In honour of Halloween, I'm going to write about two scary things, which are coincidentally, the two books that I have most recently finished. The first one is this book by Virginia Valian, a psychologist at Hunter College, about the question of why there are so few women in prestigious positions. In particular, it uses the idea of a schema (like a stereotype, but with fewer negative connotations) and a whole lot of research studies on the subject to explore various reasons why women might be held back in various areas.
This book should really be read by anyone interested in feminism, and should be read
to anyone who doesn't think that sexism is still a factor in today's ever so enlightened society. Schemas affect the way in which we treat people and the way in which we evaluate them. Small yet continual pieces of negative reinforcement and negative evaluations result in a huge disadvantage for many women for whom their gender schema and the schema for their profession clash. (As a totally random example: university professor.) But here's the thing: almost all of this bias is unconscious and unintended.
People think that sexism isn't a problem anymore because we have laws against discrimination, and nobody would get taken seriously if they said, "Don't promote her because she's a woman." But we do take seriously statements such as, "Don't promote her because she lacks leadership ability." That's a real
reason not to promote someone and doesn't sound sexist in the least. But it's not so simple, when you look at the research. Valian quotes a lot of studies in which our pre-existing schemas cause an evaluation bias. For instance, in a study in which identical resumes were sent out, some with male names attached, others with female names, people tended to rate the resumes with male names more highly. But if bias exists there, why are we so sure that our everyday evaluations are so impartial, and that we live in a meritocracy unblemished by prejudice?
There is so much more to this book than I could possibly touch on here, but it's amazing and eerie. At least, the section on academia was spookily accurate (see, this is a Halloween review) with respect to my own experiences. One of the anecdotes Valian uses, about an academic talk, to illustrate that unconscious judgments about who in the audience is likely to have a worthwhile comment, was almost identical to an experience I'd had a few weeks earlier and remarked on. (This is a case of a woman's comment being brushed off, while other comments made by men were taken seriously. In my case, what made it stand out was the fact that one of my male colleagues made the almost identical comment later in the talk and got an extremely different response.)
Anyway, the book is amazing, and is both scientific and readable. The situation outlined is an awfully depressing one if you're a woman in a position like mine, but isn't it better to know what you might be up against?
