gender and toys
Feb. 18th, 2005 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittenscribbleA bit ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cheetahmaster posted a link to the speech made by the president of Harvard at a recent conference. It was made particularly notable for his implications that women in science and technology are not only socially hampered, but are by their very nature indisposed to those fields.
No points for guessing how I feel about that, considering my gender and my chosen field. Took it all rather personally, I'm afraid. Yes, there's quite a bit of societal pressure going on, but... genetic? (Is he calling me unnatural?)
The bit that struck me was Mr Summers's use of his children as illustration: So I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something. And I think it's just something that you probably have to recognize.
It struck a chord because I had a truck, too. My parents, perhaps in a bid to avoid gender-training me, offered my baby self a selection of toys suited to both genders. My favorites were a stuffed sheep and a large red dump truck. I used the dump truck to cart around the sheep. I remember particularly liking the dumping motion: tilt, slide. Later, when I was about eight or ten, the dump truck became the focus of an almost religious worship from my Hot Wheels cars. The cars were members of a restrictive society with rigid castes based upon make, model, and paint job. This story eventually spawned a star, the low-class rebel car who rose defiantly through the ranks by being the fastest. Admittedly, I stacked the deck in its favor; I sought out textures that suited its wheels, arranged it and its fellows carefully, then tilted the surface and let them run. The protagonist, carefully positioned in the center of the board, was sometimes the only one that made it to the finish line and earned an audience with the dump truck. (Goodness knows what my parents thought of that. I guess they were glad that I kept myself occupied.)
Poor Mr Summers; after carefully not giving dolls to his daughters, he finds them mothering their trucks instead. So girls anthropomorphosize objects; so what? In what possible way does the girls' mothering instinct imply anything about their technical aptitude? The traits have nothing to do with one another. They could overlap, I suppose; I've been known to find onboard components "cute." Makes me a bit odd, perhaps, but it doesn't impact on my technical ability.
cheetahmaster posted a link to the speech made by the president of Harvard at a recent conference. It was made particularly notable for his implications that women in science and technology are not only socially hampered, but are by their very nature indisposed to those fields.No points for guessing how I feel about that, considering my gender and my chosen field. Took it all rather personally, I'm afraid. Yes, there's quite a bit of societal pressure going on, but... genetic? (Is he calling me unnatural?)
The bit that struck me was Mr Summers's use of his children as illustration: So I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my two and a half year old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck, tells me something. And I think it's just something that you probably have to recognize.
It struck a chord because I had a truck, too. My parents, perhaps in a bid to avoid gender-training me, offered my baby self a selection of toys suited to both genders. My favorites were a stuffed sheep and a large red dump truck. I used the dump truck to cart around the sheep. I remember particularly liking the dumping motion: tilt, slide. Later, when I was about eight or ten, the dump truck became the focus of an almost religious worship from my Hot Wheels cars. The cars were members of a restrictive society with rigid castes based upon make, model, and paint job. This story eventually spawned a star, the low-class rebel car who rose defiantly through the ranks by being the fastest. Admittedly, I stacked the deck in its favor; I sought out textures that suited its wheels, arranged it and its fellows carefully, then tilted the surface and let them run. The protagonist, carefully positioned in the center of the board, was sometimes the only one that made it to the finish line and earned an audience with the dump truck. (Goodness knows what my parents thought of that. I guess they were glad that I kept myself occupied.)
Poor Mr Summers; after carefully not giving dolls to his daughters, he finds them mothering their trucks instead. So girls anthropomorphosize objects; so what? In what possible way does the girls' mothering instinct imply anything about their technical aptitude? The traits have nothing to do with one another. They could overlap, I suppose; I've been known to find onboard components "cute." Makes me a bit odd, perhaps, but it doesn't impact on my technical ability.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-18 10:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-19 04:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-19 08:09 am (UTC)And, oh yeah - I took Organic Chem and Neurophysiology over at Harvard during summer school for the easy A's.
Summers is a nitwit.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-19 08:36 pm (UTC)^___^ You are the perfect counterargument!
um....
Date: 2005-02-20 08:53 pm (UTC)The only possible use I could think of for such knowledge, by the way, is to explain a part of the numerical differences which exist between male and female engineers. As in, in the perfect society, where there is no gener bias whatsoever, men might still outnumber women in engineering jobs withough making the society any less perfect. (If there were innate differences in potential, the person in charge of said perfect society wouldn't worry about a gender disparity in engineering, because he or she would realize that the disparity was to be expected.)
If the innate disparity were true, it wouldn't justify denying women jobs for which they were qualified. You'd still have to judge people as individuals and measure their abilities fairly. You just might not suspect a nefarious bias if the ratio of men to women hovered around 21:19 instead of 1:1.
Of course, there's probably no way to measure potential anyway, and, even if we could, the the results of the study -- however they turned out -- might not help get rid of a gender bias (by which I mean unfairly dismissing a qualified individual because of gender). So maybe it's not something we need to know.
The only way I can think Summers suggestion bad is if it provides ammunition to people who want to keep women out of the sciences. (I don't think anyone would argue that Summers wants to.) Otherwise, he's presenting a theory to explain a gender imbalance. If it's wrong, it's wrong. But we shouldn't call it bad unless it leads to bad results.
Re: um....
Date: 2005-02-20 09:54 pm (UTC)But why target the gender divide? I mean, if you account for all factors of socialization, then any trait could be culpable. The average engineering aptitude of short people might be less than that of tall people, or blondes less than brunettes. It's the patronizing, oh-well-what-can-you-do tone that affronts me. "Since women aren't as prevalent in engineering as we (society) would like, then maybe it's just not us. Maybe we've done all we can, and women just aren't good enough. Maybe it's them." If aptitude must be inborn, then why must he assume that it be sex-linked? Is there something extra on the Y-chromosome that says "analytical, likes to tinker, fixes things" that women just miss out on; and if so, why do some women exhibit those traits anyway?
Clearly it's the sexism that gets me. If he'd said the same thing about white people vs colored people, he'd've been run out of the room even before the speech was done -- and that's a divide in engineering that's even worse than the male/female divide, at least as far as my experience goes. Sure there's no way to measure this thing, but until he comes up with some better rationale than gut feeling and choice comments from his two-year-olds, I reserve the right to call his theory poor.
But since we'll never reach a perfect society, we'll never know. All I can say is that there are a lot more women in the younger generations of the engineering workplace, and as far as I can tell, the trend is continuing upwards. It may never match the ratio of women to men in the nation, but as long as women think that they can be engineers just as well as the men can, then I'll be happy.
Summers is clearly in support of keeping women in the sciences, yes. But he's wrongheaded in suggesting that they can't get into the sciences because they were simply born incapable; there's no proof for it and no way to take society out of the equation. (It's his poor daughters I feel sorry for. God help them if they want to major in home economics. He's going to blame it on their gender, and reassure himself that they never would have made it in engineering anyway. In light of his trucks-and-no-dolls, oh-god-my-girls-are-doomed example, I can't help but think of his speech as preemptive sour grapes.)
Re: um....
Date: 2005-02-21 06:08 pm (UTC)And as far as "what can you do:" I think he was just saying that if you do everything you can possibly do to encourage women to go into the sciences if they are so inclined, and you _still_ have a discrepancy, then it's time to start thinking that maybe no matter what you do, it just won't work. If you can't change people in that way, then you might as well say that the particular trait is innate. We're nowhere near that point yet, but if you look fifty years down the line, and men still get more tenured positions, then it might not reflect bias; it might reflect "innate abilites."
I think he can get away with the sexism because people know he's not a sexist. In our society, raceism is more of a problem than sexism, especially since to fix the gender imbalance, a male physicist can encouage his daugher to follow in his footsteps. But if there are not black physicists, there's not footstep-following to be done. Women are a part of every social class, so they can break into the club more easily. Besides, if you want to get all genetic, races can mix, which means that even if one race were better at quantum chemisty than another, it wouldn't generally stay that way. Genders don't much mix.
Re: um....
Date: 2005-02-23 06:09 pm (UTC)But if scientific inclination/ability were to any degree sex-linked (if we could indeed find out at all), then what would that change? Boys are better at spatial relations but we don't stop teaching girls geometry, and we don't teach them any differently. And when girls are bad at geometry, we don't let them use "but I'm a girl!" as an excuse.
People may not think he's sexist, and he doesn't think of himself as sexist, but to me, the statement "that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination" is inescapably sexist, even if he didn't mean it that way. He presents that "intrinsic aptitude" bit as fact, not theory to be debated, which is where the sexism lies.
And although I agree with most of his statements re: social factors in the way of women's advancement, I definitely disagree with what he calls "lesser factors." If my own (relatively pampered) experience is any guide, then there's a lot of work to be done re: socialization and continuing discrimination, not just for professionals in those fields, but for the common population as well.
Seems to me Summers is being a bit hasty in his assessment of current data. He assumes that the proportion of women who graduated 20, 25 years ago, should have the same proportion in management and professional positions today. Which would be nice, but unfortunately untrue. Social pressure must be fought off at every step of the way.
And since we're not even close to having done everything we can possibly do to promote the cause, then of what possible use was this comment of his? It doesn't help the PR campaign at all. Except insofar as any attention is good attention.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-23 01:52 pm (UTC)Here's a tangentially-related link discussing a gender-related "issue" among women in technical/well-paying professions.
Okay enough serious comments:
>rather personally, I'm afraid. Yes, there's quite a bit of societal
>pressure going on, but... genetic? (Is he calling me unnatural?)
Not that there would be anything wrong with being a little unnatural. In fact, maybe inclinations toward things technical are just the beginning... not merely unnatural, but a mutation, and next come the psychic abilities, adamantium claws, and/or ability to borrow the powers of others.
>This story eventually spawned a star, the low-class rebel car who
>rose defiantly through the ranks by being the fastest.
Little do we know that kittenscribble is actually the ghostwriter of the next Pixar film, and these childhood memories are her inspiration ;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-02-23 09:14 pm (UTC)And a study of the converse, giving boys nothing but dolls to play and so on with would be quite interesting, though many people would probably draw altogether different conclusions from that...
...which is yet another social problem; girls playing at being boys is looked upon completely differently than boys playing at being girls. If Summers had given his boy-children girl-toys, people would have considered his actions in a completely different light.
We're far from a gender-neutral society, here.
Here's a tangentially-related link discussing a gender-related "issue" among women in technical/well-paying professions.
XD That's priceless. I never thought of advanced degrees as being a hindrance in the marital marketplace. But the social custom of the male being the primary breadwinner is yet another facet of the situation...
Little do we know that kittenscribble is actually the ghostwriter of the next Pixar film,
Now that makes me unreasonably happy.
Hot Wheels = awesome! Harvard prez = asshole
Date: 2005-03-14 07:45 pm (UTC)And to add something - even if Mr. Summers doesn't make his point to purposefully hold back women in scientific fields, isn't it possible that he and those that hold his perspective (and positions of power), might in their patronizing and condescending manner, create a negative environment for women working and studying in "a man's world", and therefore hamper their ability to improve and grow? Wouldn't they be in the wrong for even holding that position so firmly when it has such obvious negative repercussions for resulting female performance in such a dampening environment? And shouldn't the president of such a prestigious university priding itself on being on the forefront of modern science have a slightly less sexist view?
To even suggest that there might be some genetic disability of sorts bred inherently into womens' genetics codes is tantamount to a complete and horrifying new breed of sexism. To hypothesize that women are less qualified for certain fields or positions because of their upbringing has some merit to it, as the nature+nurture theory goes, but it's downright wrong to suggest that our genes would decide ability to that extent.
But who am I to contest the Harvard president? I'm just a lowly state university grad, and dropped out of the sciences to boot. I guess I got the memo that I just wasn't born to be a doctor after all.
-Karen (kitten's kid sis)
ha.
Date: 2005-05-17 07:43 am (UTC)