When Overstating Sexism Hurts Women
What accounts for gender disparities in STEM?
Educators, activists, entertainers, and others have long tried to close the science gender gap. Yet men still outnumber women two-to-one in STEM jobs. Zero in on some of the most lucrative fields, such as engineering and computer science, and the gaps grow even wider.
What accounts for the disparity? Maybe it’s sexism.
One belief that’s deeply ingrained in nearly every influential American institution is this—disparities equal discrimination.
We might take a different view.
We might regard disparities as possible evidence of discrimination. We might investigate disparities, but still leave our minds open to other explanations besides bigotry.
But from newsrooms to classrooms, the tacit assumption seems to be that if we could wave a magic wand and make discrimination disappear then every job would fill up with 50 percent men and 50 percent women.
We can’t make sexism disappear, but we can examine societies where it’s more or less prevalent and observe the impact on the gender gap. Scandinavian nations exhibit more gender equity than, say, Middle Eastern and South Asian nations. So if discrimination prevents women from entering stem fields, we should expect women to comprise a larger share of STEM graduates in, say, Finland than Algeria.
Yet, William von Hippel notes that we see just the opposite.
The Australian social scientist writes, “Women make up over 40% of the STEM graduates in Algeria and only 20% in Finland. This pattern can be seen around the world.”
So what does account for the gender disparity? Von Hippel offers a different hypothesis: “There’s growing evidence that girls and women aren’t pursuing STEM careers because they’d simply prefer not to.”
Von Hippel says women often just have different interests and priorities than men. As he points out, it’s hardly a new take. Yet it’s one that does not seem to get much traction in the public conversation. He discusses the gender gap in STEM in his new book The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness. Maybe his book will broaden the discussion surrounding STEM disparities. If it does, women might benefit most of all.
If von Hippel and the other researchers he cites are right, that would mean that sexism in STEM is far less prevalent than is widely assumed. If true, it would be great news for young women interested in pursuing careers in science.
Yet there’s reason to be skeptical that von Hippel’s book will help spark a more frank discussion about disparities.
When Good News is Hard to Take
Consider, for instance, a recent study that seemed poised to get Americans to reconsider the “disparity equals discrimination” assumption. The huge meta analysis examined another gender gap in STEM, the gender pay gap. Yet the large study remained largely ignored by the media.
The study was authored by respected academics from Cornell (Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams) and Boston University (Shulamit Kahn). The authors seem to know why their findings might be a tough sell in many newsrooms.
Perhaps in an attempt to preempt any PR problems, they break from the usual robotic academic style to connect with readers in a rather personal preface, which begins:
The two female authors of this article share personal histories rife with egregious examples of gender bias in academic science and beyond. Born in 1950 and 1960, respectively, they endured substantial sexism and were victims of cruelty during the earliest decades of their careers. Despite these experiences, today they share the belief—rooted in empirical data—that although the situation in academia was often deeply unfair to women in the past, it has dramatically improved over recent decades.
They go on to ask readers to not reflexively reject their findings: “the two female authors of this article request that readers approach the topic with an open mind.”
What kind of problematic findings could warrant such a strange request?