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It's easy as a student to tune out news from the larger world, but sometimes it just bursts through.
In 9.70 (Social Psychology) we had a chance to discuss and in our own way respond to the recent report on Women in Science. 9.70, taught by Prof. Stephan Chorover, is in a case study format. Each week, a group of students lead the discussion of an area of social psychology using a particular social issue as a basis for discussion.
On April 15th, we discussed the recent report on Women in Science. Prof. Lotte Bailyn graciously addressed the class on the topic, which led to a lively discussion.
One of the things Bailyn spoke about was the idea of gender schemas, which was formulated by Virginia Valian in her book, Why So Slow?. A gender schema is a mental image of a person based on their gender, a sort of rule of thumb, a way of looking at the world. The class quickly picked up on its role in gender inequities. Because gender schemas are rules of thumb and because they lie at an almost sub- conscious level, those that favor men as scientists can be insidious.
The degree of favoritism need not be large to make a difference. Bailyn mentioned a study from Valian's book that showed how even a 1% difference, where one gender was favored over the other, could compound over several generations to become a significant difference. The class was shocked by the extremity of the numbers and the idea of error propagation through the millennia.
The class was very interested in effects of the Women in Science report: responses from other universities and departments, as well as extensions of the study. We'd all read the special issue of the Faculty Newsletter and one of the concerns was how the junior faculty related to this report. A heated discussion started about whether things were more fair for junior faculty or if they hadn't hit the glass ceiling yet.
We were all impressed that the study was the result of collective action and as such, could be clearly seen as something whose time had come, rather than action by a single maverick.
What was most shocking to some in the room were the students' own experiences with prejudice. Talking about the pipeline of female students into the sciences led to a discussion of MIT admissions and, more importantly, perceptions of MIT admissions. More than one student commented on negative perceptions of female MIT students as having gotten into MIT "just because they were female".
This shocking belief pointed out just how far we still have to go.
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