Newsgroups: bit.listserv.psycgrad
Date:         Fri, 13 Nov 1992 11:35:23 -0500
              <PSYCGRAD@UOTTAWA.BITNET>
From:         TBN@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU
Subject:      More on Preferential Treatment

Jennifer Bugg writes:

_____________
>
>=== Date:         Mon, 9 Nov 1992 19:49:48 EST
>=== From:         jlbugg@UCCS.EDU
>=== Subject:      RE: More on gender imbalance
>
>Tor,
>
>intended to reply today anway on this topic, but your comment reminded
>me... 1-2 years ago in Scientific American (I think) is a study done on
>females (excuse typos), males out publish females 2:1.  The study looked
>at blind reviews of work and females were still underpublished 2:1.  OH
>MY GOSH!! They looked at women who were married or had kids to see if it
>corresponded to lower publication rates and it was not significant; they
>found no significant effects with women who were in ANY sort of
>caretaking role (in terms of relationships, i.e., had
>boyfriends/girlfriends).
>
>I think we absolutely need to know WHY.  Given that probably none of us
>would even begin to consider the fact that we are not as academically
>capable as our male colleagues, there must be some explanation - and
>that explanation will tell us more than demographic information for our
>own careers... it will give us a more general picture of how sexism
>works and what it's function has been.
>
>Jennifer Bugg (thought I'd add my last name on this one; I consider
>myself to be an expert on name discrimination.)

Jennifer, I agree with what you are saying, and I appreciate your sharing
of those results with me and the rest of the list. This issue dovetails
very nicely with a discussion on cross-cultural research we had in my area
meeting yesterday. I think it's difficult to generalize results like this
from one sample across disciplines and even cultures. For example, it would
be interesting to look at the ratio of publication rates of females/males
in other countries, like Sweden, etc. and see what the differences between
the nations' ratios are. If we did find differences, then that would offer
some evidence for my gut feeling as to why this happens---there are
cultural values in science that favor "traditional", "male" (note I'm not
saying *all* men adhere to this way of life when I write this) ways of
doing things in science (e.g., competitiveness, squashing another guy's
theory to get ahead, etc...research capitalism, basically) and these
science cultural values are a reflection of the culture which produced
these scientists--hell, we're still using statistical methods that were
devloped to measure corn growth by guys like Fisher back in the early part
of the century because we learn how to do data analysis by watching how our
mentors do it, and they learned from watching their mentors do it, and so
on and so forth. In a similar vein, we've been raised in a society that
often objectifies women (look at any car or beer ad on weekend TV) and
devalues their capability to achieve intellectual success--is it any wonder
that researchers who have been raised in this society for 20 plus years
internalize at least some of these attitudes? We have faculty here (I won't
name names) who sometimes go out at lunchtime to sit by a foutain to
"girl-watch" while they eat their lunch and talk about social psychology.
Great example for the male students to learn from, right? These are the
same faculty who can't seem to understand why our program has such
difficulty recruiting and then graduating female Ph.D's!! One thing that we
can learn from all this is that these types of subcultural differences are
very difficult to spot from within the subculture---and that changing
attitudes will be a challenging task, indeed, for oftentimes the
"offenders" may be unaware of (or may not want to be made aware of) the
inconsistencies in their own behaviors.

Lest anyone think this is a purely intellectual exercise, I hasten to
include the caveat that we must never lose sight of the fact that issues of
discrimination are often intense, volatile, and extremely painful to
discuss. Being a minority smack dab in the middle of a majority (and being
pooh-poohed and/or ignored in the process) isn't exactly a tip-toe through
the tulips. While I'm a white male, I'm pretty much a minority in my area
when it comes to a lot of ideas about social psychology, including how it
should be done and why we're doing it---and not being taken seriously or
even listened to ain't no fun, I can tell you that, so I sympathize with
the folks out there who feel like they have a different perspective to
offer, by dint of their unique minority or gender status, and who feel like
they aren't being listened to. What a waste. I think ignoring the
alternative viewpoints is equally pernicious as is ignoring the
contributions of somone who's a minority member or a woman who's doing work
in an "acceptable" , "mainline" area simply because she's a woman or a
minority.

cheers,

Tor
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