Newsgroups: bit.listserv.psycgrad
Date:         Mon, 9 Nov 1992 15:26:30 -0800
              <PSYCGRAD@UOTTAWA.BITNET>
From:         "(Tor Neilands)" <tbn@UTXVM.CC.UTEXAS.EDU>
Subject:      More on gender imbalance

Stephanie Fishkin writes:

=== Date:         Sun, 8 Nov 1992 09:55:25 PST
=== From:         "(Stephanie Fishkin)" <fishkin@SCF.USC.EDU>
=== Subject:      Re: All the Preferental Tx Talk...

OK, maybe it's just the researcher in me, but all this talk on the
various aspects of preferential treatment seems to me to warrent some
sort of investigations of the topic -- or more if they've already been
done (assuming, of course, they were done correctly the first time).

I think this might be an excellent area of investigation for someone
wondering what area they should do research in.  OR, perhaps we could
create a study as a group psycgrad project!  Maybe someone could
sumarize what's been said to date and then people could take areas they
are interested in studying and create a study!  For example, there's been
some talk about how when you put your initials down people think that
you are male;  I know that as a pre-grad school RA I did some coding for
a prof investigating this phenomena and sure enough she did find that
people thought of male names before female ones.  Maybe there is
another way to study this?

I am presently doing some class work in the area of managing a diverse
workforce, and the training books and articles I'm reading all say that
affirmative action is useless and unecessary;  your comments suggest
otherwise. Perceptions of afirm. action would be another interesting
area.

.... Just thought I'd get your minds clicking in response to your very
interesting comments on the topic.

(And you thought social psych was useless!...)

SF

************************************************************************
In the beginning there was data.  The data was without form and null,
and darkness was upon the face of the console; and the Sprit of IBM was
moving over the face of the market.  And DEC said "let there be
registers"; and there were registers.  And DEC saw that they carried;
and DEC separated the data from the instructions.  DEC called the data
Stack and the Instructions they called Code...




Stephanie (and other interested parties, as well): I'm not sure if such a
study would do any "good" for the field--in fact, one could wind up
"studying" the problem to death and never taking the bull by the horns and
wrassling with it, not to mention the myriad of methodological difficulties
associated with trying to measure this phenomenon (or even define it--in
our program, for example, which I and some women would say is quite sexist,
others would find nothing wrong with in terms of sexism. Some type of
agreed upon classifactory sceme would have to be devised to label,
identify, and code "sexist behaviors". I fear, however, that sexism may
take on the same type of quality that Jesse Helms had with
pornography/obscenity: "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it"). I
for one don't think social psych will change the world for the better,
but....if you are seriously interested in persuing this topic, it doesn't
prevent me from wishing you good luck, and from firing a tip your way to
get you started on your quest. A few years back one of our students did a
dissertation on publication records and citation records of a big sample of
academics, and he got sex data on these folks, too. My recollection was
that the women who were in the sample actually outperformed the men in
terms of pubs and citations, and this was *especially* true if they had
kids and were married--the "superwoman" syndrome. In any event, I'd bet
that this guy has numbers on his sample, like how many women there were,
etc, etc. and I'm sure he's addressed a lot of the methodological pitfalls
inherent to this type of research--he's a crack methodologist, one of the
best I've ever seen.
        Anyway, his name is Steve Gregorich and I'll send you his current
e-mail address...
        To the rest of the discussants out there: This discussion is
*great*--I feel like I'm learning a lot from it, and I for one am heartened
that so many folks are thinking actively about these kinds of issues.

        cheers,

                   Tor

p.s.  I have to agree with Tim on the sports issue. Besides, shouldn't we
derive our research inspirations from discussions about life and the world
instead of being in such a hurry to lock ourselves back up in our ivory
towers to crank out tomes of "research" pubs that the public hardly ever
sees?


Tor Neilands
Systems Analyst
Statistical Services Group
Computation Center
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX  78712

Phone: (512)-471-3241, Ext. 263

Internet:  TBN@Utxvm.cc.utexas.edu
___________________________________________________

"Life is too short to self-verify"   --- Shawn McNulty

"Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I, I took
 the road less traveled by, and that has made all the
 difference".                                 --- Robert Frost
___________________________________________________

Disclaimer:  All of the views expressed above are solely
those of the author. Any relationship between my own
views and those of the University of Texas and/or The
Computation Center at the University of Texas are
due merely to regression to the mean.
____________________________________________________
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