Jackson, Hillard, & Schneider. Using Implicit Bias Training to Improve Attitudes toward Women in STEM.

# Table of Content 
Abstract 
Important Questions 
Key Concepts 
Further Reading and Resource 
Key words
Citation 
Abstract:
 Stereotypes and implicit discrimination towards women in STEM can negatively impact their academic performances, getting jobs and promotions in the future. This paper discovers the effect of short-term diversity training, and the result shows that training is kind of positive. The research also shows that men are more likely than women to activate stereotypes towards women, which shows patriarchy in educational setting. In the end, the authors suggest several ways to make the training more effective in changing people's attitudes. I think this reading did a very good job in discovering the microaggression towards women in STEM and the advice in the end about appreciating the differences can be very beneficial to readers' personal growth. Additionally, the attitudes of appreciating differences rather than "othering" others can be enlightening for students in creating media messages and internalize the value.
Important Questions: 
# Why is it important to have more women in the STEM field? 
Because increasing representation of women in STEM would increase diversity, which produces benefits for productivity and innovation. 
2. What are the reasons women are underrepresented in STEM? 
There are various factors, such as hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, stereotype and social identity threat, gender stereotype and even unconscious gender-stereotypical cues. 
Key Concepts: 
(Also the ways to measure the effectiveness of the diversity training) 
# favorable beliefs: In this paper favorable beliefs refer to the positive, recognizable and respectful attitudes toward women in STEM. 
# stereotype endorsement: It means agree with the gender stereotypes and activate them when meeting women in STEM in real life. 
# feeling thermometer: In this paper, it use warm feelings or cold feelings to describe the attitude change before and after training.
What should we do? 
# have the awareness of the existence of microaggression and implicit sexist attitudes towards women. 
# perspective taking, acknowledge the difficulties, challenges and pressure they are facing from the society and education system. 
# use more inclusive language, such as when doing the presentation, they can use more like "we", "our" 
# instead of saying eliminating the stereotypes, which may in turn activate stereotypes more frequently, acknowledge and appreciating differences are more effective ways. 
Resource and further reading: 
# Give Women the Access Code  The New York Times, Retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/giving-women-the-access-code.html?_r=0  This article shows besides diversity training, what are some other ways people can do from macro level to increase the diversity in STEM field 
# Fein, S., & Spencer, S. J. (1997). Prejudice as self-image maintenance: Affirming the self through derogating others. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 31–44. This paper is a great source of further understanding the formation of stereotypes: people would tend to be more stereotypically judge other people when their own self-image and self-esteem get threatened. 
# Hillard, A. L., Jackson, S. M., & Schneider, T. R. (2012). Best Practices for Discussing Diversity and Implicit Bias in the Classroom. Chicago, IL: Poster Presented at the Annual Convention of the Association for Psychological Science. This paper is a complimentary reading of the entry, it discusses the practices we should have in different settings, such as using less confrontational messages, discuss remedies and tailor the information before presenting to the audience. 
# Elsewhere, Within Here : Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event by trunh T. Minh Ha, who is a professor in UC Berkeley and a feminist film maker. I think it is very interesting that this journal comes up with the concept appreciating the differences rather than saying eliminating the stereotypes. While in her book, she talked a lot about how "otherness" looks like in the real life, and all the stories are based on her experience as an Asian live in the U.S for more than 30 years. 
# The changing lives of women http://www.npr.org/series/177622347/the-changing-lives-of-women This website is a forum with all the popular topics related to women's daily challenges. There are some articles related to women in STEM. There are more interesting ones like how women can become powerful through changing the nonverbal actions, or their voice (lower their tone of voices...) something like that. Definitely worth check it out. 
Citation: 
Jackson,S., Hillard, A. a., & Schneider, T. (2014). Using implicit bias training to improve attitudes toward women in STEM. Social Psychology Of Education, 17(3), 419-438.
Category:Diversity
Category:Gender
Category:Stereotype
Category:Education
Category:STEM
Category:Multiculturalism