Advice For Young Women Going Into Science
It's from educational psychologist Linda Gottfredson. She's apparently controversial, and you might strongly disagree with her work, which I haven't read and first read about Friday night when I looked her up on Wikipedia.
(I'm in the final throes of my book polish and I was too tired to do any reading on Friday night when I posted this. However, here's a piece at dana.org)
However, unlike those driven to censor speech, I try to take ideas and speech on their own merits, and this is right in line with what I know about evolved sex differences.
The question posed to her:
Q: Do you have any advice for young women going into science?
Her answer:
A: Yes, and it dawned on me only recently. I see women getting more caught up in committee work and other service activities than do men. The women also tend to be more conscientious about it. In my setting, I observe some men but no women refusing to carry out the assignments they have accepted, and I see relatively more women among the stellar performers. Nonperformance seems to go unpunished, but conscientious performance draws yet more requests to serve. I therefore suspect that women tend to accumulate more service time, much of it untallied. I know that they often have a harder time saying no to requests or to doing just the minimum. My close male colleagues simply cannot fathom such gratuitous helping behavior and think it foolish; close female colleagues cannot understand the males' dismissive stance toward community obligations.I am referring here to a fairly subtle but powerful sex difference that seems rooted in known differences in temperament, interests, and priorities. Evolutionarily, women have been the glue of social groups. They tend to be more concerned with ministering to families and communities, take more pleasure from such activity, are more moved by the gratitude it generates, and suffer more anxiety and guilt when they skimp on it. I have long recognized these feelings in myself and know they generalize to work settings, but I only recently realized that I experience them as physiological reinforcement. No wonder men tend to behave differently when faced with the same choices. So my advice to women is, "Restrain your natural impulse to indiscriminately serve and help. Choose wisely, because time is your most precious resource."
via @YeyoZa
Gottfredson says she doesn't get hate mail. Writing throwaway crap like "males' dismissive stance toward community obligations" can help change that.
Lastango at April 14, 2017 11:16 PM
I could sworn we covered this a few months ago...
Anyway
[1.] I totally believe this.
[2.] Earlier this week some writer somewhere was noting that this particular strain for conscientiousness, feminine conscientiousness, is exactly the work pattern that will be most necessary for the few remaining blue/gray collar jobs in America for the next generation.
(i.e., mostly caring for seniors)
Crid at April 15, 2017 12:42 AM
I think you have to look at the whole sentence:
She's writing from the point of view of each sex toward the others' behavior.
Amy Alkon at April 15, 2017 5:59 AM
So, her implication here is that men do the minimum level of work, don't volunteer to help out, have no social conscience, and don't carry out their assignments.
Women, on the other hand, are conscientious, hard working, take on too much work, help out regularly, and are unfairly taken advantage of in terms of work load and un-tallied work time.
I think this is a self-pitying feminist fantasy some women have, that they're working so much harder than their male counterparts for less reward and recognition. That they volunteer to do too much because they care and men don't. She's right about one thing: your time is yours and don't give away what the company won't purchase.
I've worked with women (and men) who fit Gottfredson's feminist trope. However, I've also worked with women who had no trouble declining work, citing a heavy workload and family obligations (picking up kids from daycare, etc.) or who joined committees at work and used the hours they spent on those as reason they could not take on an assignment. I've worked with men who over-volunteered for work or service activities.
This idea that women in general are somehow more conscientious and hard-working than men but are unrecognized for their superiority because of a patriarchal workplace is fantasy. If that's her advice for women going into science, she needs to rethink it.
With that advice, she's arming those women ahead of time with a grudge. Arm them instead with enthusiasm and common sense. Yes, they will encounter some sexism, but women can do quite well in STEM fields these days. Most of the people in the field have no problems working with women and the dearth of women in the past entering those fields means women entering today have opportunities not available to those earlier women and, in some cases, not available to their male colleagues.
I will agree with her on one thing, most of the men for whom I've worked have concentrated their efforts on the job at hand, the one they get paid to do. Their social life is generally outside the office and they keep the two separate. In my experience, more women than men tend to think of the office as a socializing place, organizing lunches, office birthday parties, showers, and after-work get togethers. Generally, men tend to socialize around work while women socialize through work. To function well, a workplace needs both.
Conan the Grammarian at April 15, 2017 7:51 AM
If women are typically the stellar performers and men are regularly non-performing why is there such a striking disparity in patent and publication productivity between men and women in STEM fields?
Only 8 percent of patents list a female as the primarily inventor, and only 20% as a contributor, and women produce ~30-40% fewer publications, if they publish at all ( 40% of female Phd's don't ).
Also I reject the idea that becoming involved in administration and committee work (i.e. bureaucracy ) is somehow more conscientious than pursuing research.
Linda is trying to spin the career trajectory preferred by women as somehow more noble than that chosen be men.
But what she's describing is the conventional career path of someone working in STEM who no longer wishes to publish or pursue original research - they move into an institutional role.
mmm at April 15, 2017 9:54 AM
I notice that men are more strategic at work. They will do projects that move them towards their goal - and often nothing else.
Women tend to do what needs to be done or to help people, so I agree with the premise.
I competed head-to-head for a job once. I remember thinking that I should get promoted because I always did what was better for the team and for the business rather what was better for me personally.
I thought that the self-serving asshole should get "what he deserves." Then I realized that everything he did was "important" and built his resume. He wouldn't be on a project unless he was the lead.
Hell yes, his resume looked better than mine. Was his work better? Absolutely not. However, he refused subordinate work and it paid off.
My willingness to do whatever needed to be done but me in the ass.
Jen at April 15, 2017 10:43 AM
Proving once again, as if further proof is needed, how virulently anti-human feminism is.
Pay no heed to what resonates with you, because Science!
This raises a very similar question that is glaring in its absence. Why is there no similar concern for women going into, say, small engine maintenance? No barriers to entry, no particular demands on upper body strength. Yet (google [women's bureau non traditional occupations]) less than 2% of small engine mechanics are women.
For that matter, any occupation with the word "mechanic" attached to it has just as lopsided gender balance.
I rather suspect there is a strong correlation between mechanical reasoning and mathematical/science aptitude. The D (measure of the difference between the mean of two sample populations) between male and female mechanical reasoning is close as darnnit to 1 — i.e., one standard deviation.
Assume for the moment that people tend to self-select into occupations. The mean mechanical aptitude of men who are mechanics is bound to be to the right of the entire male population. Further assuming that mean to be 1 standard deviation to the right of the male mean, there are virtually no women whose mechanical reasoning reaches that level.
Which squares with reality: almost no women are mechanics of any stripe.
Mechanical reasoning is of a type with mathematical reasoning: obsessive systematizing, and putting widgets in places to make bigger widgets.
So the advice that should be given to women who want to go into Science! is this: be born male.
(Google [this american life testosterone]). Fascinating episode. Listen, or read the transcript. One of its sections is a female-male transgender person. After getting dosed with testosterone to make the transition, she finally understood physics for the first time.
Yes, Science! is super duper glamory and we all have love crushes on it. That's no reason to believe women, in general, will be any good at it, or have any desire to do it.
Evolution didn't stop at the neckline.
Jeff Guinn at April 15, 2017 1:55 PM
Oh boy. Ok, here goes:
1. By being in a committee one avoids actual work yet one gets paid-for chatting. Remove the chairs from committee meetings and lets see how many women (and men) join committees. Make standing mandatory. And no chatting/personalizing. THEN let's see how long their in their precious little committees.
2. "The women also tend to be more conscientious about it." (women being in committees and other service activities). Women want leverage. Joining a committee gives one that & equity.
3. "I see relatively more women among the stellar performers." You're typing that on a computer designed by and made by and manufactured by equipment designed by and made by men. Come to the hospitals at which I work and see the less-than-stellar drama in which the female employees participate.
4. "I therefore suspect that women tend to accumulate more service time, much of it untallied." Yes, to get leverage, so later they can release emotions when it is time to respond.
5. Less committees and service, more racquetball and swimming-let's have women switch.
6. "they often have a harder time saying no to requests or to doing just the minimum." Oh, they do huh?
7. "Evolutionarily, women have been the glue of social groups." What a load of crap. My hang gliding club and SCUBA diving clubs are low on glue. I don't know how we function. Good thing we've got 'Lisa'! I hope she doesn't leave the sport or bye-bye hang gliding club.
8. "They tend to be more concerned with ministering to families and communities, take more pleasure from such activity, are more moved by the gratitude it generates, and suffer more anxiety and guilt when they skimp on it." Youuu moron-that's because 40% of the population falls into ONE temperament type: Sensing Judging (according to the Keirsey Temperament Sorter)! That's WHAT those people DO!
9. Then women need to grow the hell up and think more & feel less in the work environment. I suppose that comes w/time. Work is work not a place to make new girfriends/BFF-ugh, the socializing and personalizing women do at work. Good Lord.
10. 'Sensing Judging' ppl long for duty & exist primarily to belong to the social units to which they belong. They nurture institutions. They have a parental attitude. They seek cues to tell them what they're supposed to do. The women who are IN those institutions 'feel' more than the males, thus, the choices the women make.
Adam Bein at April 15, 2017 3:13 PM
I must admit I read this differently than most of you. My take was:
1. Self control is important (and really it is for both sexes). Just doing what you want isn't necessarily the best thing to be doing.
2. Getting involved in the bureaucracy doesn't help women's careers in science. They appear to have a natural tendency to focus on committee/bureaucracy over projects/publications and this is not a good choice for most of them.
I do agree much of it was poorly worded.
Ben at April 15, 2017 6:34 PM
I love being right.
Crid at April 15, 2017 6:41 PM
Linda Gottfredson's observations may be colored by the horrible treatment she's received at the University of Delaware, where she's a professor.
Her work involves the role of intelligence in occupational status and resulting disparate impact outcomes. This makes her an 'academic Nazi' according to her colleagues.
They'd tried to purge her in the 90's and fabricated charges against her, then attempted to rig the adjudication process. When the AAUP caught wind they censored the University and assigned an arbitrator. Her colleagues, including her Dean, refused to attend the process.
Gottfredson received a settlement from the University and continues to do research at UD.
margo at April 16, 2017 9:56 AM
"My willingness to do whatever needed to be done but me in the ass."
At my previous employer, I served on committees. I volunteered to go to college-recruitment events. I got CPR and AED training and took on the role of fire warden for the floor I was on. Most of this was on my own time -- other than the recruitment things, we didn't get paid for any "employee life" activities. Trying to do the good corporate citizen thing. When layoff time came, none of that did me a bit of good.
So no, I don't do that anymore. Fortunately, my employer seldom asks for employee volunteers for that sort of thing -- if they are going to do an employee morale event or something like that, they have admin assistants that they pay to do that sort of thing.
Cousin Dave at April 17, 2017 8:03 AM
Also, in this industry, they have a thing called the "proposal committee". You do not want to be on a proposal committee if you can avoid it. It's an arduous and thankless task; you work under tight deadlines, you have information-handling and ethics restrictions, you are expected to do a lot of stuff outside of your area of expertise, you are constantly having to rip work up and start over because the customer changed the specification, and you are locked in a room away from all of your colleagues, often in some rented space that either resembles a warehouse, or hasn't been cleaned since the last tenant moved out. And you work under the pressure of knowing that if your company doesn't win the bid, the company don't make money and that could impact your own job.
You do not volunteer for a proposal committee. You are assigned. Once assigned, you will be working whatever hours are necessary to complete the proposal by the deadline, including nights and weekends as needed, and no, you won't be paid overtime. There are seldom any non-executive-level women on these committees. If you are female, you can say don't have time, family obligations, have to pick up the kids from school etc., and get out of it. If you are male, you are stuck. There are some conscientious women who will serve if asked. But most will find a way out of it.
Cousin Dave at April 17, 2017 8:13 AM
"The company doesn't make money"... jeez, my Southern is leaking out this morning.
Cousin Dave at April 17, 2017 8:15 AM
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