The Washington Post: Anthropologist Dan Grunspan was studying the habits of undergraduates when he noticed a persistent trend: Male students assumed their male classmates knew more about course material than female students — even if the young women earned better grades.
“The pattern just screamed at me,” he said.
So, Grunspan and his colleagues at the University of Washington and elsewhere decided to quantify the degree of this gender bias in the classroom.
3 comments:
Oh for God's sake.
I'm glad this research is being done, really I am. It's important and relevant and necessary and truthful. But did we really need a study to tell us that men don't see women as equals in STEM classrooms? As someone who will never have a career in STEM, even I know this. All one has to do in order to learn more about this reality is have a chat with any of CMU's female STEM students. I've heard stories about everything from a male classmate offering to teach a female classmate how to use a laser cutter because he assumed she didn't know how, to some dude asking a girl if she knew how to use a paint marker. Really? It's a marker, you misogynistic cave man. Girls feel that they can't discuss material with male classmates because they know the condescension that awaits, and male classmates take this as an indication of their not knowing anything at all. Maybe we're lucky, in some strange, twisted, terrible way, because we haven't been taught that in order to be smart and knowledgeable and powerful we must find someone to talk down to. But what does that say of a woman who should have every right to talk down to men, because she does indeed know more and have greater ability? She will never be given the opportunity to reach that potential. It's not that women aren't capable of success in STEM. They aren't dropping out because they can't solve an equation or conduct an experiment. They are dropping out because they are the only ones who know that they can. It's disgusting that it takes a freaking anthropologist to get that point across. Use your eyes, world.
I can see this as highly apparent even in our classrooms here. Every day I'm talked down to by a male peer who thinks my answers are "cute" or dumb. Why? Because its ingrained that I'm not as smart as this study shows. Which is so strange to me. Why would I be regarded that way ever? I clearly am smart enough to be here, so why do the boys constantly talk down to me? I find myself having to constantly defend myself and assert myself in basic situations and come off as a "bitch" because I know what I'm talking about, and they're just ready to belittle me. It makes me furious. I wish rather than two girls who get regarded as "cute" commenting on this article it had been read or commented on by the people who have this problem. But they won't because this is an article they think is tailored to girls or they don't realize or want to admit that they're part of the problem. This year I've become more feminist than I ever have before because sometiems you really have to fight to be noticed or regarded as half as good as male peers.
This article was pretty fascinating. It’s crazy that the experimenters in this study found a “GPA boost” from a male to another male of 0.76. That’s pretty significant. However, I think we would know a lot more if the researchers repeated this test across all grades of education. I wonder if children in first grade have this much of a bias – or any bias at all. If we could locate exactly where this bias begins to form, perhaps we could implement some strategies to combat it. This trend also manifests itself here at CMU. I haven’t payed too much attention, but I’m struggling to remember if a female ever raised her hand to ask a question in a science class I’m currently taking. Now, questions is that class are rare, but this observation is still worrying. Coming from a science background, though, I definitely notice the trend. In the School of Drama, I think the gender situation is much better than in the STEM community, thankfully. Still, I’ll revert back to my original point that more research needs to be done so we can actually figure out good ways to address this overwhelming issue.
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