STUDY: "Interacting with sexist men triggers social identity threat among female engineers"

[ms_geekette]

How do you feel about the statements/data presented in the following abstract? (my thoughts are behind the cut at the end of this entry)

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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
2009 Volume 96, Issue 6

Comments

[ms_geekette]

Late to the party here, but I think you come at this from a different perspective than maybe I do with your background. I guess I'm not a fan of the blanket statements that the abstract puts forth. (And, after reading the full paper once, I still have some problems with claims put forth.)

I was trying to figure out *why* the abstract statement bothered me, and I guess it boils down to I'm tired of the "women are weak/inferior/what have you" insinuation. I'm sure this is not the intent of the study and the authors *at all*, but that is how it struck me, at first.

"It is already well-documented in the literature on stereotype threat that women who are even reminded of their gender (let alone treated badly because of it) before a math test end up doing worse on the test (and men end up doing better), and that it affects high-ability women more (and this isn't just a phenomenon of women - it applies to any subgroup of people that are high-ability in an area where their larger group, like gender or race, is stereotyped as being bad)."

I got my undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering. After a certain point in my undergrad coursework, there were MANY times when I was the ONLY female in the class. So, in light of these studies, I should've done worse in all of my classwork where I was the only female present, just b/c I might be reminded of my gender? Where do you draw the line at "absolute truth" and "possible excuse" for poor performance?

(I officially only had one female engineering instructor during undergrad, a female grad student that taught one of my lab classes. I was exposed to several other female engineering professors as part of SWE and such. This is not counting math and science instructors, of course.)

I don't know...I just have a lot of feelings about these issues and I don't think I can articulate them all at the moment.

And yes, I'm glad people are doing research geared toward female engineers, but it's got to be GOOD. Not half-a$$ed.

I'll be *very* interested in hearing your thoughts with the latest post (with all the *cough* stuff). :-)