31–40 of 66 posts
Speaking of control, writing about values in a physics class could cause people otherwise interested in physics to lose interest in the class.
I've always been offended that there's a gender gap when it comes to pregnancy and childbirth. Perhaps a writing exercise could be devised that would erase the horrible, oppressive and misogynistic stereotype that prevents men from becoming pregnant and giving birth. That is necessary if we are to ever achieve true equality. (cheek <- tongue)
I remain really skeptical. If you believe this, then doing a fifteen-minute writing exercise at the start of a fifteen week course in which you "write about your values" rather than a different fifteen-minute writing exercise where you "write about other peoples values" leads you to understand introductory physics significantly better at the end, if you're a woman, or understand introductory physics significantly wor…
Your assertion that the male students might have dropped out because of the "frou-frou" exercise is easily construed as chauvinistic.
Unless you are a female student in physical sciences or math, I don't think you can really understand what its like to be told, implicitly and explicitly, for most of your secondary and college education, that you are inferior to your male peers.
But here's a hypothetical for you. You come to my company for a job interview.
When you come see me, I ask you what your favorite subject is and I let you talk about it for twenty minutes. Then we start talking about the job.
When you see Bob next door, he immediately starts drilling on topic.
Which interview do you perform better on?
I remain really skeptical. If you believe this, then doing a fifteen-minute writing exercise at the start of a fifteen week course in which you "write about your values" rather than a different fifteen-minute writing exercise where you "write about other peoples values" leads you to understand introductory physics significantly better at the end, if you're a woman, or understand introductory physics significantly wor…
I'm very skeptical too especially when they write this near the end of the paper: "One virtue of the affirmation is that it can be combined with instructional approaches that show promise in closing the gender gap, such as the interactive engagement approaches used in the present course" so the course they are teaching isn't a standard physics course. They very well might be on to something, but I think it's a huge s…
Generally this just strains credulity. Telling yourself "I can solve this problem" goes a long way in math and physics, but there's also a feedback loop (the article even alludes to it) - successfully solving problems makes you better at solving problems. So how is it that over a decade of damage due to this effect can be undone with a single inspirational chat?
I remain really skeptical. If you believe this, then doing a fifteen-minute writing exercise at the start of a fifteen week course in which you "write about your values" rather than a different fifteen-minute writing exercise where you "write about other peoples values" leads you to understand introductory physics significantly better at the end, if you're a woman, or understand introductory physics significantly wor…
I remain really skeptical. If you believe this, then doing a fifteen-minute writing exercise at the start of a fifteen week course in which you "write about your values" rather than a different fifteen-minute writing exercise where you "write about other peoples values" leads you to understand introductory physics significantly better at the end, if you're a woman, or understand introductory physics significantly wor…
>Think about the things that are important to you. Perhaps you care about creativity, family relationships, your career, or having a sense of humour. Pick two or three of these values and write a few sentences about why they are important to you. What has this got to do with physics and why are universities so interested in students' private lives?
"Aspiring female scientists and mathematicians still have to contend with the inaccurate stereotype that men are innately better at them in their chosen fields." I wasn't aware that this had been definitively established as a myth. Last I checked, there was a gender gap. There are a lot of interpretations that wish to ascribe this to a social difference rather than a physical one. Further, this is an introductory cou…
>"Aspiring female scientists and mathematicians still have to contend with the inaccurate stereotype that men are innately better at them in their chosen fields." I just thought more men preferred Physics. Do women really contend with this? Is it any worse than for a man trying to be a kindergarten teacher? Do theoreticians jump online and check the sex of the author's of papers in Physics A before they'll read them…
Unfortunately, it only takes a few extremely chauvinistic individuals to sour an entire field towards women. If you look through James D. Watson's book The Double Helix, you'll see dozens of disparaging references to Rosalind Franklin[1], inditing her for such crimes as not wearing enough makeup, and being a woman running a chem lab.
I think the flavor of a field can be tinted strongly by edge cases. Although it is a form of confirmation bias, I believe people can't help applying extreme behaviors by individuals to their understanding of the group. I'm sure if I heard the president of some college spouting racial epithets, I'd look a little more sternly on the college as a whole and question how it treats its students. I would make the association that if someone with these views was allowed to become an authority, if it had taken a number of people who shared these views to allow them to get there.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin Rosalind Franklin had an incredibly fascinating life, and most likely would have been credited with a Nobel prize for the discovery of the DNA helix if she hadn't died before it was awarded. She actually died of ovarian cancer, caused by the xray machinery she operated in investigating the composition of the DNA crystal.
"Aspiring female scientists and mathematicians still have to contend with the inaccurate stereotype that men are innately better at them in their chosen fields." I wasn't aware that this had been definitively established as a myth. Last I checked, there was a gender gap. There are a lot of interpretations that wish to ascribe this to a social difference rather than a physical one. Further, this is an introductory cou…
I am taking a class taught by the professor who wrote this book about the economics of higher education: http://www.amazon.com/Tuition-Rising-College-Costs-preface/d... One of the more interesting things he went over from the book was the discrepancy between males and females in PhD in the hard sciences. While many claimed discrimination, what it turned out to be a slew of different issues. Except from his lecture, t…
There is also the issue of having children. One article I read ascribed a great deal of disparity at the top simply to time: If you take time off from your career to raise children, you have thousands fewer hours to devote to your profession. Even if the male partner is willing and able to do the child-rearing, it doesn't follow that the female partner will therefore abdicate.
Assuming reproductive opportunities as a major driver of behavior, professional success leading to increased social status is a far larger differentiator in males. People are lazy and if they don't have to try hard in a certain category, they generally won't. This says nothing about males being smarter; simply that they try harder because they have to in order to get laid. (Or think they do.)
This is somewhat akin to an evolutionary arms race with predators and prey getting better each generation because their counterpart was better in a previous generation.
If a guy is a gamer, so what; everyone knows guys who are gamers. If a guy is a scientist, so what; everyone knows guys who do that. If a guy makes $100k a year, so what; everyone knows guys who do that. You have to do even better in order to stand out. (Note the attention you'd get, however, if you were a female in any of these categories.)
Likewise, nobody is surprised when Grandma can cook, to take a traditional gender example. But a guy who can cook like Grandma? Now that stands out.
So to some extent it doesn't even matter which gender did which thing -- divvied up randomly, whichever category is overrepresented may start a self-feeding evolutionary cycle within that category.
This could mean that something which was purely social ends up leading to a genetic difference. For example, male 3D spatial relation ability.
By the same token, I would expect female lions to be better at this than male lions!
By contrast, there is nothing about a female being predisposed to be a good scientist which would make you stand out as a good mate in, say, Saudi Arabia. And it could be downright dangerous in Afghanistan under the Taliban. If your abilities aren't recognized as a positive then they won't result in positive selection pressure.
All it takes is selection pressure and you eventually get a noticeable genetic difference. Social differences are a huge selection pressure, so it would be astounding if there WEREN'T genetic gender differences in aptitude for certain subjects.
Hmm, I think I just shot down the political correctness lobby by working from first principles.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did either of you read the article? The control group picked "their least important values and wrote about why these might matter to other people." The article says nothing about how either men or women perform without a values exercise.
I don't think that exercise, in itself, would make anyone perform worse at physics. While writing about why your values are important to you could very plausibly increase your confidence, I don't see how writing about why other people might care about things you don't value would decrease your confidence or performance.