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Post by melody7song on Apr 5, 2016 4:20:01 GMT
Moderator: Melody Song Ted Talk: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCknUJJc3qUIn this Ted Talk, The surprising neuroscience of gender equality, Janet Crawford discusses her experience with sexism at UC Berkeley and in Silicon Valley. She speaks about the unconscious gender biases both men and women have which affect their actions, which may unwittingly perpetuate the status quo of inequality. Our brain unconsciously creates associations and patterns daily, allowing us to make sense of the world formulate our responses accordingly. The implicit association test, when used for gender, asks us to associate certain words with the image of a man or a woman. When our unconscious association matches with the given input, tasks are done more quickly and efficiently. What researchers found following this test was that men and women, regardless of political orientation, has gender bias relating men to strong leaders and women as more nurturing. Although we have taken many positive steps in the right direction, gender bias and inequality remains a pressing problem today. In the past few days, a major headline in many newspapers and websites has been spotlighting USA’s National Women’s Soccer Team. Hope Solo, Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe and Becky Sauerbrunn, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the team against FIFA for a “gross disparity of wages” compared to their male counterparts. www.businessinsider.com/uswnt-files-wage-discrimination-complaint-against-us-soccer-federation-2016-3I have grown up playing sports, and when I was younger in elementary school, I never felt out of place playing with the other boys. However, as I grew older and grade school flew by, the discrimination I saw against girls playing sports became more evident. I found myself having to prove myself to my male peers in order to play soccer or basketball with them during recess. I couldn’t simply be “just as good” as them to play; I had to try to beat them in order for them to respect me as an athlete. Thus it is fascinating to see how neuroscience affects this bias in our brains. How much of a role do you think the media plays in affecting our unconscious associations of men and women? Should we regulate the media to be more objective in portraying genders? What about race? |
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Post by Admin on Apr 5, 2016 11:48:57 GMT
I made the same comment on another thread, but it's relevant here to. It brings to mind the concept of stereotype threat, where your performance is inhibited by your mind's unconscious activation of negative stereotypes about you or people like you.
In one experiment, women were given two versions of the same math test and the only difference was that version A had check boxes for male or female at the top of the page and version B did not. Women performed worse on version A than on version B.
The implication is that stereotypes can fulfill themselves because people unconsciously change their behavior to match them.
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Post by lilyzhuo on Apr 6, 2016 0:08:51 GMT
When I started playing lacrosse in high school, I thought it would be similar to men's lacrosse, where there's a lot of injuries from intense/violent body checking. However, my coaches actually discouraged us from checking, because of all the nit-picky and extensive rules for checking in women's lacrosse intended "for our protection," as if we couldn't handle a little bit of bruising. When I wanted to learn how to do a backflip in dance, though my teacher, a guy, kept encouraging me and teaching me, I still felt like it was hopeless, especially after other people started reinforcing the "reality" to me that men are better suited to doing backflips and breakdancing.
Media definitely reinforces all these stereotypes for what society deems as appropriate or "normal" for men and women, because they think that that's what we, the audience, want to see. Despite this issue, I think the increasing impact of social media on the decisions of different film/TV producers, will be the regulation necessary to lead to a greater variety of unique, non-stereotypical characters. When it comes to race, I think media has come a long way from portraying Asians in demeaning roles, though the proportion of strong male Asian leads is still very low. However, the leads in recent media, such as The Maze Runner (Ki Hong Lee) and The Walking Dead (Steven Yeun), have begun to change the past stereotype that Asians are just weak/submissive/nerdy.
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Post by Admin on Apr 6, 2016 0:27:02 GMT
I'm curious if other people had Lily's experience in girls' sports where athletes were kept from their full potential by overprotective coaches.
And now that you mention it, cinema does suck at casting Asian actors, but you never hear about it. It seems like Asian-Americans always get the short end of the stick when it comes to talking about racism.
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paola
New Member
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Post by paola on Apr 6, 2016 4:26:36 GMT
I like the connection you made to the recent happening regarding the U.S. Women’s National Soccer team. I am an avid female soccer player and therefore feel strongly about this topic. The Women’s team, although it generates much more (approximately 20 million more) in revenue yearly and is ranked as the best women’s team in the world, is regarded as inferior to the Men’s team. The Men’s team gets paid just for showing up to practices and matches, whereas the Women’s team gets paid to win major national championships. The members of the Women’s team are paid 5 times less than the members of the Men’s team. Such a statistic is ridiculous and represents a near perfect example of the type of gender inequality we still face today.
On another, yet similar note, evolutionary evidence can perhaps explain (partially, of course) the existence of today’s gender inequality. During the era of “Hunters and Gatherers”, a clear sexual division of labor existed. Men were the hunters, performing fierce and laborious tasks, while women “gathered” and performed monotonous tasks that required minimal concentration and strength. Perhaps from this point in time, a division between “masculine” work and “feminine” work evolved. Jobs that "seemed" to belong to a man were assigned to men. Women were excluded from possessing such jobs, regardless of their probable ability to perform the same type of task.
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Post by rebeccah on Apr 6, 2016 4:47:40 GMT
This post reminded me of the movie "She's the Man," in which Amanda Bynes pretends to be a boy so she can still play soccer because her girl's team is not allowed to play with the boys, despite their fairly matched skill level. This gender gap is ridiculous to me because women are often held to a different standard in most aspects of life. Even though many things are being done to try and change this, the fact remains that women are not treated the same as men are in society.
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Post by emmajessicalin on Apr 6, 2016 5:33:02 GMT
This topic of conversation reminded me of a riddle I once heard from a high school class. The riddle is as follows: "A father and son are in a terrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he's about to under the knife, the surgeon says, 'I can't operate -- that boy is my son!' Explain." The answer to the riddle is that the surgeon is the boy's mother. This reveals the unconscious bias against women that many of us have. In a study conducted by Boston University, this riddle was presented to varying groups of people and the large majority was unable to come up with the correct answer. Interestingly enough, even in a group of self-described feminists, the majority was unable to figure out the riddle. Even when we are trying to consciously address and fight the gender stereotypes that society perpetuates, we fall victim to our unconscious biases. Furthermore, when the riddle was presented to young children, only 15% of the children could come up with the correct answer. The unconscious biases we form evidently begin at a young age. In my opinion, this paints a bleak picture of the activism being done to change gender stereotypes. We not only need to address the way people consciously act, but their underlying mental processes and thoughts. This is definitely a challenge and I believe the only way to fix this problem is to continue to spread awareness so that people can understand their own unconscious biases. For this problem to dissipate, society as a whole must shift its perspective and the entire social climate regarding gender stereotypes must be changed. Of course, this is a far-reaching goal that may or may not ever be fully reached. However, the best we can do for now is to continually remind ourselves of our own unconscious biases and try to act in a way that addresses them. Article detailing the study/riddle: www.bu.edu/today/2014/bu-research-riddle-reveals-the-depth-of-gender-bias/ |
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Post by melody7song on Apr 6, 2016 9:34:03 GMT
Lily: I definitely have seen that happen with my experience growing up playing sports. We're seen as more "fragile" and not able to protect ourselves, and so we're often way overprotected. I fortunately had a coach who encouraged me and my teammates to always go all out and get as many bruises as we could (reasonable). I definitely have experienced unconscious bias against myself as a female as well. I remember never attempting to learn to do certain tricks because they required a "man's body" to do so.
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Post by melody7song on Apr 6, 2016 9:37:57 GMT
Paola: Fellow soccer player! Hi  I have researched the USWNT and its effects on gender inequality extensively for a year-long project, and at times the disparity between the paychecks and even treatment of the women's team is shocking - even for today's standards. Recently, the men barely made it to the 16th round during the men's World Cup, while our women's team won the World Cup altogether. Yet each women's player was paid up to 17.5x less than their male counterparts were...for a greater accomplishment than the men ever came close to. I found this infuriating as the media even recognizes and covers these women for their outstanding talents and what they have done to further women not just in athletics but in society as a whole. |
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Post by melody7song on Apr 6, 2016 9:39:32 GMT
Rebeccah: I've certainly imagined playing out She's the Man in real life several times myself, just to see where that would get me. Still today when I enter a pick up game, boys will go easy on me until they realize that just because I'm a girl doesn't mean that I'm worse than them. Even the most well-meaning, self-proclaimed feminist guys unconsciously do this, which is interesting.
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Post by melody7song on Apr 6, 2016 9:41:43 GMT
Emma: I remember discussing this riddle with you in a conversation outside of class, and I think the study done on the riddle is particularly fascinating. The most interesting part to me is that even self-described feminists were unable to remove their unconscious biases of the surgeon as a male - even the most well-meaning and rational people in our society are unconsciously sexist because of our brain's tendencies to make sense of patterns and form associations of our surrounding environment.
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Post by krish97 on Apr 7, 2016 0:53:33 GMT
I'm curious to know whether you guys think that our unconscious bias is something that is purely created by our external interactions with the world or whether there might be something internal, maybe even genetic, that causes us to have this gender bias. In other words, do you believe that the creation of our unconscious bias has only to do with the media, the people we meet etc. or whether we might have a predisposed bias as a result of evolution? I hope the question is clear enough.
I raise this question because gender inequality has been around since the beginning of civilization, and so perhaps gender inequality will always be an issue because its an innate characteristic within all human beings. This is not to say that gender inequality should not be considered a problem because we're all bias, but rather to say that we should perhaps be tackling the issue from a new perspective. Regardless, I'm curious to hear what other people have to say.
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Post by nicolegreenbaum on Apr 7, 2016 7:05:18 GMT
Lily and Ben mentioned the overlooked racism of Asian Americans which is a very interesting topic, in my opinion. Some researchers have termed the form of racism which occurs in the daily lives of people, "racial microaggression". They have proposed categories of microaggressions with their own distinct themes: (1) microinsult occurs when the ascription of intelligence to a racial group or second class citzenship; when one is treated as a lesser being or group; when one is presumed to have criminal status (2) microinvalidation occurs when one is considered an alien in one's own land; when racial minority citizens are assumed to be foreigners (Sue et al., 2007). Racial microaggressions can also take form as verbal statements such as “You speak such good English,” “But you speak without an accent,” and “So where are you really from?”(Solorzano et al., 2000). These exchanges are so pervasive in daily interactions that they are often dismissed and glossed over as being innocuous. This leads me back to Krish's point: is our unconscious bias something created by external interactions with the world or is it something internal, or perhaps a mix of both? |
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I have researched the USWNT and its effects on gender inequality extensively for a year-long project, and at times the disparity between the paychecks and even treatment of the women's team is shocking - even for today's standards. Recently, the men barely made it to the 16th round during the men's World Cup, while our women's team won the World Cup altogether. Yet each women's player was paid up to 17.5x less than their male counterparts were...for a greater accomplishment than the men ever came close to. I found this infuriating as the media even recognizes and covers these women for their outstanding talents and what they have done to further women not just in athletics but in society as a whole. 