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Assignment: Discuss
Oct. 20th, 2005 03:24 pmThe colloquium speaker gave a talk on 'Women in Science' today over lunch. I learned some interesting psychology.
People tend to be harder on women then men -- some psychologist submitted a journal article to be peer reviewed. With the name Joan Smith attached to it, the paper did worse than with the name John Smith (with J. Smith coming in medium, but reviewers later said they thought J was probably female). Women apparently are also harder on themselves -- when asked to rate their performance, men would give themselves above average scores, while women would rate themselves as below average. I find this interesting with reference to things other than science -- note that a lot of the rants against characters are female.
The speaker once polled her intro to physics students on 'What are your plans for kids?'. Of the female students, only 2 said they were planning on taking a significant career break for kids (beyond maternity leave) and 3 said they were planning on making their partner do this. Of the male students, a full third said they wanted their partner to stay home with the kids. She also pointed out that if all of these Important People thought staying home with the kids was so critical, why the heck aren't they announcing they are taking five years off to raise Junior?
People tend to be harder on women then men -- some psychologist submitted a journal article to be peer reviewed. With the name Joan Smith attached to it, the paper did worse than with the name John Smith (with J. Smith coming in medium, but reviewers later said they thought J was probably female). Women apparently are also harder on themselves -- when asked to rate their performance, men would give themselves above average scores, while women would rate themselves as below average. I find this interesting with reference to things other than science -- note that a lot of the rants against characters are female.
The speaker once polled her intro to physics students on 'What are your plans for kids?'. Of the female students, only 2 said they were planning on taking a significant career break for kids (beyond maternity leave) and 3 said they were planning on making their partner do this. Of the male students, a full third said they wanted their partner to stay home with the kids. She also pointed out that if all of these Important People thought staying home with the kids was so critical, why the heck aren't they announcing they are taking five years off to raise Junior?
