Read the following texts about gender styles and sort the most important ideas and information.
Can you somehow see a gender divide even nowadays?
Worlds Apart: Women, Men and Technology
By Margaret Brenston
By my early teens, while boys my age were discovering cars and pinball machines, I discovered books and horses. Later in
adolescence, Friday night at the local drive-in would be spent with boys discussing cars or football and the girls discussing
clothes or gossiping about friends. In high school, shop was required for boys and home economics for girls, but even if
any of the girls had had a choice, we would never have ventured into the world of tools and grease.
Unlike most of the girls I knew, however, I liked science in high school and majored in chemistry in college. I was odd
enough to enjoy mathematics and theoretical work, but still I avoided or skipped labs. In graduate school, as a physical
chemist, I was in one of the "hard" sciences and my husband was in English. Yet he was the one who did the plumbing
repairs and tuned up the car.
There is a clear pattern here. Even though I like mathematics and scientific theory, I have never felt "at home" around
machines and technology. I am not alone in this – it is typical for women.
In our society, boys and men are expected to learn about machines, tools and how things work. In addition, they absorb,
ideally, a "technological world view" that grew up along with industrial society. Such a world view emphasizes objectivity,
rationality, control over nature and distance from human emotions. Conversely, girls and women are not expected to know
much about technical matters. Instead, they are to be good at interpersonal relationships and to focus on people and
emotion.
These differences have consequences in two different areas: first, technology itself can be seen as a "language." Second,
men's control over technology and their adherence to a technological world view have consequences for language and
verbal communication and create a situation where women are ‘silenced.'
This is not to say that women do not use tools and machines in our society. Everyone interacts with the underlying technological system; we both use telephones and TVs. But there are important differences.
I have never felt "at home" around machines and technology. I am not alone in this – it is typical for women.
First of all, much equipment tends to be gender-typed. There are machines and tools suitable" for men – saws, trucks,
wrenches, guns and forklifts, for example – and those "suitable" for women — vacuum cleaners, typewriters and food
processors.
Men repair cars, drive large trucks, operate cranes, build houses, captain ships, use guns, design computers and do scientific
experiments. Not all men do all of these things, but these and actions like them define a male domain that women enter
only as exceptions. Women typically do not engage in behavior that changes the physical world or involves much control
over it. This is men's club.
Where men have interests in some common technical area, either at work or as a hobby, discussion becomes a way of relating to peers. Men and women, however, do not communicate as equals about technology. The information flow is almost
entirely one-sided. Men may explain a technological matter to women but they do not discuss it with them: that they do
with other men. Asking a question or raising a problem in discussion is proof (if any is needed) that women don't know
what they are doing. Male students, needless to say, do not get this treatment.
The whole realm of technology and the communication around it reinforces the idea of women's powerlessness. But men
lose too; they lose touch with a reality outside their own technical world view. In addition, both men and women lose the
chance to develop a technology that would serve other goals than those of a small group of privileged (usually white) men.
There is no easy solution to the problem. Yes, women do need to learn more about technology and gain more confidence.
Yes, men do need to be more sensitive to other perceptions. But these are only preconditions. Fundamental change can only
come about by an attack on all the structures of domination in the society. If we can do that, the consequences will be new
kinds of technology as well as new kinds of people.
Footnotes: Excerpted from the book Technology and Women's Voices, edited by Cheris Kramarae. Routledge, Chapman
and Hall, Inc. Author Bio: Margaret Brenston teaches jointly in the Computing Science Department and the Women's
Studies Program at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.
Are Boys Better Than Girls At Maths (and Science)?
Answer to a maths question one confused
(or perhaps brilliant) child gave in a maths exam.
THINK BACK TO your school days and conjure up an image of the archetypal maths-whizz: striding ahead of the rest of
the class, solving problems with ease, clearly destined to be a mathematician, physicist or engineer later in life.
Chances are that person was not female, and considering how few women occupy the top spots in maths-based
professions, your memory is probably accurate.
Explaining this disparity between men and women has been the source of considerable controversy. Former President of
Harvard, Larry Summers, argued that one reason men do better in maths-related fields is because they have a superior
innate ability. Summers, of course, was forced to resign in 2006 after his public endorsement of this view caused a
furore.
On the other side of the debate are figures like Elizabeth Spelke, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, who
argues that the differences at the top levels of maths and science are rooted in social factors.
Whichever side you lean towards, the widespread assumption has been that there is a difference in mathematical
achievement that needs explaining. Research has shown that both parents and teachers commonly hold this belief.
Indeed research on thousands of SAT scores published in the 1990s backed this up: for complex problem-solving males
had a significant advantage over females in the general population, especially at the high end of the distribution.
Confirming this theory, studies show that when women are reminded of the stereotype, they actually do perform worse
in maths tests. So we end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Could it be that women have been hamstrung by a self-limiting belief?
To find out let's fast-forward a decade or two. Women are now no longer encumbered with the same restricting
stereotypes they once were. Certainly all is not rosy in the garden of gender equality, but major strides forward have
been made.
In a new study published recently in Science, Professor Janet Hyde and colleagues may have spotted the first signs of
change.
What they found was that in marked contrast to earlier research, there was little or no difference in maths performance
between girls and boys. Yet not everyone is convinced that we will see women rise to positions of eminence in the
currently male-dominated worlds of mathematics, engineering and physics.
High achievers
Many have argued that men's and women's abilities in maths may well be comparable on average, but that the specific
individuals who go on to become great mathematicians, physicists and engineers are rarely average. The argument has
been that these talented individuals who lie at the extreme end of the bell-curve distribution of mathematical ability are
more often men. It's this extra talent at the extreme high end of ability that is thought to account for the fact that men
dominate in fields that require advanced maths skills.
Professor Hyde's study also addresses this question, and once again her data questions the assumption. She sliced and
diced. her sample of students down to focus just on performance on the most difficult types of problems. If the
prediction was right that the best boys can outperform the best girls, then this difference should emerge in their data.
Again, though, the differences between boys and girls, even on the hardest questions, were small.
This study won't end the debate, though, because as Professor Hyde points out, even the hardest questions on this test
are still not complex enough to stretch the most talented students and really uncover whether a gender difference exists
at the extreme end of the distribution.
Although Hyde's study could have identified the vanguard of change in challenging stereotypes, we won't see the
evidence before our eyes until women begin to believe in their ability. Who knows, perhaps in a few generations we'll
see just as many female theoretical physicists as male. Unfortunately, as Professor Hyde points out: "Stereotypes are
very, very resistant to change, but as a scientist I have to challenge them with data."
Notes
Fully 78% of the differences between men and women are small or close to zero. There are three main areas of
differences between men and women:
1) Sexuality – in particular attitudes to sex in uncommitted relationships.
2) Aggression – men are generally more aggressive.
3) Motor performance – this is where the largest differences are seen with men being better at throwing, jumping,
sprinting and so on.
The bottom line is that if someone tells you men are more aggressive, have better motor performance or have different
attitudes to sex than women, then you can believe them. If it’s anything else, the differences between men and women
are probably very small or non-existent.
Ultimately men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. We’re both from Earth, so don’t let anyone tell you
otherwise.