Further to my remarks about gender earlier today, you may find this article interesting. Part of me wonders how anyone can get any academic credit for stating something so obvious, but of course what these people have done is get data, and that makes a world of difference.
The issue is very simple. Most of these statements of the form “men are better than women at X” (or vice versa) tend to be based either on anecdata, in which case they are worthless, or they are based on studies that quote averages. What the averages don’t tell you is how much overlap there is. So it may well be correct to say that men are better than women at tennis, but Serena Williams can still thrash anyone except the top male professionals. What this means is that appointing a man to a job because “men are better than women” at that work is a nonsense because your list of applicants may well include women who are better than all of the male applicants. And vice versa, of course.
The researchers went further and looked for correlations between characteristics. They did find some in physical traits. For example, if a man is taller than a woman, it is highly likely that he’ll have broader shoulders than her as well. But when it comes to abilities and attitudes there’s no such effect. A man may be better than a woman at math, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be better than her at repairing cars, or less empathetic, or less interested in fashion than she is. And vice versa. In other words, gender stereotypes are a nonsense.
So the question now is, why are we so fond of them?
One reason — not the only reason obviously — is that they reinforce the status quo.
Spot on.
Because they give us something to be. There may be people who prefer not to define themselves by their gender–I know at least one such–but I know that I, for one, feel a very strong affinity for one particular gender identity (okay, not the one I have, but the time to do something about that was way too long ago) and would not be happy if I were compelled to present as genderless, to abandon even the markers of my technical gender and invent a whole identity for myself. How much of this is cultural I don’t know; if all current gender stereotyping were swept away in an epidemic of selective amnesia, would new stereotypes evolve? I suspect they would; they’re a comfort zone for those of us lucky enough to be the gender we want to be, a point of aspiration for some others.
That’s so messed up I don’t even know how to start addressing it. Attitudes such as that have made life miserable for trans people for years and need to stop.
A study can also cause a gender difference where no underlying one exists through the well-studied effect of stereotype threat: If you prime someone to think about a gender stereotype before performing a task, they will tend to conform to the stereotype more. (Even if the way they think about the stereotype is, “They say that, but I’m gonna prove them wrong!!”) One finding with practical applications is that gender differences in math test scores vanish if you have the students fill out the personal information section after taking the test rather than before.
It applies to lots of other kinds of stereotypes, too. For instance, describing a physical task as a test of natural athletic ability will cause white people to perform worse than black people, whereas giving it a neutral description results in no racial difference. (In studies in the US, anyway. The results will vary according to whether the stereotype is present in the local culture.)
Cites for those? (I’ll see if I can find them myself; just trying to save some effort.) I’d love to be able to use that information in “discussions”.
Here (PDF link).
Since Ana’s got the test-taking aspect covered, here’s one on athletic ability.
I rather suspect that stereotyping exists because it allows us to come to quick judgements based on minimal information. So even although most snakes and spiders are harmless the stereotyping prompts us to avoid all of them because some of them will cause us a lot of harm. If you have the time to look you might be able to determine safe from deadly, but in a split second the stereotype is your friend.
Similarly if you were told to bet on a match between an unnamed male tennis player and an unnamed female tennis player the stereotype would tell you the best place to put your money. A lot of stereotypes are sort of useful when we have no detailed information, we just take that too far and believe that everything can be stereotyped. So while *some* gender stereotypes might be more right than wrong (i.e. 60/40) I can’t think of any racial stereotypes that would be accurate (i.e. more often right than wrong).
Why? Because stereotypes take the need for thinking out of the process of communication by making you feel that you have got a handle on the situation. So you end up in a position of [perceived] safety and control with very little [apparent] cost to yourself.
And, let’s face it, if you happen to be in a position of power and privilege – what is there to dissuade you from relying on incorrect stereotypes about the disadvantaged group?