You can go to our
Newsletters
.
Or search for a word here:
Book review -
Why So Slow?: The Advancement of Women
by Virginia Valian, 1998, MIT Press
Reviewed by Cathy Kessel
Emily Toth, author of
Ms. Mentor's Impeccable Advice
for Women in Academia , remarks parenthetically (p. 176), 'It
should be no surprise--though it is galling--that academic men are
often
rated more highly then academic women, and paid better, for the
same work.' Ms. Mentor's readers might not be surprised, but the
person in the street may be. Moreover, that academic person (being
an academic) might like some evidence. Virginia Valian's book
Why So Slow? provides this--and a theoretical framework in
which to think about it.
Valian is a Professor of Psychology and her book focuses on
the individual and psychological, rather than the cultural and social.
The evidence comes in two categories: psychological experiments
and statistics concerning performance ratings, studies of women
and men matched for various attributes, and so on. A 1975 example
of the former: Make up some resumes, put men's names on some and
women's names on the others. Send to 147 heads of psychology
departments with a request to rank the 'candidates' according to the
professorial rank at which they should be hired. Rotate names so
that each resume sometimes gets a woman's name and sometimes a
man's. Result: Resumes with men's names were assigned the rank of
associate professor. When the same resumes carried women's names
they were assigned the rank of assistant professor.
Vilian's framework for thinking about this kind of phenomenon
uses gender schemas and role schemas. Schema is a term
used in cognitive science to denote an individual's mental
construction affecting that person's perceptions. One's gender
schema, for example, affects the way in which one perceives the
behavior and attributes of women and men.
Role schemas are mental constructs about the behavior and
attributes of people in particular roles, such as that of professor.
Gender and role schemas may interact. Not only do gender and role
schemas interact, but the way in which they interact depends on
context. Some interesting (and cheering) experimental and
statistical findings (pp. 141-142) suggest that women tend to fare
better when there are more women around, when a larger
percentage
of women are in the applicant pool, or in tenure situations when
there are more women in the department.
The schema framework nicely explains why Ann Hopkins, the
Price Waterhouse attorney who had brought in 25 million dollars
worth of business and had more billable hours than any other
attorney under consideration, was rejected in her bid for partner in
1982. 'She had all the qualities that gender schemas dictate
successful men should have. Her problem was that she wasn't a
man" (p. 291). WAGE members may be particularly interested to
know not only did Hopkins win all three of her suits against Price
Waterhouse,
but part of her defense involved research on sex stereotyping.
Valian points out (p. 166) that professional women 'face a cruel set
of choices: make an accurate intellectual evaluation of the situation
and feel helpless; or make an inaccurate evaluation and feel in
control.' She offers a third option: 'learn how gender schemas work,
recognize instances of disadvantage, and develop methods of
correcting imbalances. Knowledge is power.'
Why So Slow? offers important information about all
three: gender schemas, instances of disadvantage, and methods of
correcting imbalances. In my view, the story of why women's
progress in academe has been slow requires (at least) the
viewpoints of education, history, and anthropology offered by, for
instance, the work of Myra and David Sadker; Elizabeth Fennema and
Gilah Leder's Mathematics and Gender ;
Margaret Rossiter's
Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940
and Women Scientists
in America: Before Affirmative
Action, 1940-1972; Elaine Seymour and Nancy Hewitt's
Talking About Leaving ; and Nadya Aisenberg and Mona
Harrington's Women of
Academe, as well as the lenses of race,
ethnicity, and class.
-wage@wage.org-