author: Cordelia Fine
name: Elaine
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2010/09/23
date added: 2010/09/23
shelves: gender, non-fiction, psychology, science, sociology
review:
I happened to run across this book at the library having forgotten that it was in my "to-read" list. I’m SO glad I did, and given a certain pair of somewhat ranty posts a couple of months back, only wish I’d read it sooner! I literally could not put it down – as in: "no really, I need to go to bed/back to my desk from lunch/off the bus, I have to put the book away."
In short, social construction of gender: you’re soaking in it. (And especially, your brain is soaking in it.)
1) Priming & stereotype threat affect everything. Just checking gender on a form before taking a test changes womens’ performance, especially on math tests. More priming (being told that the test relates to gender, watching a gender-stereotyped commercial, etc) increases the effect.
2) Most of the "science" as it’s filtered through to the popular media is a disaster of half-baked assumptions, small and/or poorly-constructed experiments, and willful misunderstanding of the actual results. (She tears apart one popular writer; it’s kinda fun.)
3) Worse, those lame results create a feedback loop, combined with the impossibility of gender-neutral child-rearing, that increases the problem of stereotype threat, and makes genuine social change more difficult.
Le sigh. Not only is the feminist struggle not over, we may actually be hitting a really hard spot.
On the plus side, I’m fired up now. Not just that, but I’m thinking more about my own personal construction of gender identity, including my history with math and science.
There’s a post I wrote about my life with math a while back, and there I wrote about it as a choice between writing and math – now I’m seriously looking back and wondering about the effect of gender stereotypes, and whether I might have come to computing sooner given different circumstances. I think it’s worth noticing that choices exist in a constrained environment, constrained both by the external world, and by our own unexamined or incompletely-formed attitudes.
As for the writing style, it’s a delightful read. She’s got a sharp conversational tone that pulled me in; I even read the footnotes.
HIGHLY recommended, great in combination with Pink Brain Blue Brain.
Reading notes:
page 261 “footnote 32: cognitive empathy vs affective empathy, some research that autistic do have affective empathy, just missing the mind-reading part. puts “Aspie nerd culture” claim into a more skeptical light.”
page 252 “footnote 28: moderately math-identified women most vulnerable to stereotype threat. makes me want to go back to that post I made about my history with math.”
page 229 “little girl in cat costume makes me want to weep.”
page 221 “until “girlish” – concern w/beauty & affection – is cross-gender acceptable (“sissy” is as ok as “tomboy”) AND is associated with effectiveness, we’re f***ed.”
page 207 “going to Toys R Us makes me INSANE.”
page 200 “NON-VERBAL CUES. “learning from the wrong half of the half-changed mind””
page 198 “remember reading about the slope-crawling test in Pink Brain, Blue Brain”
page 191 “”a gender-neutral environment is not something any parent does, could, or even wants to provide” THIS. also: behavior (parental) undermining stated values.”
page 186 “women’s gains may increase demand for essentialist research, leading to abandonment of social change.”
page 181 “Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth – was I in that study? (took SAT in 7th grade as part of *something*, did pretty well) – if so, funny remembering that, since I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to guess, and I’m VERY good at guessing on multiple choice tests.”
page 180 “”greater male variability” as concept dates back at least to 1910. HOWEVER, doesn’t hold true in testing cross-culturally, even w/in the US. side note: are Steven Pinker & Susan Pinker related?”
page 177 “”transgenerational shaping of brain function thru culture” am reminded of “natural-born cyborg” (was that the title) – humans evolve by shaping the environment.”
page 174 “why she wrote this book: son’s K teacher reading book that claimed his brain was incapable of forging connection between emotion & language.”
page 172 “bad research creates feedback loop into stereotype threat, creates self-fulfilling prophecy!”
page 170 “”neuro-realism” ie: need fMRI to say “yes, I enjoyed that donut” also: “where else but in the brain would be see effects of socialization or experience?””
page 167 “horrible education stuff. the reminder of 19th century beliefs is a helpful touch.”
page 158 “oh hey, Language Log! will have to go look up Brizendine posts.”
page 152 “multipurpose areas of the brain: anterior cingulate = “on button””
page 150 “highly charged emotion…in dead salmon. (was it fakebaldur who tweeted about that?)”
page 145 “researchers present opposing hypotheses in the same article. nice. she’s got a strikingly sarcastic tone here. (not that I disagree)”
page 128 “same primate species, but different group: difference in involvement of males/females in parenting activities. primate culture?!”
page 110 “”no perfect set of cognitive abilities for the perfect scientist have been identified””
page 108 “most of the ways of measuring fetal testosterone in humans are VERY indirect, not known if correlating w/actual levels. (also, per p111, no solid relationship found between these levels and, well, anything)”
page 105 “sex differences in size of brain areas in rats caused by differences in licking by the mother.”
page 96 “”the small biasing effects accumulate […] to result in substantially different [paths/outcomes].” which is the basic message of part 1.”
page 86 “”social norm puts women in weak negotiating position” re division of labor w/in household.”
page 82 “”female brain more likely to sense” stuff out of place (her quote of another book) – not in my house!”
page 74 “56% of women in corporate science, 69% in engineering, report sexual harassment.”
page 73 “note lawsuits re “the automotive and mining industries where women sought access to some of the best-paying jobs in the area””
page 65 “”women rate their work as harder” – headwind metaphor again. also, previous para: “glass escalator” for (white) men in feminized professions.”
page 52 “Was reading in the bath, and realized THIS was the book I needed on hand during the blogging contretemps a little while back. Priming, stereotype threat, plus some writing specifically about computer science fields. Fascinating stuff, makes me think about my own life choices.”
page 26 “Thinking about something only tangentially related, namely Meyers-Briggs tests: how much priming is involved in selecting aspects of identity? (Am I really THAT introverted, for example.)”