Meg Urry on Unconscious Bias Against Women
Hi friends of women in science,
Recently, Meg Urry gave an interview to CNN on unconscious bias against women in STEM fields, following up on the Yale study published in PNAS that we discussed earlier here. In 2001, Meg Urry became the first woman faculty member in physics at Yale to ever be tenured. She says that during her 30 years as a physics faculty member, "being the only woman in the room is the norm." She is now the Israel Munson Professor of Physics and Astronomy and chair of physics at Yale. Meg Urry thought it was terribly important to make sure people realized that the new studies by her Yale colleagues showed we cannot be unbiased even when we're sure we are being fair to everyone. Why not? Because, having been raised embedded in a society where the norm is a man as scientist, that is our unconscious expectation. Women are fewer than 12% of working physicists and engineers, so the average mental image of a man is close to accurate.
The recently released study, which involved ratings of candidates for positions with identical backgrounds except for male or female names at the top of the CVs, found that both men and women who are STEM faculty members tended to rate men higher in qualifications and recommend higher salaries for them.
An interesting feature of the new study, as she pointed out, was that the more dogmatically a faculty member insisted he/she could make an unbiased judgement unaffected by gender, i.e. the more he or she felt completely objective, the more his/her judgement was shown to be strongly influenced by gender. Those who were less sure they could factor gender out were more open to shades of meaning, evidently, and more able to correct for their own unconscious biases. If you'd like to find out how fair your own ratings would be, go to this website and try it out: implicit.harvard.edu.Choose the Gender-Science IAT.
The point is, they ARE unconscious. The biases aren't willful or malicious, but that does not make them any the less harmful to young women scientists who feel the pressure of decisions made in with these fingers on the balance weighing down the scales in favor of the men.
Do let us know if you try it, how you felt about that experience. And if not, what you felt about why not.
cheers,
Laura
Hi Laura,
I came out moderately on the side of male with career and female with family. It was an interesting test in that I could tell the difference while I was taking the test, but that consciousness didn't mean I could change my response time.
I think such tests are useful to put us on the alert that we are not as unbiased as we think we are. Hopefully that helps folks put in place back up mechanisms when they are making hiring/promotion decisions.
For myself, because I know I'm a bit biased, I will ask myself if the opposite gender had the same issues/credentials/statements would it change my impression. Sometimes that's all it takes to get back to a logical decision making position.
Thanks for passing this along!
Helen
Hi Laura,
I don't really trust these quick quizzes to give an accurate reading on something so important. I think the new published study is good, though. It really got at a lot of the underbrush around decision-making, the things that happen where no one can see them and disadvantage young women.
FBP
PS Did you see that Female Science Professor is strongly considering stopping her blog? I'm upset!
Hi Laura,
I had a slight tendency to associate male with science and female with liberal arts on this test. Of course, what Jo Handelsman and her colleagues did in the Yale study was quite a different procedure. I don't know if I'd rate CVs fairly. Evidently many who were sure they would, actually did not.
MRP
Hi friends,
When I took the Gender and Science IAT, I was sure I was showing a bias for men and science association, but with the way they designed the test, they said I showed little to know tendency to associate male with science and female with liberal arts. Interesting!
cheers,
Laura
