Reacting to low percent of women
Hi Women in Science Forum,
An important woman in science whom I visited last week told me that her university is having a celebration kicking off a program in Systems Biology, and the announced list of about 20 speakers included only 1 woman. She mentioned an article from 2007 on the possible effects of such an event on women graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who attended, saying that it described how she had often felt.
I read this article, "Signaling Threat: How Situational Cues Affect Women in Math, Science, and Engineering Settings," by Mary Murphy, Claude Steele, and James Gross at Stanford. It was in Psychological Science, vol 18, page 849 (2007). The authors selected advanced students in Math, Science, and Engineering fields, choosing students who strongly preferred and felt confident about mathematical analysis. They studied 25 males and 22 females. Each participant viewed and reacted to one of two 7 minute videos depicting a scientific meeting. One of the two had a 1:3 ratio of women to men; the other had a ratio of 1:1 women to men. During the viewing of the 1:3 vidoe, women (but not men) had changes in physiological responses indicating stress and readiness for possible attack. Neither gender responded that way to the 1:1 video. Questions about the attractiveness of attending the conference showed that both genders preferred the gender-balanced conference, women a bit more strongly than men, but both statistically significantly. Women but not men perceived that they would not belong at the 1:3 conference, significantly more than the 1:1 conference.
The authors related these findings to the cues hypothesis, the cue in question being the numerical deficiency of women and the response being alertness and sense of not belonging. Does this mean women wouldn't succeed as a result? Not ncessarily; nothing about performance after such conferences was assessed. Clearly a woman in such a setting, even though she is highly qualified to be there, feels less comfortable than a man. Over time, this lack of comfort might add up to a decision to leave the field, or to find a more balanced setting.
How do you feel about these findings?
A I never felt out of place or unwelcome, even at meetings where I was among very few female participants.
B. I identify with the women who felt alert and on guard. I'm tense at meetings without gender balance.
C. I felt so out of place I made every effort not to go into such a setting again, chose a different society or changed jobs or tried to get into a more balanced setting.
D. I like meetings and settings with more men than women; in generaly I get along better with men anyway.
Yes, it's the evaluation threat. I think that study hmcbride cites is right on target. If people are studying me to see if I fit, if I measure up, if they are guys with almost no women, yeah I sweat.
That's cool. Of course, we're already experts at handling distraction (work/family for example) so only the risk of evaluation would send our stress hormones raging. Very interesting! Thanks Helen!
cheers,
Laura
How about on humans? :)
Stress. 2010 May;13(3):214-20.
Effects of manipulating the amount of social-evaluative threat on the cortisol stress response in young healthy women.
Wadiwalla M, Andrews J, Lai B, Buss C, Lupien SJ, Pruessner JC.
The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), University of Toronto, 555 University Avenue, M5G1X8, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Abstract
Psychological stress is known to activate the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, resulting in the release of cortisol from the adrenal cortex into the bloodstream. Cortisol is the major human stress hormone and its health correlates continue to be investigated by laboratories around the world. One line of research suggests that specific situational variables play a role in the creation of a stressful situation. The current study examined the effects of systematically varying several situational characteristics on the cortisol stress response in 80 healthy young women exposed to a public speaking task. Three main factors and its interactions were investigated by locating the expert panel either inside or outside of the room, having the subjects speak either about themselves or somebody else, and by asking half of the subjects to perform a distractor task in addition to performing the public speaking. We interpreted these manipulations as variations of social evaluative threat, ego-involvement, and divided attention. We hypothesized that the variations and their interactions would cause differences in endocrine stress responses. The results showed that only the manipulation of social-evaluative threat had a significant main effect on the cortisol stress response in women. There was a further trend (p = 0.07) for a four-way interaction effect. No other main or interaction effects could be observed. We conclude that in women, social-evaluative threat affects the endocrine stress response. This is in contrast to a previous study showing no effects of this variation in men. Thus, future studies should more closely investigate sex or gender effects that might be interacting with the situational aspects of a stressful task.
Hi Living in a Small Pond,
I'm going to look up fruit fly stress studies. Might find something interesting there, but I don't know about it yet.
cheers,
Laura
I have been to meetings that were man-dominated and there was a lot of yelling and hissy fits. Who says woman are more emotional? (disclaimer: not all men are like that)
Isn't there a study that shows that a female fly is more stressed if there are a lot of male flies around?
I have been trained on my postdoc to be a systems biologist. But I wonder if I have to go to these meetings to succeed? I hate the feeling of competition and infighting that seems to take over when there are so many men and so few women there. Maybe there needs to be a society of female systems biologists. One of my friends told me there is a society of female economists.
To Flummonxed's point, I think they have criteria because those standards are what they think should be used in an ideal world, and you're right that often those objective standards are not used when making the real decisions. There should be more objective criteria for promotion in academe, so that women can see where they stand in the process and make changes to help themselves succeed. But that requires a substantial culture shift which is slow in coming. Women can help by pointing out to administrators when objective criteria are not being used, sometimes that will work. And certainly fighting an unfair decision is important, and I agree it is frustrating that the "good" fight is still going on.
Money just doesn't matter to me. I don't even notice how others are paid as long as I have enough to get along. I care more about the benefits, childcare, maternal and paternal leave, retirement contributions, good med and dental benefits.
I just don't get it, when they lay out criteria for success and women go ahead and carry out their agendas, and then they use some other criteria to reward men more. How they play the game, how much another organization wants to hire them, how much they are willing to ignore their families and work day and night, even publication at the expense of teaching. Why have criteria? Just to mislead women?
A. I always hung out with boys growing up, and so it seems natural to me to hang out with men now. I'm not uncomfortable in such as setting, in fact, I might be more uncomfortable in an all female science discussion. Would the scientists be wearing Jimmy Choo shoes or chatting about lip gloss? That's totally not my scene.
B. I agree with hmcbride, you can smell the testosterone. Points are made in the discussion for competition, not for science. At that point, I try to go out for coffee or a bathroom break and come back later if that's possible. Otherwise, I think about experiments I want to do and try to isolate my mind from the conflict.
FBP
B. As much as I'd like to say otherwise, I've been in male dominated fields as a graduate student and postdoc and the meeting tone is much more aggressive when you get a male ratio above 5:1 males to females. I've been at some conferences where it has been 9:1. You can smell the testosterone in the room. And you can't fight natural physiology which is telling you there's danger in the air for a female at that point. Did it make me not enjoy myself, not necessarily. I still had a good time for the most part but it gets old having to act more aggressive to fit in. It's just plain more exhausting. Now that I don't have to care what those good old boys think when I go to meetings since I don't rely on them for reviewing papers and grants, I can just relax and be myself. World of difference in my enjoyment level!
C. I rarely go to the big meetings in my field. It's not all about the gender ratio though, it's partly because I can't find the few people in the field that I know. It works a lot better at small meetings like Gordon and Keystone conferences.
