Aside from being socialized to expect to be bad at analytical problems, I’d suggest (from aggregate reading about stereotype threat, feminist issues, and my experiences growing up) that part of the issue is that there’s a lot of fear of being seen to try hard and fail. It’s perfectly socially acceptable (unfortunately) for a young woman to doubt her own abilities to solve a problem and in so doing, decline to try it. However, if she’s seen struggling with something, she’s likely to encounter derision, with the implicit or explicit statement that she’s reaching out of her depth. A self-effacing attitude, or the semblance of it, is socially necessary, because while young women are allowed to be Smart, they are not allowed to be Arrogant. I can provide references for these points if needed, though I believe it’s pretty familiar ground for those at all versed in gender socialization norms.
Into purely personal territory now—take as you will—there was a time (around 4th grade through perhaps 10th) when I was that afraid of failing. If I tried a novel problem (even if no one else understood it), and couldn’t immediately figure out what to do to solve it, my (male) peers jumped in with taunts along the lines of “she’s not so smart after all.” There were several years where it felt like any major failure would utterly ruin my credibility as a Bright Girl. It was far easier to assess the difficulty of a new problem, and quietly decline if I didn’t think I could handle it.
Concerning the gender imbalance on the nerd spaces of the internet, I could probably go on all night about it, but I’m about to pass out and start drooling on my keyboard. Maybe I will go on all night about it in a separate post on a separate night.
I find that kind of interesting, since my mom’s similar behavior comes off as extremely arrogant to me. Electronics and computer software of any kind are the Domain of Men, and any problems she has with them are our responsibility to solve, no matter how many thousands of hours she’s been using a particular system and no matter how unfamiliar it is to us. If you try to guide her toward figuring something out herself, she’ll eventually grin and throw up her hands and say “Confusing! Confusing!” and repeat the request just do it for her.
On further thought it’s not strictly about doing things for her, but when she wants to know how to do something she wants specific, step-by-step instructions without trying to explain why those steps work (doing that will immediately trigger “Confusing! Confusing!”); i.e. “How do I check text messages on this phone which I’ve been using for years and which has simple and clearly labeled menus?”.
...I’m probably using a thread as an excuse to vent again, but GIFT.
I rather suspect my mother (or anyone else that wasn’t paying me a lot of money) would soon find that behaviour of that kind would rapidly lead to my disinclination to provide assistance. They can either show some respect and courtesy or follow the flowchart themselves.
Mind you I am willing to adjust my teaching to suit individual learning styles. Some people just really do suck at understanding how steps work. Meanwhile I am extremely poor at following instructions without understanding how they work—scarily so at times.
In general, becoming indignant is a good strategy for dealing with people that are manipulating you deliberately. Not many people are willing to follow that strategy with their immediate family, however.
Personally boundaries can be discovered, expressed and executed without indignation. Learning how not to get caught up in patterns that personally detrimental while minimising unhealthy forms of conflict is an invaluable skill.
Providing technical support is, after all, an optional service. It isn’t an obligation that you have to the world simply because you have the capability. People may be able to influence you to provide that support either by providing incentive or by making the experience of giving the favour rewarding in itself. Helping out of a frustrating sense of obligation is a less healthy and to be avoided if possible.
Sources might be useful because many on LW will not be versed in gender socialization norms. These things make sense to me, but I can’t say I’ve seen them explicitly stated before (at least in a way that stuck with me).
Not the complete story, of course, but here’s an interesting recent Slate article suggesting that female professors seems to have a positive effect at the university level:
They measured, for instance, how often each student responded to questions posed by professors to the classroom as a whole. At the start of the semester, 11 percent of the female students attempted to answer questions posed to the entire class when the professor was male, and 7 percent of the female students attempted to answer questions posed to the entire class when the professor was female. By the end of the semester, the number of female students who attempted to answer questions posed by a male professor had not changed significantly: Only 7 percent of the women tried to answer such questions. But when classes were taught by a woman, the percentage of female students who attempted to answer questions by the semester’s end rose to 46.
. . .
Finally, when Stout and Dasgupta evaluated how much the students identified with mathematics, they found that women ended up with less confidence in their mathematical abilities when their teachers were men rather than women. This happened even when women outperformed men on actual tests of math performance.
. . .
These experiments suggest that subtle and unconscious factors skew the “free choices” we make. The career choices of men and women are affected far more by discrimination than by any innate differences between men and women. But it is not the kind of discrimination we usually talk about. We ought to assume that male math professors at the University of Massachusetts were just as committed to teaching young women as they were to teaching young men. And those professors were just as talented as their female counterparts. (The professors and students were not told the purpose of the experiment beforehand, so the female professors and female students couldn’t have entered into some kind of pact to boost test scores.)
This isn’t surprising, boys in elementary school do better with male teachers, which may be part of the reason why we are seeing such worrying figures about their performance in recent years.
A bit later than intended, but here are some useful sources related to my post. I’d recommend the stereotype threat wikipedia article and the Handbook of Socialization as the best overviews for those less familiar to the topic.
most relevant source article (unfortunately subscription-protected, but I think a lot of people here have some sort of institutional access): Murphy MC et al, “Signaling threat: how situational cues affect women in math, science, and engineering settings.” Psychol Sci. 2007 Oct;18(10):879-85.
Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research, edited by Joan E. Grusec and Paul D. Hastings (2007). Excerpt here: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/CBD/downloads/week9_LeaperCh22.pdf (Particularly relevant is the section on peer-sensitivity and the tendency to downplay achievements or ability in an area considered to “belong” to the other gender.)
Claire Etaugh, Marsha B. Liss, Home, school, and playroom: Training grounds for adult gender roles, Sex Roles, Volume 26, Issue 3 – 4, Feb 1992, Pages 129 – 147
A self-effacing attitude, or the semblance of it, is socially necessary, because while young women are allowed to be Smart, they are not allowed to be Arrogant.
This gibes with what I’ve heard about the difficulties of being a female professor in a traditional male-dominated environment of academia.
Aside from being socialized to expect to be bad at analytical problems, I’d suggest (from aggregate reading about stereotype threat, feminist issues, and my experiences growing up) that part of the issue is that there’s a lot of fear of being seen to try hard and fail. It’s perfectly socially acceptable (unfortunately) for a young woman to doubt her own abilities to solve a problem and in so doing, decline to try it. However, if she’s seen struggling with something, she’s likely to encounter derision, with the implicit or explicit statement that she’s reaching out of her depth. A self-effacing attitude, or the semblance of it, is socially necessary, because while young women are allowed to be Smart, they are not allowed to be Arrogant. I can provide references for these points if needed, though I believe it’s pretty familiar ground for those at all versed in gender socialization norms.
Into purely personal territory now—take as you will—there was a time (around 4th grade through perhaps 10th) when I was that afraid of failing. If I tried a novel problem (even if no one else understood it), and couldn’t immediately figure out what to do to solve it, my (male) peers jumped in with taunts along the lines of “she’s not so smart after all.” There were several years where it felt like any major failure would utterly ruin my credibility as a Bright Girl. It was far easier to assess the difficulty of a new problem, and quietly decline if I didn’t think I could handle it.
Concerning the gender imbalance on the nerd spaces of the internet, I could probably go on all night about it, but I’m about to pass out and start drooling on my keyboard. Maybe I will go on all night about it in a separate post on a separate night.
I find that kind of interesting, since my mom’s similar behavior comes off as extremely arrogant to me. Electronics and computer software of any kind are the Domain of Men, and any problems she has with them are our responsibility to solve, no matter how many thousands of hours she’s been using a particular system and no matter how unfamiliar it is to us. If you try to guide her toward figuring something out herself, she’ll eventually grin and throw up her hands and say “Confusing! Confusing!” and repeat the request just do it for her.
On further thought it’s not strictly about doing things for her, but when she wants to know how to do something she wants specific, step-by-step instructions without trying to explain why those steps work (doing that will immediately trigger “Confusing! Confusing!”); i.e. “How do I check text messages on this phone which I’ve been using for years and which has simple and clearly labeled menus?”.
...I’m probably using a thread as an excuse to vent again, but GIFT.
I rather suspect my mother (or anyone else that wasn’t paying me a lot of money) would soon find that behaviour of that kind would rapidly lead to my disinclination to provide assistance. They can either show some respect and courtesy or follow the flowchart themselves.
Mind you I am willing to adjust my teaching to suit individual learning styles. Some people just really do suck at understanding how steps work. Meanwhile I am extremely poor at following instructions without understanding how they work—scarily so at times.
In general, becoming indignant is a good strategy for dealing with people that are manipulating you deliberately. Not many people are willing to follow that strategy with their immediate family, however.
Personally boundaries can be discovered, expressed and executed without indignation. Learning how not to get caught up in patterns that personally detrimental while minimising unhealthy forms of conflict is an invaluable skill.
Providing technical support is, after all, an optional service. It isn’t an obligation that you have to the world simply because you have the capability. People may be able to influence you to provide that support either by providing incentive or by making the experience of giving the favour rewarding in itself. Helping out of a frustrating sense of obligation is a less healthy and to be avoided if possible.
Sources might be useful because many on LW will not be versed in gender socialization norms. These things make sense to me, but I can’t say I’ve seen them explicitly stated before (at least in a way that stuck with me).
Not the complete story, of course, but here’s an interesting recent Slate article suggesting that female professors seems to have a positive effect at the university level:
. . .
. . .
This isn’t surprising, boys in elementary school do better with male teachers, which may be part of the reason why we are seeing such worrying figures about their performance in recent years.
A bit later than intended, but here are some useful sources related to my post. I’d recommend the stereotype threat wikipedia article and the Handbook of Socialization as the best overviews for those less familiar to the topic.
Stereotype threat:
good synopsis at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat
most relevant source article (unfortunately subscription-protected, but I think a lot of people here have some sort of institutional access): Murphy MC et al, “Signaling threat: how situational cues affect women in math, science, and engineering settings.” Psychol Sci. 2007 Oct;18(10):879-85.
Basic overview of childhood gendered socialization: http://gozips.uakron.edu/~susan8/parinf.htm
Other stuff:
Handbook of Socialization: Theory and Research, edited by Joan E. Grusec and Paul D. Hastings (2007).
Excerpt here: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/CBD/downloads/week9_LeaperCh22.pdf
(Particularly relevant is the section on peer-sensitivity and the tendency to downplay achievements or ability in an area considered to “belong” to the other gender.)
Claire Etaugh, Marsha B. Liss, Home, school, and playroom: Training grounds for adult gender roles, Sex Roles, Volume 26, Issue 3 – 4, Feb 1992, Pages 129 – 147
I’ll go through my link archives tonight, then. Still getting a feel for what’s considered common knowledge here and what isn’t.
This gibes with what I’ve heard about the difficulties of being a female professor in a traditional male-dominated environment of academia.
Related.