What keeps women out of academic fields? A new paper out in Science says that it’s expectations of genius. The more academics believe that what they do requires innate talent,* the fewer women are in those fields.
As I wrote about this paper, called outside sources and scrapped the original lede, I ended up thinking that there are expectations of brilliance elsewhere as well.
Elsewhere, as in in writing.
I hear it everywhere I go. “Oh, you have a talent for words,” “I could never write, I just don’t have the talent for it.”
And yet, scientific writing has plenty of women. Most of the people I work with are women. Women write well received science books, go on the lecture circuit, have their own shows.
Why is this? I wonder if it has to do with how we think about writing, and what kinds of talent women are “allowed” to have.
As Joshua Aronson mentioned when I spoke with him:
Culture and convention play an important role not only under-representation, but also in the theories scientists develop about why under-representation occurs, notes Joshua Aronson, a social psychologist at New York University. “In the 1960’s there were very few women in psychology,” he notes, referencing a previous 2009 chapter he wrote on stereotype threat. “And if you walked down the halls of psychology departments, you could hear men talking smugly about how women were ill-suited to psychology. Now, more than 70 percent of Ph.D.s in psychology are given to women. And now we hear people say it’s a woman’s field, and women are well suited to psychology. The theories and explanations arise in part to justify current practice.”
In the early 1800’s it was accepted that women could never write anything of real value. They could write romance or novels, but never anything, you know, “important.” This was because women had all this emotion. But men at the time did not acknowledge that women had practical sense, as well. When Mary Shelley wrote “Frankenstein,” most men assumed she was not the real author. They had difficulty accepting that a woman could write something that was quite so…good.
Now, many women are writers. Many of us worked out butts off to get here, as my friend Danielle has said, “working twice as hard for half the credit.” Many of us have talent. And now, we think, well women are good writers because they are good communicators. They can talk, use words, and use emotions. Women must have an innate talent for writing. Right…
So it might make you think that expectations of innate talent wouldn’t predict participation in writing.
And yet.
And yet.
At the top and in the many lists of notables, men still tend to dominate.
And when there is success, what gets emphasized is startling. When Jonah Lehrer wrote (now discredited) best sellers, people called him genius, polymath, wunderkind. When Rebecca Skloot wrote a superb, best-selling book that not only opened the eyes of the world to an important part of scientific history but also influenced public policy, people called her accomplished, talked about the immense effort she took, her hard work. No one has yet, to my knowledge, called her a polymath. Or a genius. One person called her a wunderkind but only to then make reference to how she was “taut and trim in boot heels.”
For the man, they emphasized his genius. For the woman, her hard work. This is only one example, of course. But I do seem to hear this anecdote everywhere. When I hear men get introduced, I hear “the brilliant mind behind,” “the award-winning.” With women, I’m much more likely to hear just “this is what she does.”
It might just be my own experience. But it makes me think of my own actions. When I talk about becoming a science writer, I talk about working hard. I don’t talk about talent. When people praise me my first response is to say, oh, not really, I’m not brilliant or anything. I emphasize my hard work. I see other women do it, too. In many fields. To acknowledge your brilliance makes you egotistical, and no woman can afford to be seen as arrogant. But hard work? Everyone can appreciate that.
It’s left to the men to make much of (or at least just smile and accept) their natural genius. It makes me wonder if our acknowledged talent…is really so acknowledged after all. And it makes me wonder if our real talents lie, not only in our genius, but in the heroic act of running twice as hard, just to stay in place.
*This begs the question. If you believe your field requires innate talent, in and you’re in that field, does it not also mean that your field requires a lot of ego? Does this mean the real correlation is between fields full of egotisical people and fewer women? Hmmm.
