Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Read this article

My dad sent me this awesome article about the Larry Summers controversy. It does a much better job of discussing what I think is most relevant: what the day say about women's abilities and cultural biases that affect women's performance and the outcomes of evaluations. Also, there's a great little sidebar with statistics on how many tenured women faculty there are in the 'hard sciences' (biology-related stuff is not there, but still), as well as a discussion of what 'stereotype threat' is- basically enforcing stereotypes that generate anxiety and drive down performance.

Read it now . Tell me what you think.

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3 Comments:

At 5:35 PM, Blogger Megan said...

I couldn't get to your article (I get paranoid about registering for things, though I think I'll break down and do it to read this baby). I'll let you know what I think!

 
At 6:41 PM, Blogger Ms.PhD said...

My impression is that nobody wants to register for these things, because no one- including any of the friends I emailed about it- actually read it.

Too bad the newspapers don't realize how much readership they lose that way.

 
At 8:58 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I really enjoy your blog, it offers a real frank perspective of a career in the life sciences in academia. Regarding your post and the article, do you think that things will get better for women in academia in the next 10-20 years? I've noticed an increasing trend of international and female students into Ph.D. programs in the life sciences, while at the same time a decrease of domestic and male students. Actually, during the past year in my lab alone 7 out of 7 students were international and 6 out of 7 of them were female. I have talked to other students at other universities and this seems like a universal trend. I understand why there is an increase in the internationals (better opportunites and education in the U.S.), but why the decrease in men in these programs? Is it because the training is impractical? Just wondering what your thoughts are on this.

 

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