I have been trying to write this post for days and it is not going well. Friday I gave a workshop talk for my department. It was on my latest project (Why Happiness is Not Dispositional) and it was scary. As someone who occasionally has mental freezes where thoughts refuse to enter into my mind, defending my work to a collection of my most relevant peers and mentors is slightly nerve-wracking. Still, I think it went well. My brain cooperated with me and I think I handled the questions well.
But as my friends and colleagues congratulated me on a job well done, a nagging question resounded in the back of my mind. “Was that good... or was it just good for a girl?”
Now, I know this sounds pretty sexist, but its hard for me to avoid this kind of thinking at times. Everyone is aware that there are not many women in philosophy but no one is quite sure why or how to deal with that fact. For better or worse, I think that this sometimes results in lowering the bar for women and sometimes I wonder if I am being evaluated on the same curve as the guys.
This is an extremely delicate subject and I was wary of bringing it up. I don’t think this is an intentional attitude, but I do think it is pretty embedded in the philosophy world. Sometimes, I even catch myself thinking about things that way.
Are people going easy on me in talks? Do professors expect less participation from me in classes? If so, is this a bad thing for women or a good thing? Should I welcome the extra slack or be offended by it?
I don’t know. I think the reason that I have been stalling on this entry is that I couldn’t really decide what to say about the issue. I remain in a state of confusion. Nonetheless, I wanted to flag the issue and see what others had to say about it.
Does anyone else feel this way? Do you find yourself evaluating yourself or others differently based on gender? If there is a different standard... what is the difference?
P.S. Thanks to everyone who wrote to me last week in response to my first post! I really enjoyed the stories, thoughts and support. I only wish that some of these comments had made it to the blog! Remember, you can always comment or post anonymously :)
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
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Well, let me put it this way: which would be worse, for people to be cutting you slack because your female or for people to unconsciously assume that men are better, thus requiring a *higher* bar for women? Because the statistics pretty convincingly support the latter rather than the former. For example, there have been tests where they give the same resume/CV to different people, some with female names and some with male names, and on average the ones with male names are judged to be of a higher quality.
ReplyDeleteMore personally, I have sat through a series of job talks where the female candidates were consistently treated more rudely and harshly. Not by everyone, of course, but by some.
Not cheery news, I know. But the good news is that when someone says you're good, you know that you really *were* good.
Also, you bet that none of the men give talks, only to wonder, gee, did they go easy on me because I was a man? Did I get preferential treatment because I was one of the guys? The fact that you are worrying at all says that you have pretty high standards for yourself, which is a good thing -- as long as it doesn't turn into finding ways to discount people's positive praise of you. Remember that as a group, philosophers don't tend to be really lavish with their praise. :-)
Adding to my previous comment at 9:06 PM -- here is an article on unconscious biases:
ReplyDeletehttp://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/women-in-philosophy-whats-getting-left-out/
Nicely done. I really support posting while uncertain. It's good to write through confusing topics, rather than thinking that you need to master everything before you can mention it.
ReplyDeleteYour question is too difficult and complicated to have an easy answer. And even if you answer it one way today, you might feel different tomorrow.
I like that you come down slightly positive, though, because, ultimately, I think it's just healthier to be able to feel ok with your situation, rather than seeing discrimination everywhere. And wow, I'm surprised to see myself writing that. It must be really late. And I must be much happier than I used to be, or something.
Thanks for the comments :) I encourage everyone interested in this topic to read the article posted above. I found the following passage particularly reflective of the phenomenon I was trying to describe.
ReplyDelete" Most academics hold egalitarian explicit beliefs. Yet we may nonetheless be influenced by unconscious schemas which are not so egalitarian in their effects. We may, for example, associate men more readily than women with competence in maths or logic; or with skill in argumentation (especially if we conflate that with aggression!). More generally, it is likely that in a male-dominated field, the schema for a member of that field may well clash with the schema for *woman*. This affects behaviour, including how members of the field (both men and women) expect women to fare, how they advise women, how they evaluate women’s work, what tasks women are assigned, etc. "
I also wanted to reply to the point that it is better to be given a lower bar than a higher one. I agree in some ways, but it's also more insulting. It also causes people to take you less seriously. If it is clear that people are going easy on you, you look weak and incompetent. This often results in being overlooked for opportunities and underestimated in general. I'm not sure it's better to have a lower bar if it means being less respected (or derives from that).
Of course then my mood shifts, I get bogged down in work, and I think, wow, I'm sure glad I don't have to work even harder than I do now...
Like I said.. conflicted :)
Well, it seems to me that the lower bar and the higher bar are just different reactions to the same phenomenon -- the phenomenon of assuming that women aren't as capable as men. The higher bar means that there will be fewer opportunities for women because they are assumed (by virtue of being women) that they aren't as good -- thus, they have to achieve more to get the same opportunities. The lower bar means that people go easy on women for awhile, but then discount her achievements in the long run (because everyone knows people went easy on her) and so give her fewer opportunities.
ReplyDeleteSo, I definitely see conflict.
The answer, of course, is to give kick ass talks. Which it sounds like you did. Let me put the point this way: you thought you did a good job. Everyone else said you did a good job. Is there any *real* evidence that you didn't do a good job, other than a worry that people might be going easy on you? Do you have any real evidence that philosophers go easier on women?
Also, think about it this way: If the patriarchal default is to fail to recognize women's talents, this "lowering of the bar" doesn't necessarily mean that the women's bar is lower than the men's bar...it just means the women's bar has been lowered from its previously *too high* status to be *on par* with the bar for men. Even if it feels like it's too low, isn't it more likely that it just feels too low because you're used to being held to a higher standard than men instead of an equal one? If anyone looks down on your accomplishments as a woman, just tell them to remember that they get ahead by being privileged, so they can fuck off if they have a problem with you getting a break *for once* in a society that's stacked against you.
ReplyDelete