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CSE 403 Sp 04 - Ginorio Notes |
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Additional information sources related to Professor Ginorio's lecture.
Issues for Women and Ethnic Minorities in Science and Engineering is a class and public lecture series at the University of Washington run by Professors Angela Ginorio in women studies and Marjorie Olmstead in physics.
The notes that Professor Ginorio referred to during the lecture will be posted in the Spring 2004 leadership workshop under the names Angela B. Ginorio & Marjorie Olmstead. (http://www.engr.washington.edu/advance/workshops/).
The following notes were taken by Valentin Razmov (link) during the guest lecture by Prof Ginorio (link). Valentin's comment is "I found many of the examples from Friday's guest lecture in CSE403 thought provoking, and I wrote down several of them (as many as I could remember)." and we thought that others might like to be able to refer to them too.
Ideas from a guest lecture in CSE403 by Prof. Ginorio (UW Dept of Women Studies)
In an experiment with students from 14 nations (including USA, Canada, Australia, Fiji, Phillipines, India, etc.), when students were asked a question, the first to try to answer it were invariably the American students. They were taught in school that they should volunteer their opinions, and silence (after a question was posed) seemed unbearable to them. When asked about it, students from Fiji said that in their culture they are encouraged to first look around and see if others have something to tell, while students from India were taught to quietly consider all the possible options before choosing one.
In an experiment about the influence of gender attitudes in reviewing conference paper submissions, a paper was given to 100 reviewers with its author given as "John Smith" (I do not remember the exact name), and the same paper was offered to another set of 100 reviewers, this time the author's name was changed to "Jane Smith". Yet another set of reviewers had the author's name indicated as "J.S.". The results, on a scale of 1-4 where 1 is "excellent", were as follows:
Clear from this experiment are the stereotypes that people, perhaps unconsciously, have about the quality of a person's work in relationship to his/her gender. Perhaps surprisingly, even women hold those stereotypes, though not as strongly as men do.
In a recent survey, a group of school administrators and department chairs were shown pictures of people from different races and genders, and were asked to link those (based on their intuition) to a set of academic fields, including sciences, engineering, art, theater, etc. The results showed that both men and women who were surveyed strongly linked men to engineering and women to arts, indicating the presence of a gender stereotype.
In 1970, only about 10% of the students admitted to law school were women. There was an unspoken "agreement" at the time among admissions committees that no more than this many women should be admitted. Two years later a law was passed that prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender. Allegedly as a result of that, in 1980 the percentage of women students of law had risen to 28%. Today, it is roughly 50%. The conclusion is that when artificial hurdles are removed, the natural state of things is gradually regained.
Women generally make 70%-80% of what men make for the same jobs. This ratio has been in the lower 70% a few decades ago and has since gradually improved (toward 100%) but even when a variety of factors are accounted (and adjusted) for, at least 5% of the difference remains unattributed to anything else but gender.
A survey of academic salaries by gender has found that women starting in an assistant professor position earn on average slightly more than men do. By the time they become associate professors, however, the men have overcome their female counterparts in salaries.
An interesting trend has been observed related to how the mix of men and women influences the average salary in a given profession. In a traditionally male profession, when women increasingly start joining the ranks, the average salary experiences a drop. This may be related to the fact that women (by their nature) feel less comfortable negotiating salaries, or it may be a result of increased competition in the respective profession.
Some employers fear hiring a woman, since a woman is more likely (than a man) to leave the job for family reasons (e.g., rearing a child). It turns out that men are just as likely to leave a job, though the motives of men and women are quite different -- men would do it in pursuit of a career and higher positions, while women might do it to comply with their societal expectation of taking care of their families. Moreover, it was found that employers who offer good benefits packages are more likely to retain their female employees (than they are to retain their male employees).
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