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Two articles appeared in this weekend’s New York Times, nearly side by side.
Stephanie Coontz, writer and educator, explains in her data rich article, The Myth of Male Decline (9.30.12), that women are doing better than they were decades ago. At the same time, however, there still unassailable professional and educational gaps relative to men. In a nutshell, women must work harder (e.g., more years in higher education) than men for similar payoffs. Men still enjoy what has been referred to as the ‘patriarchal dividend’; the expectation and realization that maleness and masculinity bestows long term benefits based on the institutional structures that invisibly (and visibly) surround us.
Flip to page 6 and you can read Robin Marantz Henig’s tromp through the history of Valium and other anti-anxiety meds (Valium’s Contribution to our New Normal). In her commentary, she wonders (worries?) about women dampening their normal emotional reactions to normal human experiences. According to Henig, Roche made a fortune by advertising the calming effects of Librium through portraying the lives of young coeds as an avalanche of worry-inducing newness. Henig reflects on the irony of women turning to drugs to ‘feel more like themselves’.
Does anyone else see the connection between these two stories?
As a research psychologist, I study the manifestations of power and power strategies in social groups from an evolutionary perspective. Fairly recently and from a decidedly non-evolutionary angle, my students and I have turned our attention to social processes and institutional cues long understood by second wave feminist scholars. These social processes, this research shows, effectively keep women in their place just below men. (Note: Virtually anywhere in the present article you can insert the word ‘race’ to open up a related body of scholarly research).
Sexy mouth advertising a mixer for scientists.
Consider the following: At left is a set of lips very close to ones I spied on a flier for a mixer at an academic conference. The flier trumpeted a pair of sexy, sexy lips. After about 6 seconds of deliberation, I concluded the party ‘was not for me’, and moved on to dine by myself.
I woke up from my complacent slumber several weeks later when it occurred to me that my female graduate students might have done the same thing. If this were the case, they would be denying themselves important professional opportunities afforded by such mixers. If men attended and made connections that women not attending wouldn’t make, well, then they would unintentionally enjoy a little patriarchal dividend. Ka-ching!
That’s when we set to work studying the image.
In typical very simple but effective experimental fashion, we exposed 150 students - men and women - to a single mock up flier; either one with this sexy mouth (the ‘experimental group’) or one with an attractive woman’s mouth (but not sexy) purloined from a dental studio website. The flier announced a faux “social gathering” with faculty (i.e., professors), graduate students (students pursuing advanced degrees such as Masters or Doctorates) and undergraduates (i.e., college students). Then we asked a litany of questions tapping into their responses to the fliers. “Who do you think would go?” “What do you think people would be drinking?” “If you were to attend, how do you think you would feel?”
The strength of our results surprised us. Both men and women thought that the majority of attendees of the sexy mouth party would be men, and that there would be more drinking of hard liquor and more sexual activity. But women - not men - in the experimental condition reported more negative feelings about the sexy-mouth party: They felt less respected and intelligent, and more cautious.
In these respects, men were not phased by the image. Men expected a good time (and in the experimental condition, a very good time), and did not anticipate bearing any professional costs.
And you know what? They are probably right. There may be no costs for them.
Ka-ching!
In this month’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Corinne Moss-Racusin and colleagues (original article) showed that -- with absolutely equal qualifications -- even college faculty in the biological and physical sciences judge student applicants that they believe to be male to be more competent, more hirable, and worth more in terms of pay than applicants they believe to be female. Here’s the rub: The resumes were exactly the same. Moreover, ‘female applicants’ were offered on average $3,730.16 less in starting pay, or 88% the salary of men (a number that resembles national averages, according to Coontz). Coontz might point out that women need more education than men simply to counteract these discriminatory effects
This effect cannot be explained away by blaming “sexist men”. Female faculty demonstrated similar patterns of bias. Bias, by the way, they would deny having if you asked them outright. Many of our attitudes are automatic and unconscious.
But don’t despair, girls. The faculty judged women to be more likable. Just don’t expect to get paid for it.
Institutions (factory floors, post offices, corporations, university departments) are full of cues signaling what's referred to as organizational culture. Some of these cues bear obvious costs to women and are blatant. Acts of ‘overt sexism’ are often ‘actionable offenses’; you may not, for example, offer grades or promotion for sexual favors. But what of someone who quietly doubts your competence even the face of contradictory evidence? Is it less sexist if that someone is another woman? Worse still, do women hold these biases against themselves?
I worry that these nearly invisible cues might be our slow undoing. What is signaled to male and female college students when a senior male professor quips in a professional meeting how boring my sex life at home must be? Trust me, public humiliation + fury makes one long for a tranquilizer. Add a layer of pressure to roll with it lest one come off as a ‘humorless, sexless shrew’ who ‘cannot take a joke’, well, throw in a vodka chaser. Doubtless the student audience did not consciously process the comment in this way. And this fact alone gives these social processes their legs. The status quo can rest assured.
The merits of just ignoring it notwithstanding, our unconscious processes guide us in important ways. After an accumulation of a litany of micro-experiences, young women internalize this culture and conclude, ‘this is not for me’ and ‘I do not fit here’. And in a sense they are correct. Perceiving tiny slights paired with the pressure to ‘let it slide’ is in fact a combination that (my graduate student Jacklyn Ratliff showed in her dissertation) leads women to leave academia. Women who silently soldier on bear a double cost, the insult and the injury.
So, we can ‘let it slide’ (as urged by Katie Roiphe) or discuss what are now well documented patterns in the open for the end goal of promoting women’s professional wellbeing. These discussions will not be easy or welcomed, especially by those who have long, albeit unknowingly, profited by said system. There will be costs, social and professional. I will bear some for simply writing this piece. Indeed, I have already been asked (by a senior male colleague) if my concerns about the professional atmosphere stem from my not being young or cute anymore.
Valium anyone?
Let's start this discussion right here, right now. Please tell me your stories.
