Women, Science, Stereotypes and Storytelling
When you look around at the accomplishments of the women in your own circles, isn’t it hard to believe that we still have so far to go in terms of gender equality in the workplace? On Monday I attended a conference in Washington, D.C., on women in science that covered brain/biological factors as well as cultural/societal factors – and considered the stereotypes of women in science.
One of the women in attendance, an incredibly accomplished engineer at my table, made a great point during a mid-morning break, which was: young women considering their possible future in science-related careers discount engineering because they don’t see it as being something that is about helping people. Engineering just sounds like you are off in a room with gadgets and numbers. The perception is all wrong – but how would someone who wasn’t familiar with engineering know that?
That just made me think that storytelling would be a great tactic for “selling” science to women. If the traditional perspective of a career/profession is long-since outdated, how will the reality ever be passed along to future generations? It isn’t only women, of course, who need to hear the tales of incredible good that come from this person or that person’s work. Any and all up-and-coming scientists or lawyers or teachers need to see some common ground. They need to witness like-minded, like-valued people doing amazing things with their educations and specialties.
One of the speakers at this event pointed to the way a male brain or female brain might achieve the same task – or get to the exact same action/decision, but by using very different parts of their brains. Another point made was that the best minds in the brain study realm only know about 1 gazillionth (ok – I exaggerate, but you get the point) of what goes on in a human brain and why.
So, we can’t hang our gender difference hat completely on the biological side of things, in terms of how men and women function in their professional lives or otherwise. There are just too many unknowns. Instead, we can say that a LOT of differences between men and women are cultural and that each of us has had incredibly unique influences on the direction of our own lives, so it is awfully hard to categorize. And, that should mean we try even harder not to stereotype, as well.
Even given the expertise and renown of the various speakers/panelists at this event, I felt like I left the conference feeling about the same way: That there are more variables and subtleties in brain make-up (nature) and in our upbringings/culture (nurture) than we can possibly measure. It is indeed fascinating to study up, but very hard to make proclamations one way or the other.
Instead – maybe we should all just make the small changes we can in our own industries. Like – helping fill the minds of future scientists, lawyers, doctors, school teachers, marketers and beyond with the stories of the very cool things each of us has been able to do within our careers.
P.S. Speakers at this American Enterprise Institute conference included: Simon Baron-Cohen, famed autism researcher and the author of The Essential Difference, Elizabeth Spelke, Professor of Psychology at Harvard, Rosalind Chait Barnett, senior scientist at Women’s Studies Research Center at Brandeis and co-author of Same Difference, and Joshua Aronson, an associate professor of applied psychology at New York University and expert on “stereotype threat,” among many others. Andy Guess wrote a very good summary of the day for InsideHigherEd.com, so check it out if you are interested in more.
