Women were raised with the idea that we have a choice – a choice to be single or not, to have kids or not, to delay marriage, to pursue a career or not, to have it all, to live our lives the way we want to… or not. Female empowerment by way of the pill, Sex in the City, and a steady backlash towards Marie Claire all created a compelling feminist march.
And choice sounded good until hitting the reality of biology.
Feminist back-tracking all the way to mainstream 60 Minutes and others inundated female consciousness with some alarming counsel: career women risk infertility, miscarriage and general unhappiness. So don’t wait; there is a deadline for “having it all.”
It was a lose-lose situation. Choose a career and risk having a family, or choose a family and risk having a career. The biological clock guaranteed you couldn’t have both. Many women tried – and failed – to sneak marriage in at just the right moment to have a career without kids for a few years, but not too late that the fertility window closed. It turned out only women of privilege could pull that off, and only through the latest scientific advancements.
Despite reality, choice brought about certain expectations. Women were expected to fill the same categories as men. If men shot guns and went to war, women should not only be able to do the same, but with the same performance. Women could hold public office or play sports or fix houses just as well as men.
None of that happened in large numbers however. After 30 years, women today aren’t represented in positions where men have traditionally held power, and still can’t close the salary gap. Faced with such disheartening realities, scientists, journalists, and feminists decided the reason wasn’t because discrimination and difference are still rampant (apparently, society is too evolved for such a notion), but rather that men and women are different.
The differences extend far beyond having a penis or a vagina, and supposedly prove that women simply aren’t interested or wired to thrive in traditionally male-dominated areas like say, math.
Brain scans show that women aren’t good at math so women will never be engineers, technologists, or scientists. Women are too empathetic to be CEOs. Women aren’t competitive enough to be in start-ups. Career blogger Penelope Trunk exemplifies the prevailing attitude in a recent post: “It’s outdated to think there are no differences between men and women. And once we accept there are differences, we need to study them instead of downplay them.”
Trunk goes on to make the argument (with brain scan images and all) that “we can say, with a decent amount of certainty, that the average girl is as good at math as the average boy,” because of decades of data.
Author Cordelia Fine argues in her methodical and myth-busting book Delusions of Gender, that “[those] who argue that there are hardwired differences between the sexes that account for the gender status quo often like to position themselves as courageous knights of truth, who brave the stifling ideology of political correctness,” but these claims made by so-called experts are “simply coating old-fashioned stereotypes with a veneer of scientific credibility.”
And that veneer is easily cracked. The things that hold women back aren’t biologically wired, but socially and culturally ingrained. Fine methodically turns popular science on its head to punch a giant hole in neurosexism.
“Although it’s not yet clear what it is, exactly, about neuroscience that is so persuasive, it’s been found that people find scientific arguments more compelling when accompanied by an image showing brain activation rather than, say, a bar graph showing the same information,” reports Fine.
It turns out white versus gray matter in the brain is a relatively useless determination of what creates gender difference. The real cause is something that’s much easier to understand, but harder to accept – we create it, every day.
Gender is socially constructed to the point that simply asking a person to mark whether they are male or female, or having a person write their name, will prime their behavior and actions, and affect how they achieve on tests and in life.
Most data will show men test better than women in math. But when women are tested on their math ability and told that “despite testing on thousands of students, no gender difference has ever been found,” they “outperform every other group – including both groups of men. In other words, the standard presentation of a test seemed to suppress women’s ability, but when the same test was presented to women as equally hard for men and women, it ‘unleashed their mathematics potential,’” reports Fine.
Trunk isn’t alone in propagating neuro-falsehoods, however. We’re now told that to walk into a classroom or workplace without knowledge of how the brain works (and how certain abilities are biologically pre-determined) is actually detrimental in terms of treating both genders equally.
Well-loved VC Fred Wilson recently posted an interview with his wife Joanne Wilson in which she argued gender difference starts “from the time you come out of the womb. Boys gravitate towards blocks. Girls gravitate to the dolls. That’s a generalization but in general, its true. I look at my own kids – my son, gamer extraordinaire. My daughters used to play those games but then they lost interest.”
Wilson is wrong on both accounts – as a result of gender priming and salience, gender difference starts far before a child exits the womb.
“Women who knew the sex of their unborn baby described the movements of sons and daughters differently,” reports Fine. “All were ‘active,’ but male activity was more likely to be described as ‘vigorous’ and ‘strong.’ Female activity, by contrast, was described in gentler terms: ‘Not violent, not excessively energetic, not terribly active were used for females.’”
And the gravitation for young girls and boys towards certain types of toys is not because of a biologically ingrained or wired reason, but because children start learning the gender ropes early on. Fine reports: “As they approach their second birthday, children are already starting to pick up the rudiments of gender stereotyping.”
It is no mistake that having not achieved equality by choice, or through the impossible success of “having it all,” that women are now being told that they are just born that way (as women) with all the rules and limitations the gender entails. It is no mistake these supposed biologically ingrained differences are too large to surmount. It is no mistake that while consciously reported beliefs are modern, progressive and indicative of an enlightened and evolved society that unconscious actions and behaviors are remarkably reactionary and indicative of the large discrimination, difference and inequality that still exist.
It is no mistake gender is one of the most salient social constructions. And it is no mistake the construct consistently fails women.
30 replies on “A Brief History of How We Fail Women”
This was riveting. As a father to a 14-month old daughter, I wonder about the world she grows up in. I wonder how her gender (and her view of it) will shape the way she competes and collaborates. Articles like this are ones I’ll come back to again and again as she grows up.
You’ll really find Cordelia Fine’s book fascinating then. The entire last third of the book is dedicated to how we construct gender early on in a child’s life and how quickly they want to and will learn it. What was particularly fascinating was that most parents expressed the “biology as fallback” position having believed they engaged in gender-neutral parenting. But you’ll find it’s impossible to do so. A young girl will still migrate toward the color pink (which incidentally used to be reserved for boys once upon a time), even if you thrust cars at her and dress her in blue. Gender is that salient.
Now, everything in our world is socially constructed and gender being the most prominent is at the very least something to be aware of, but we also need to be more critical of it since it’s hiding some very real discrimination and inequalities. Another thing Fine mentions is that it’s more unconscious these days which is actually more insipid.
Clearly, I could talk about this for days. And I will be delving more into this topic as it’s one dear to my heart.
Many of my MBA classmates are women who come from Engineering and IT. One of the main reasons they’re here, however, is that they need to be able to speak the same language as business people. Alright, that’s fair. I think most people who have specific specialties are able to add value when they can communicate across various lines of business. However (and this is just my observation), I get the impression that it’s communicated that women who are engineers are expected to be better at the “people” skills than men, just because of our nature. Being a male engineer who might not do too well in any interpersonal situation, business or social, might just be considered an eccentric genius. A woman, on the other hand, might alienate people because she’s missing the “social” hardwiring women are supposed to have. Even when women are in a position to be like men, when they aren’t women, they’re damned. Good post Rebecca…
Great observation, Emily. What makes it more troublesome is that when women enter traditionally male fields they tend to strip themselves of feminine characteristics to fit in better and belong – and are less likely to wear makeup, be emotional, or want children.
This is because the higher the woman goes up the ladder in such a male-dominated field, the more salient her sex will become. She will also lack a female role model to look up to. And you’re right, when women drop those female characteristics on their journey, they’re judged again. It’s impossible to win.
So, women who have more “male-wired” brains aren’t the ones that succeed in male-dominated fields. Rather, women who want to succeed in these domains strategically shed their feminized desires in response to reminders that these fields are not for women. In many cases, they go on to hold anti-female attitudes which, while the research didn’t touch on this, I’m sure probably contributes in part to the infighting we have with women in the workplace.
When I was growing up, I went through phases. When I was very little (before age 5) I would only wear dresses, and hated my blue room, which my parents eventually painted pink. But then I went through a backlash where I “wanted” to be a tomboy and decided olive green was my favorite color, Lego was my favorite toy and I wanted to go to football games. But neither of these came naturally, and represented me in the fullest sense. It took me a long time to realize that my identity is far more complex than merely partaking in “female” activities or reacting against them to partake in “male” ones. But you are so right that it has so much to do with external expectations; even with my dog people often assume she’s male because I use a blue leash.
Harriet, thanks so much for sharing your experience – I find that fascinating. I really loved cars when I was little myself, and have always been drawn to a more male aesthetic design-wise. It’s fascinating to me how are likes and dislikes are shaped by society – many of us don’t get the chance to figure it out on our own. So the matrix (the movie and sociologically, ha) is very real in some sense.
And I love, love that you brought up the assumption about your dog. Research shows that we tend to think of people or creates as male unless otherwise indicated. I love this quote from Fine on the topic: “In other words, as has been long observed, men are people, but women are women.”
I wanted to say that but couldn’t find an eloquent way of putting it! I really like that quote from Fine. Yes, people do assume that creatures are by default male. Although some do hesitate to give them time to look for “signals” to either validate their beliefs or prove them wrong, hence the point about the blue leash. Although with that being said, she had a pink collar and leash when she was a tiny puppy, and people still referred to her as “he.” (I don’t believe in color-coding babies or animals, especially as you said in your response to someone else that at one time pink was for boys and blue for girls, but I do like pink, and it went so well with her fur… she’s a red merle.)
I’ve always found this a depressing topic, particularly as a well-educated middle-class Chinese young woman born and raised and living in Asia. Every time I think the developed world has gotten just a little better for women something will come along to disabuse me of that notion. Despite my reasonable success in life my elders will never let me forget I have yet to fulfil my ‘filial duty’ by marrying and propagating (yeah I will, when gay marriage is legal)
You’re right on the money about the constraints being social and cultural constructs, and so long as they remain the way they are I’m going to find it hard to justify bringing any daughters into this world…
Thanks for sharing your experience, Jules. I can’t imagine the pressure you’re under and would love to hear more about the cultural expectations you face in Asia. Are the expectations rampant throughout all generations or mainly concentrated with your elders?
And I’m fascinated that you wouldn’t want to have daughters. Do you think the constraints are beyond repair at this point?
It’s a very curious situation Rebecca, especially in my country of birth, Singapore. We have what is called a Women’s Charter, passed in 1961, which amongst other things eradicated (1) polygamy and concubinage – my mother’s paternal grandfather had four wives, (2) gave women equal rights to enfranchisement and property ownership under the law and (3) almost full culpability on the part of the adult male in any case of sexual crime towards a woman. So yes, under the law, women in Singapore are so protected they make other Asian nations appear backward – the only thing that has changed little would be cultural and societal expectations, except they exist in a more insidious form now.
Singaporean women are given a pretty good education and are expected to aim high in their chosen profession, whilst at the same time marrying and bearing kids and running what is more often than not a multi-generational household. It’s not a unique situation except that the older generations here do not view marriage and children as a big deal; it’s just something you do (or at least try to do) once you hit a certain age. To the Chinese especially one of the greatest taboos is not to give one’s family ample descendants, hence the burden on women to bear sons. It’s as if a woman is not truly a woman unless she has given her in-laws at least one healthy son. As for women who choose to remain single or are gay…well let’s just say snide remarks are just the least of what they face.
My friends and I often joke that as single Asian females, we probably get the shortest end of the developed-world stick.
My reasoning where children are concerned is simple: Five thousand years of misogyny and discrimination isn’t going to change in my lifetime or the next, and even if I move to the West there is still misogyny and privilege, albeit subtler. I would want to give my child the best start in life, and so long as this remains a misogynistic, male-privilege world, I would not choose to bring a daughter into it. I mean, just by virtue of her gender alone a woman is vulnerable to abuse and brutalisation, and I feel like I’d go berserk if anything happened to my daughter.
It sounds selfish, but don’t parents want only what’s best for their child? ;-) And… if I had a daughter, I doubt I’d ever sleep another day in my life…looking back it’s a wonder my dad didn’t get white hair in his 30s, lol. Even though I’m all grown up now I know he worries over me and my sisters in a way that he’d never worry over my brothers.
I agree that there is definitely a difference between how parents treat boys and girls. Although my parents see me as the most sensible of their children, and I’m the oldest by 6 and 8 years, when I moved home after college (I had left for boarding school at 14 and had studied in the UK for 8 years) it was a tough adjustment for everyone. I was used to doing my own thing, which included coming and going as I pleased. A few times I would come home late after a few drinks at a bar or crash at a friend’s and not return till the morning, which infuriated my parents. The older of my two brothers, however, is always out, never tells anyone where he’s going, and my parents never worry (well, they do worry about his behavior in general, but don’t react to singular instances in the same way they did mine). He is 18; I was 22 when I moved home. I am positive it’s because I’m a girl, and as a result I moved in with my boyfriend, probably far too prematurely but there you go.
I’m not sure if this paints women as fragile and incapable of taking care of themselves or if it paints males as predatory creatures. My father was a little more protective of my little sister, but I wonder if it was because A.) he ‘knew’ what guys were capable of and her physiological build dictates she had less ability to ‘escape’ than I did or B.) growing up I exhibited characteristics that made my parents more comfortable that I could take care of myself. Who knows. One of many interesting dynamics. I took a whole course on Com & Gender. If you think unpacking gender is complicated, try unpacking whiteness.
Ryan – I really want to do a post on white privilege. I have been thinking about it a lot lately… would love to hear your thoughts via email or maybe even a guest post? Let me know.
Please do, Rebecca. Having grown up in a postcolonial society which still glorifies whiteness I’d like to hear the other side of the coin, as it were.
Yes, I’m with Jules, I’d love a post on that. The dynamic between whiteness and the purported “Other” is all at once fascinating, mystifying and terrifying to me: my dad grew up as a white colonialist in 1960s Kenya, both my brothers are adopted and one is black, and I wrote my Masters dissertation on the identity of mixed race women in twentieth century American literature. My dad and I were just discussing that perhaps with the crises that are currently taking place in the Middle East, that perhaps we’re coming to the end of post-colonialism (or the beginning of the end). And maybe the “Other”?
Ah, Rebecca, you know that I’ve been waiting for this. It would be great if you did a post on this, and I’d love to talk with you some more about it if you’re up for it.
It sounds like each of you are more qualified to write a post on white privilege than I am. I think it’s telling we have these private conversations with close members of our family or friends, but I rarely see any public conversations around the issue. Ramou, I would love to chat with you more. I’d love to see a post from you or at the least, get some more of your thoughts. I’ll send you a message this weekend with some thoughts.
Oh, definitely Harriet. I’ve heard from my female friends more complaints than I can count, about how their parents forbid them to stay out overnight or impose a curfew whilst their brothers run free (it’s even worse here because singles tend to stay with their parents until marriage due to land constraints and astronomical property prices) or more mildly, they question the girls’ every move and give them grief while the boys remain unaccountable.
I can understand the reason ‘but girls are more likely to get hurt’ but when a woman’s in her 30s that just becomes ridiculous.
Jules, thank you for sharing this. Really enlightening and thought-provoking. As I was reading this I was thinking Western countries are not anymore evolved we just have the veneer that we are. And then of course, you made that point as well. I think boy children are more valued over girls here as well, but of course no one would say that out loud. I personally have always wanted boys myself, but hadn’t really thought about the why. I think maybe similar to you, I would drive myself nuts.
I do think it’s interesting too that running a multi-generational household is just something women do – or I assume that falls on the woman’s shoulders. I think in trying to be politically correct, we may try not to do that as much in the U.S., but when all is said and done that is still the expectation (except just one generation).
I wonder if you’re right that after 5000 years this won’t change. I feel like there are other cultures (although I have admittedly not studied them in any sort of depth) that revere women are where the roles are switched. But I wonder if equality in the true sense of the word is a futile goal. Do you think that the rate of technological advancement we’ve gone through over the past 100 years hurts or helps this? I wonder if the technology will allow us to expediate the process of treating each other equally or will only make things worse… thoughts for another post perhaps! Ha.
I do feel this is a biologically driven world and nothing will change that. It is a man’s world. Strength will almost always result in dominance and in many cases, abuse. More developed nations will try to enshrine equality but I feel it is futile because we need a shift in attitudes and not enforced laws. As an example quotas are all well and good but what you might get are boards with a fair proportion of women who are little more than ‘flower vases’ (Singaporean vernacular for looking nice and staying quiet and unobtrusive). I spent 9 months working in a rough, exclusively-male environment (automotive tuning) and I can say that nothing changes unless attitudes change.
As for culture: The way I see it this aspect of Chinese culture has always been driven by economic imperatives. Most of the older generation cling on to the belief that investing in their sons will bring huge returns because they’ll be the ones supporting them in their old age, whereas a daughter ‘marries out’ and become part of another family, and her first and chief duty will be as a daughter-in-law to her husband’s family. Fair enough, the boys may be spoilt and privileged but in most cases they are expected to man up and provide comfortably for both their parents and their wives and kids. It’s a culture that places undue burden on both genders, to be honest.
That said I am speaking for the more traditional Overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. Mainland China is another beast altogether and we have the Communists to thank for that. Their women may have more ‘equality’ but given the rate of female foeticide/infanticide I’ll be surprised if there are any more mainland Chinese women left to take advantage of that equality.
I don’t mean to make it sound as if women here are hopelessly oppressed. In all likelihood most of them do not feel, or do not bother to feel, the weight of discrimination and misogyny unless it smacks them in the face. They just go about their daily business: working, hanging out, taking care of family and house. It is probably women who have had contact with academia or who are very socially and culturally aware who feel the weight of this discrimination and misogyny.
I think the rate of technological advancement has helped, for sure. It has linked likeminded people in a way our grandparents could not have imagined. Like any tool it has potential for good or evil – I believe it is up to us to determine that. :)
Is strength relevant in a knowledge economy though? Is that what it really all comes down to?
I’m glad you brought up the pressures on men, because we have been unduly ignoring them here.
And I’m really fascinated by this idea that there are a cohort of women living in your culture – and here too I think – that are living oblivious. If you’re not aware, does it even matter? Is education then a burden? I don’t expect you to answer those questions, but I do find it interesting to think about :)
“Is strength relevant in a knowledge economy though?”
Not in my opinion, no, and thankfully for me I’m part of a knowledge economy.
“Is that what it really all comes down to?”
If we take this world as an entirety then sadly, I think so.
Some disconnected thoughts and questions:
Question: would the solution be to have no genders? What would be the trade-off of that new social construction?
Thought: It worries me when people talk about potential families in “haves”. “Having a family” is an irresponsible and selfish goal, because technically it can be pursued whenever, however. “Providing a good environment for my child” is better, in that it’s not about the man/woman (this is regardless of gender). Is having it all the best path to provide a good environment for a newborn?
Question: is biology a reality or a fantasy then? Is it possible to “have it all”?
You could equally assign the constructions we have for gender to say, right-handed and left-handed people for instance (Fine expands on this example in her book). There are very few differences we haven’t classified and assigned assumptions to however. I don’t think the solution is to ignore gender (although if you believe some of the futurists, we’ll all have our brains in a computer and live forever and then there will be no gender, but that seems difficult to understand and grasp at this point in time) simply because there are differences. I think the solution is to stop magnifying and creating additional constructs about those differences in order to keep one group in power and one group subservient.
Getting philosophical though, many believe that that is the law of the universe – we will never live in equal bliss because you can’t have pleasure without pain, student/teacher, success/failure, etc. When you are feeling happy you are feeling sad at the exact same time. Nirvana doesn’t exist – it is a construct to control. So if women became more equal, men would have to become less so and I think we’re seeing some of the fall-out from that already. If somehow we did make the genders equal, we’d probably see the exertion of power and dominance in a different area rise. I am speaking purely philosophically at this point however.
I would like to have it all – although I see your point. I am still working on that idea and don’t fully understand, and probably won’t until I have a family, the implications of having it all and the shifting of priorities and expectations…
Biology is a reality. We are biologically different, you and I. But the mind is more than biology. The mind is malleable and influenced by more than our genes.
As a baby boomer, I thought of myself as a feminist and though I know women haven’t become equal to men in any sense of the word, I read Delusions of Gender and was shocked at my own defining of my daughters once I read it in black and white. I hadn’t seen it until I saw myself in her writings.
I also have two dogs. One male and one female. I have also defined their gender by how I treat them, what toys I give them, how I train them, etc., which says volumes about how I interact as a woman, mother, pet owner, and baby boomer. Society has shackled us and though we believe we are moving toward equality, the discrimination has been inbred in us. We have generations of retraining ahead of us.
That’s so interesting – I do think it is largely unconscious at this point as you say. Inbred again makes me think of the idea that it is wired and can’t be changed, which I don’t believe. Regardless, whether you call it unconscious or inbred, that fact alone often makes it more insipid and difficult to become aware of and address. Will you now change your behavior or in some cases, does it not matter?
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