Okay, this is interesting. I was doing a Google News search for:
biologist OR physicist OR scientist “she says”
And Google responded:
Did you mean: biologist OR physicist OR scientist “he says”
So I tried a little experiment and searched for:
teacher OR nurse OR housekeeper “she says”
And Google didn’t ask me if I meant to search for anything different. Is that weird or what?
Yeah, that’s pretty weird. Out of curiousity, I just tried the “teacher OR nurse OR housekeeper” with “he says”, and I didn’t get a suggested correction on that one.
Dunno what I think that means, but it’s odd.
The search > does not recommend an additional search. Neither > nor > results in further suggestions.
Apparently educational, medical, and house related authorities are not quoted nearly as widely on the web as scientific sources. At least may be why neither gender is quoted often enough with “a person says” to alter the results. I assume there is not a 50/50 split as my mother is a teacher and claims a huge shortage of male teachers exists. Perhaps they’re shy about being quoted on the web…
The first search’s results possibly show a disproportional shortage of women — in roles of authority — in the scientific community. Therefore less quoted. Or it shows a preference by the web creators of the english-speaking world for quotes from male scientists. I suspect both, unfortunately.
I would hope I would notice that preference for more often quoting male sources when a female source was available, we’ll see. Perhaps an apparently often cited female (or male) educational professional should do a study on quotes from women scientists.
The search > does not recommend an additional search. Neither > nor > results in further suggestions.
Apparently educational, medical, and house related authorities are not quoted nearly as widely on the web as scientific sources. At least may be why neither gender is quoted often enough with “a person says” to alter the results. I assume there is not a 50/50 split as my mother is a teacher and claims a huge shortage of male teachers exists. Perhaps they’re shy about being quoted on the web…
The first search’s results possibly show a disproportional shortage of women — in roles of authority — in the scientific community. Therefore less quoted. Or it shows a preference by the web creators of the english-speaking world for quotes from male scientists. I suspect both, unfortunately.
I would hope I would notice that preference for more often quoting male sources when a female source was available, we’ll see. Perhaps an apparently often cited female (or male) educational professional should do a study on quotes from women scientists.
The search ‘teacher OR nurse OR housekeeper “he says” ‘ does not recommend an additional search. Neither ‘professor OR doctor OR architect “she says” ‘ nor ‘professor OR doctor OR architect “he says” ‘ results in further suggestions.
Single quotes apparently work better than /
uh, that’s not just weird, that’s creepy. i hope it’s simply based on an algorithm of likely responses (more male biologists, female nurses, etc), because the alternative is awfully sexist.
Steve, I think you’re right that female authorities are quoted less often on science than male authorities. Although both searches (he says and she says) come up with plenty of hits. But yeah, either there’s a shortage of authorities, or a preference for quoting men, or most likely both.
hey I love that you tried this – I did a similar experiment on google’s search engines here:
Wow, Tricia. That’s really really interesting. I sent it on to a friend of mine who works at Hyphen.
Great site – linked you to ours today at smartgirlsrock.com. I started the site when I got tired of people coming into my NASA store and saying “this stuff is great, now where can I go shop for a girl?”