Junk science hurts women’s brains: it’s official
Friday, November 3rd, 2006If you tell women they’re genetically worse at math and science long enough, it’ll become true. Or at least that’s the impression I get from a new paper in the journal Science. (From MadScienceMama.) Researchers divided women into four groups. Each group took an “exam” in which they answered math questions, and the math questions were broken up by an essay in the middle which the women had to study.
One group had an essay that stated that women do worse in math than men due to genetic factors. Another group read an essay which said women do worse at math than men, but blamed it on environment. A third group read an essay that had nothing to do with women or math. And a fourth group read an essay that wasn’t about math, but talked about women artists, thus “reminding” the women of their group membership.
The women who had the essay stating that women are genetically less gifted at math did much worse on the math questions than the women who read the neutral essay. The women who read the essay that blamed environment for women’s lower performance in math did as well as women who read the neutral essay. And the really surprising result: the women who read the essay about women artists did almost as badly as the women who read the essay that said women were genetically inferior at math.
As MadScienceMama says:
The study suggests that genetic theory can give powerful support to discriminatory stereotypes. It is likely due, in no small part, to the way genetics is presented to the public, with an emphasis on determinism.
She goes on to say that this study may not explain the “leaky pipeline” in science, because women who actually work in the sciences may know better than to believe in junky theories about genetics. She may well be right, but the results of this study may go some way towards explaining why fewer women enter the pipeline in the first place.


