State schools 'failing girls who want to study physics' Study shows gender bias in science is real. Here’s why it matters. It’s tough to prove gender bias.
In a real-world setting, typically the most we can do is identify differences in outcome. A man is selected for hire over a woman; fewer women reach tenure track positions; there’s a gender gap in publications. Bias may be suspected in some cases, but the difficulty in using outcomes to prove it is that the differences could be due to many potential factors. We can speculate: perhaps women are less interested in the field. Perhaps women make lifestyle choices that lead them away from leadership positions. The only way to do that would be by a randomized controlled experiment. But in a groundbreaking study published in PNAS last week by Corinne Moss-Racusin and colleagues, that is exactly what was done. The scientists also offered lower starting salaries to the “female” applicants: $26,507.94 compared to $30,238.10.
This is really important. We are not talking about equality of outcomes here; this result shows bias thwarts equality of opportunity. Study aims to learn why some black men succeed in college. The litany of bad news about the status of black men in higher education is by now familiar.
They make up barely 4 percent of all undergraduate students, the same proportion as in 1976. They come into college less prepared than their peers for the rigors of college-level academic work. Their completion rates are the lowest of all major racial and ethnic groups in the U.S. Shaun R. Harper is tired of hearing the list. And it troubled him professionally, as well, because he believes the relentless emphasis by researchers and others on the failures of black men has helped "shape America's low expectations for black men. " Harper set out to do something about it as he built his own research agenda as a graduate student a decade ago. The answers drawn from the National Black Male College Achievement Study are anything but elemental.
Beyond 'Deficit' Like so many academic research agendas, Shaun Harper's was shaped as much by personal experience as by professional curiosity and interest. Female Geeks Flex Their Skills At Ladies-Only Hackathon. Why women should pick science & math degrees over liberal arts. “What a pistol!”
Was the universal sentiment voiced around the office after we shot this video with Penny Herscher. Herscher is a tech CEO (FirstRain is her company); she and I first came into contact on Twitter when I was bemoaning the state of female entrepreneurship. I thought lady founders were wasting their talents on dating- and fashion-related startups, while Herscher contended that more women founders was better than the alternative, regardless of the startup’s vertical.
While Penny and I agree to disagree on the kinds of startups women (and men, too) should be focusing their attention on, she brings a fresh perspective to how women should approach science, technology, engineering and math. With both parents working in the STEM fields, both Herscher and her sister ended up choosing STEM majors in college; liberal arts education and careers, she said, were out of the question.