SOCI 250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: The Takeaway, Chauvinism
8 Jun 2018
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SOCI250 – SOCIAL PROBLEMS
POST MIDTERM CLASS NOTES
Lecture 13 (October 26th, 2017)
Gender Inequality
! Gender inequality
•!Gender: refers to the culturally and socially constructed differences between females and
males based on meanings, beliefs, and practices that a group or society associate with
femininity or masculinity
o!Different from a biological prescription, but rather a cultural one
o!We learn how to be women and how to be men – related to culture as opposed to
biology
o!It’s cultural since we learn it
•!Gendered division of labor: the process whereby productive tasks are separated on the basis
of gender
•!Gender inequality: the unequal allocation of rights, privileges, resources, status and power
based on gender
•!How is gender inequality and individual problem? Social problem?
o!Is gender inequality a reflection of micro level processes/individual qualities of
women vs. men? Or is it really about social constructions?
o!Someone on the right is going to say that gender inequality exists in the economy
because men are much better than women – men are at the top of the carrot
"!Women are not as ambitious, talented… as men
"!Individual or possibly biological processes making women less ambitious
o!Someone on the left is going to say that gender inequality exists in the economy
because of blocked opportunity and discrimination, which is why we see more men at
the top of the carrot
o!Remember the CEO example
"!31 out of 500 women are CEOs
o!545 out of 557 Nobel prizes for science have gone to men
"!Function of the prize: the highest achievement in science
"!Men are better than women at least in science or there’s blocked opportunity
discrimination
o!Only about a 3-4-point gap in IQ between men and women (not statistically
significant)
"!If we’re saying that the best and brightest rise to the point, we have some data
point to speak about. If men are disproportionally up at the top of the food
chain, are they really more talented? Smarter? The data says no –on average
when people take IQ tests, the gap between men and women is not statistically
different (they’re IDs are the same)
o!Women have higher educational attainment/higher GPA
"!We are being “streamed”. The principle metric for this streaming is the GPA
"!On average, women have higher GPAs than men
"!Higher educational attainment, women go to school longer than men
"!Those things by themselves suggest that you would see women more at the
top of the carrot.
"!People who don’t like this and don’t like the disconnect between metrics that
are supposed to indicate talent and actually economic position will say “well
there’s other things that will get you up here besides these numbers, such as
leadership and ambition” – convenient because you can’t really measure
leadership and ambition
•!It’s a convenient shift away from something that’s measurable when
you’re faced with data that doesn’t fall on the same lines as your
conclusions about merit
o!There are twice as many men as women in the top 2% of IQ
! Graph: What do folks think about gender?
•!“Pew research”
•!About 6 in 10 women sat the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to
gender equality
•!If you’re asked questions like “% saying that the country hasn’t gone far enough
when it comes to giving women equal rights with men” (you can see a
distribution which is maybe sort of accurate), the answer is “yes”
o!If people are perfectly informed about what the data tells us, the answer
is yes
o!The real interesting thing/question is: why does anyone say no?
o!It’s not much different than climate change: scholars don’t actually
debate if it’s real or not, they debate how serious it is
"!It’s not “does it exist”, it’s “where is it worst? In what occupation
do women face more barriers? Are things getter better?”
"!That’s absolute
o!40% of women say “We’re either good or we’ve done enough”
•!How do you get to these answers when the data doesn’t even support it?
•!What is one of the strongest predictors looking at this graph?
o!About 50% of all people say “the country hasn’t gone far enough when it comes to
equal rights between men and women”
o!Gender differences
"!The plurality of women say we haven’t gone enough
"!The plurality of men do not say that
"!About a 40/40 split with 13 saying we’ve gone too far
o!Education
"!The more educated you are the more you’re likely to say “we haven’t gone far
enough”
o!Political ideology
"!Best predictor of “hasn’t gone far enough” – 69%
"!The largest group of people, not based on whether they’re men or women, but
whether or not they’re liberals – left right ideology
"!How important political ideology is shaping the way you see the world
"!It’s more important than how much education you have, and more important
than your gender
Document Summary
Or is it really about social constructions? o someone on the right is going to say that gender inequality exists in the economy because men are much better than women men are at the top of the carrot. Women are not as ambitious, talented as men. 31 out of 500 women are ceos o 545 out of 557 nobel prizes for science have gone to men. Function of the prize: the highest achievement in science. Men are better than women at least in science or there"s blocked opportunity discrimination o only about a 3-4-point gap in iq between men and women (not statistically significant) If we"re saying that the best and brightest rise to the point, we have some data point to speak about. The data says no on average when people take iq tests, the gap between men and women is not statistically different (they"re ids are the same) o women have higher educational attainment/higher gpa.
