Gender Deficits in Science Education - Essay Example

A recent column in the New York Times highlighted the findings of a Duke University study wherein the researchers reported that “our data clearly show that there are sex differences in cognitive abilities in the extreme right tail, with some favoring males and some favoring females. Thus, sex differences in abilities in the extreme right tail should not be dismissed as no longer part of the explanation for the dearth of women in math-intensive fields of science” (Tierney D1). However, as Jacob Blickenstaff explains, there is a “danger in continuing to emphasize biological differences between men and women, because the tendency is to then argue that if unalterable biological differences exist, then no action need be taken to improve the situation for women” (Blickenstaff 383).

  Women’s health issues include the psychological effects of discrimination. Gender bias in the sciences begins early, according to Blickenstaff, and involves a plethora of factors, including sex bias in textbooks, lack of attention paid to contributions by female scientists, gender bias in science teachers, the overt favoring of boys’ answers to questions in science classrooms and the “unapproachable and distant” demeanor of male science teachers (Blickenstaff 379).

Blickenstaff also points to the possibility that “positivist objective rationality” itself is a masculine construct, and that in order for women to progress in the sciences, the scientific paradigm itself must be re-engineered (Blickenstaff 382). …political and social power affects the kind of questions that scientists ask and how scientists interpret the answers they obtain. If only one kind of person asks the questions and interprets the results, then the field of scientific inquiry will be narrow and inbred.

Science can be improved by broadening the diversity of its practitioners across gender, ethnic and racial lines, and science education can be improved by acknowledging the political nature of scientific inquiry (Blickenstaff 15). Erwin and Maurutto surveyed female university students pursuing a degree in the sciences and found that gender bias in science affected women’s health in numerous ways.