Women in Math and Science - Essay Example

Where do you stand on the question of women in math and science? Studies show that men and women have the same academic cognitive ability. In fact, there is an emerging study that women are now performing better than men in academics that could be attributed to their diligence, persistence and more focused study compared to men who are susceptible to “distractions” in their studies. The point is, both gender has the same cognitive ability and aptitude. These abilities however can only be similar under normal conditions and without the intervention and threat of gender stereotype. The gap in academic performance will appear once the threat prejudice is applied and this persists in the professional life assuming that the female student was able to overcome the threat stereotype condition in the academe. In the essay "Women in Math and Science" of the book Writing Arguments -A Rhetoric with Readings, it showed how powerful prejudice and stereotype threat condition is in debilitating the capability of a person. In fact a study showed that even men are vulnerable to it. In a controlled condition conducted, two sets of white Caucasian men were asked to take an exam in math. The other set was subjected to stereotype threat condition that Asian are better than them in math while the other set took their test regularly. The result showed that Caucasian men who were subjected to the prejudice of stereotype threat performed less than the other group who were not subjected to the same prejudice. Of course the group who underperformed is not less tough or less than bright than the other group but only showed how stereotype threat can undermine one’s ability. The Asians are the females’ equivalent of stereotyping to Caucasian men when it comes to math. For the longest time, Caucasian men have been bombarded with the prejudice that Asians are better than them in math (559). This is being reinforced everywhere, from mass media to anecdotes that when used as a threat, Caucasians would men would perform less in accordance to the stereotype. Does this mean that Asians are intellectually superior to Caucasians? Of course they are not, but the threat of stereotype debilitates their ability to perform. The same thing happens to women. In fact, the cases among women are quite strange. Despite incidence of women who are performing well in school particularly in math and science, there are still fewer of them who are in the field of engineering and science. As I write this paper, I cannot recall anybody who is a popular female engineer, a scientist, or an astronaut. Apparently, prejudice still haunts them beyond school. That even if they managed to overcome the threat of stereotype in the academe, the prejudice still exists against them along the way when they are charting their career path. Somehow somewhere, this gender stereotype is still sabotaging them to land in a profession that is heavy in math and science because they are women. The sorry thing about this phenomenon is not that the threat stereotype condition can still hinder women in realizing their potential and contributing fully to society but rather, on our failure as a society to optimize the capability to contribute to the general good of society and to themselves. It may be subtler now and not as overt during the Middle Ages but it still exist. We can only glean from the evidence of women’s lack or non-participation in professions they are very much capable of but are excluded by the stereotype of male domination. In fact, the women’s challenge in dealing with subjects that relates to math and science is twice as much as men. First, she has to overcome the prejudice of gender stereotype which is known to effectively debilitate women’s ability to perform according to her potential. And if she is able to overcome it, the profession that she intends to practice her ability limits her option because she is a woman. Yet, despite this prejudice against her gender, she could even be still considered lucky because she is in America. Her counterparts in the Middle East are generally deprived of her education because she is a woman and that her place should only be at home. When she is given an education, it is not considered to be at par with men and are only limited to health services. She needs to be escorted by male companion in going to work because she is not allowed to drive by herself. And no matter how competent she is, or how good she is with her job, she will be paid less compared to a male dominated function that does not require high skill sets. Having this situation where women are subjected to threat stereotype condition to debilitate their performance both in the academe and professional life here in America and elsewhere, it only meant that we are an inefficient society. If we are going to compare society with a machine with its population working as its parts in an integrated fashion, our society is only working at half capacity and yet we want progress, optimum productivity and high performance. Our attitude does not simply match our expectations when we deliberately incapacitate half of our society’s talent and capabilities just because they are women. The modern information society is now technology based. For any given society to be advance and progressive, it has to harness its capability in technology. And technology requires high aptitude in math and science of which our women which compose half of our population can more than adequately perform. The women in United States are capable. I believe they need no special attention just like we gave special attention to minorities decades ago. They do not need special attention because they are not minorities in the first place as they compose half of our population. It is only our paternalistic attitude that alienated them to become minorities. The best way to encourage them to perform in math and science and in their respective professions in general is to treat them as equals in all aspect, from academe to professional life. Remove the prejudice and threat stereotype condition that debilitate them from performing to their optimum and measure them according to their true merit. The same applies to their professional life. Remove gender hindrances and stereotypes in any profession and let them be in a profession that they chose. Let the measurement of success be based on competence and not on gender. There should be a shift in attitude where superiority in the workplace is measured in terms of output and not on gender. When we have a society that includes its academe and industry that is gender blind, then we can say that we have optimize our capacity as a society. The potential of progress that we can achieve is yet to be measured because we have not realized yet the full potential of the other half of our population. At present, progress is still generally male driven and is still limited. Imagine the kind of society that we will have when the other half of the population contributes. That may yet to be seen but one thing I am sure, it will be much, much better than the kind of society that we have now. Work Cited Writing Arguments -A Rhetoric with Readings. Ninth Edition Read More