Reconsidering The Boys Club

By E. Newbury

You've got it wrong. It isn't socialization that we should blame for gender roles, it's just pure logic and biology. Oh, and it’s these factors, combined with shoddy job market, that cause the lack of women in scientific fields not discrimination. It’s because our brains are different that women are bad at science and math.

R.Malfi
2/2/06

Thanks Larry, but No Thanks

Some say that gender equality is no longer an issue in the workplace. I've heard it myself, from the mouths of friends. Feeling, myself, that this statement is incorrect, I struggle to understand the source of this sentiment. Perhaps this belief is partly derived from the fact that an increasing number of women seek higher education. Perhaps it comes from seeing women like Hilary Rodham Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Condoleezza Rice in leadership positions. There is no doubt that women have come a long way, that they've overcome many obstacles to enter positions formerly closed to the female sex. What remains to be seen, however, is a State of the Union Address where the room is 30 to 50 percent women. In this article, I wish to focus specifically on women in the sciences, but it is important to keep in mind that the ongoing dialogue presented here should be taken beyond this field into discussions about other professional areas and the workplace as a whole.

• Serendip's Exchange, a place (this place!) for conversations, blogs, forums and papers in progress. Please join in!

 

• Courses for Spring 2007:
  • Biology 202: Neurobiology and Behavior
  • Emergence 362
  • The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories
  • Gender and Science: Re-envisioning & Revising the Relation

   

Hey everyone! Marquise de Merteuil here, starting her evil letters. Just have one book keeping question. It's OK for me to post a blog entry as my forum writing for the week, right? My thoughts don't correspond to any existing thread, and I was thinking of creating a forum topic but just instinctively felt that "the blog" would be a more appropriate outlet. So people can comment on blogs, right? Because, as always, I would love to chat.

Since our course, "Evolution of Stories" is about the relationship between science and literature, we apply Prof. Grobstein's idea that science is a process "of getting it progressively less wrong" to Zadie Smith's idea that literature is the same thing, that classics are the best failures we have, since the author can never express "his true self." Or "soul" but somehow she feels in our society that word can't be said... But even in a course like this it is essential to keep in mind that literature is not just a discipline that can be connected to science, but its own rich field, and so I'd like to see if Smith's argument holds up from a literary point of view, or in other words if it describes literature in a compelling way.

I like the idea that Eden expresses in an earlier thread, How much of “me” is my choice?” It reminded me of something I read about child development. There are many theories on child mental development. Of these theories there is one theory by a man named Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. His theory illustrates development as being largely influenced and shaped by the culture and society that a child is living within or exposed to. Vygotsky views development as a process of inevitable acculturation.

The first few years in child development are precultural, but at 2 years of age, a child will begin to learn semiotic tools it will need to develop. At 2 years a child will begin to grasp language and symbolic thinking. With these tools a child will develop higher consciousness and take in the world through the onslaught that is verbal society. This means that a child’s exposure to language will cause acculturation and the child will assign meaning to words and concepts as they are used and viewed within the society he is living in. These concepts become concrete ideas and allow the child to build upon that foundation with other things that he experiences. No matter what the activity, when children observe the world about them, they will learn and develop values that will later determine his thoughts and actions. Such values are learned unconsciously and can be as little as the usage of the word “cup” and the actions associated with the word cup: “we share cups, we clean up after ourselves when we spill, we must be careful not to break cups.” This type of development allows younger minds to be guided by more knowledgeable individuals.

I found Chapters 1-4 to be very interesting. I'm going to be completely honest: Before I read the material, the thought of reading 80-some pages about evolution made me sick, as I am a Spanish major taking this class for a Div. II requirement & by spark of interest. I'm glad I read now because I learned some new things that 1) I have always wondered about but never cared or remembered to research & 2) just never occurred to me. For example, I never knew that the young Earth initially consisted of methane, molecular hydrogen, ammonia, and water vapor, and finally, oxygen came in increasing quantities with the rise of cyanobacteria.

I also agree with the theory that brain equals behavior. Data from fMRIs and PET scans is pretty convincing for me, but at the same time I think it is important to realize that these machines do not yet show “real time”. “Such images can be acquired with moderately good spatial and temporal resolution; images are usually taken every 1–4 seconds...(Wikipedia)”. Thinking about how quickly one can feel pain or think or react to any stimulus tells me that taking images every 1-4 seconds doesn’t give a very clear picture. So much more is most likely going on within the brain during those 1-4 seconds than the final image shows. Although the parts of the brain that were activated are still shown, they are not precise pictures.

Chapter One: In September of 1994 people in India were found to have a disease that was once called the Bubonic Plague in the 1400s. In the end fifty-six people died, but before it was all over, panic and fear spread throughout the nation rapidly, and then it hit the world. This panic caused the economic and political decline of the country. Stocks went down, tourists stopped coming, and trade with surrounding countries ceased almost completely. Indian doctors and citizens fled the country as well. Basically, all the necessary components of functioning cities were not in place, thus the country lost its ability to maintain an economic infrastructure. The Indian government had been negligent and had not paid enough attention to issues concerning the country's public health; their priorities had not been in order. As Garrett suggets, the government did not need new technology to defeat the plague, but proper implementation of basic health measures. There is a certain amount of trust between government officials and citizens that is necessary for maintenance of public health programs; this trust was violated globally and nationally during the plague outbreak. Garrett proposed that if the Indian citizens trusted their government they would, "respond swiftly to a disease crisis, reach sound scientific conclusions, and act rapidly in a manner that both staunched the outbreak and quelled panic."

To people all over the world cocaine is viewed as a taboo drug. It is the cause of addiction and death among other things, but is, nonetheless, used by people of all social classes. Models and celebrities make it seem glamorous but those who have been sucked in by cocaine’s addictive properties or have seen a loved one hit rock bottom because of it know that it can ruin lives. It seems as though something this detrimental could only be manufactured by humans, but is it? Where on Earth does this horribly addictive drug come from? Is there more than one form of ingestion? How does it integrate itself into and react with our brains? And finally, what makes it so great that one would want to use it again and again, even to a point where it is life-threatening?