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Study: Belief That Some Fields Require "Brilliance" May Keep Women Out

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-can-go-it dept.

sciencehabit writes Certain scientific fields require a special type of brilliance, according to conventional wisdom. And a new study suggests that this belief, as misguided as it may be, helps explain the underrepresentation of women in those fields. The authors found that fields in which inborn ability is prized over hard work produced relatively fewer female Ph.D.s. This trend, based on 2011 data from the National Science Foundation's Survey of Earned Doctorates, also helps explain why gender ratios don't follow the simplified STEM/non-STEM divide in some fields, including philosophy and biology, they conclude.

2 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. No surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We think (and so define in IQ calibration) that mean intelligence is the same for men and women.
    We know the deviation of intelligence is higher for men than women.
    By selective bias many people end up thinking men are smarter than women (caused by selecting the top few which will be weighted towards men due to above).
    Some fields really do require IQ >= 110 (one std above mean).
    Between these three I would not be surprised if the effect is fully accounted for.

  2. take my wife... please by crgrace · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Take my wife as an example. She's incredibly smart, hard-working, and capable. She could be AT LEAST as good an engineer as I am. Why isn't she? Because she's smart enough to make a conscious choice to choose a field with better work-life balance than I did (engineering). She can take 3 months off when we have a child and organize her work to be compatible with having a young child. It's much harder for me.

    I think she's smart.