We recently conducted a study of women’s participation in political decision-making groups. It is in these settings — committees, caucuses and delegate meetings — that women’s presence matters, often profoundly.
Our experiment assembled 94 five-person groups and asked them to decide whether and how much to tax the more fortunate so as to provide for those with less means. We ran the study in two states: conservative Utah and liberal New Jersey.
Surveys have demonstrated that women of both parties are more likely than men to mention the needs of vulnerable populations when asked about the nation’s problems. Women more frequently choose “caring” occupations and, within households, shift resources toward children more than fathers do. The most commonly accepted explanation is that women are more socialized than men to care for others.
To observe how and when women voice this “caring” — and when their voice matters — we randomly assigned 470 individuals to groups in which women made up zero, 20, 40, 60, 80 or 100 percent of participants. We assessed each member’s views before and after the meetings, and recorded who said what.
On average, women make up about 20 percent of lawmakers in the United States and abroad. We found that when women constituted 20 percent of a decision-making body that operates by majority rule, the average woman took up only about 60 percent of the floor time used by the average man. Women were perceived — by themselves and their peers — as more quiescent and less effective. They were more likely to be rudely interrupted; they were less likely to strongly advocate their policy preferences; and they seldom mentioned the vulnerable. These gender dynamics held even when adjusting for political ideology (beliefs about liberalism and egalitarianism) and income.
In contrast, the men in our experiment did not speak up less or appear to lose influence when they were in the minority.
In our experiment, groups with few women set a minimum income of about $21,600 per year for a family of four — which is close to the federal poverty level for a family of four. But once women made up 60 to 80 percent or more of a group, they spoke as much as men, raised the needs of the vulnerable and argued for redistribution (and influenced the rhetoric of their male counterparts). They also encountered fewer hostile interruptions.
Significantly, they elevated the safety net to as much as $31,000. The most talkative participants in these majority-female groups advocated for even more government generosity: $36,000, enough to catapult many poor families into the ranks of the lower middle class.
In another study, we pored through a sample of minutes from more than 14,000 local school boards and found that the pronounced gender gap in participation shrank sharply when women’s numbers reached parity — a real-world confirmation of our experimental findings.
When legislators vote, parties and constituencies matter most — but gender ratios matter too. For example, analyzing the 1990 confirmation hearings of the Supreme Court justice David H. Souter, the political scientist Laura R. Winsky Mattei found that the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee, regardless of party, was twice as aggressive in questioning female witnesses as male ones.
I don't think women are trained to be submissive so much as they are often put in situations where they are a distinct minority. I work in an industry that's dominated by women, and also highly competitive - publishing. The women I know in the business are assertive and highly effective. I know very well the chilling effect being a minority can have on your ability to make yourself heard.
Training women to be more like men, or at least an idea of a man that does not appear to be supported by data is not a solution. Women are often forced to be MORE assertive in minority positions, because they face a lot of passive and ingrained sexism, such as the assumption that they are by nature meek, when it seems that they are only so situationally
Women have been performing better in school than men for a few years now, and people seem quick to turn this around on them as well, suggesting it is due to their meek nature.
Suggesting that women continue to be excluded from power because they are not assertive rather than because of the systematic disenfranchisement and exclusion by the existing power structure is... troubling to say the least.
My children will only be given formless beige clay to mold their own toys from.
We'll solve this problem once and for all.
Your son turns his into a gun. Your daughter throws a wedding for her clay blobs.
"Damn clay embodies gender stereotypes!!!"
I will definitely not say that.
Though I won't have toy guns in my house. At all.
My mom tried that. She says that one day while out in the yard playing I picked up a stick and started pretend shooting things with it.
Some children seem disposed towards turning things into weapons.
Something something Darwin something something Freud something something it's not just culture.
Are you suggesting that your exposure as a child to culture was so limited that the only reasonable explanation for your stick-as-gun-play is that you possessed some innate understanding of and affinity for "gunness"? That there is some essential part of you that knows the Platonic form of gun and finds it compelling enough that you had to seek out even the palest of representations to play with?
My children will only be given formless beige clay to mold their own toys from.
We'll solve this problem once and for all.
Your son turns his into a gun. Your daughter throws a wedding for her clay blobs.
"Damn clay embodies gender stereotypes!!!"
In no way does a boy using a Barbie as a gun imply that his behavior isn't cultural. What, are boys born with a "gun gene"? And also a "truck gene", maybe?
Yes, girls have a lot of wedding-related toys. Not coincidentally, for a long time getting married was the only viable way for a woman to move out of her parents house and start her own life. Under those circumstances, it's understandable why girls would think about weddings a lot. And even though women can now get jobs in the workforce, there is a continuity with the past that means we still have a lot of Wedding Barbies on the shelves.
My children will only be given formless beige clay to mold their own toys from.
We'll solve this problem once and for all.
Your son turns his into a gun. Your daughter throws a wedding for her clay blobs.
"Damn clay embodies gender stereotypes!!!"
I will definitely not say that.
Though I won't have toy guns in my house. At all.
My mom tried that. She says that one day while out in the yard playing I picked up a stick and started pretend shooting things with it.
Some children seem disposed towards turning things into weapons.
Something something Darwin something something Freud something something it's not just culture.
Are you suggesting that your exposure as a child to culture was so limited that the only reasonable explanation for your stick-as-gun-play is that you possessed some innate understanding of and affinity for "gunness"? That there is some essential part of you that knows the Platonic form of gun and finds it compelling enough that you had to seek out even the palest of representations to play with?
No. I likely saw a tv show where someone used a gun, or held a gun. But I had also seen tv shows where people used spatulas.
I didn't pick up the stick and pretend it was a spatula.
I wasn't fixating on the "gun" aspect so much as the "weapon" aspect. Children can pretend to have weapons even if you don't buy them toy guns or toy swords.
In no way does a boy using a Barbie as a gun imply that his behavior isn't cultural. What, are boys born with a "gun gene"? And also a "truck gene", maybe?
Perhaps a "dominance" gene or a "violence / combat" gene. Or at least a "doesn't pretend the stick is a spatula" gene.
_J_ on
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Oh, my kids can definitely have swords.
Not a lot of culturally-weighted sword violence outside of fung-fu movies and Peter Jackson.
My children will only be given formless beige clay to mold their own toys from.
We'll solve this problem once and for all.
Your son turns his into a gun. Your daughter throws a wedding for her clay blobs.
"Damn clay embodies gender stereotypes!!!"
I will definitely not say that.
Though I won't have toy guns in my house. At all.
My mom tried that. She says that one day while out in the yard playing I picked up a stick and started pretend shooting things with it.
Some children seem disposed towards turning things into weapons.
Something something Darwin something something Freud something something it's not just culture.
Are you suggesting that your exposure as a child to culture was so limited that the only reasonable explanation for your stick-as-gun-play is that you possessed some innate understanding of and affinity for "gunness"? That there is some essential part of you that knows the Platonic form of gun and finds it compelling enough that you had to seek out even the palest of representations to play with?
No. I likely saw a tv show where someone used a gun, or held a gun. But I had also seen tv shows where people used spatulas.
I didn't pick up the stick and pretend it was a spatula.
I wasn't fixating on the "gun" aspect so much as the "weapon" aspect. Children can pretend to have weapons even if you don't buy them toy guns or toy swords.
Right, "someone" used a gun. What are the chances that the gun-holding someones were men and boys, much like you? What are the chances that a spatula-wielding someones were women and girls, less like you? Could that perhaps have influenced your conceptions of appropriate play types?
+1
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
We recently conducted a study of women’s participation in political decision-making groups. It is in these settings — committees, caucuses and delegate meetings — that women’s presence matters, often profoundly.
Our experiment assembled 94 five-person groups and asked them to decide whether and how much to tax the more fortunate so as to provide for those with less means. We ran the study in two states: conservative Utah and liberal New Jersey.
Surveys have demonstrated that women of both parties are more likely than men to mention the needs of vulnerable populations when asked about the nation’s problems. Women more frequently choose “caring” occupations and, within households, shift resources toward children more than fathers do. The most commonly accepted explanation is that women are more socialized than men to care for others.
To observe how and when women voice this “caring” — and when their voice matters — we randomly assigned 470 individuals to groups in which women made up zero, 20, 40, 60, 80 or 100 percent of participants. We assessed each member’s views before and after the meetings, and recorded who said what.
On average, women make up about 20 percent of lawmakers in the United States and abroad. We found that when women constituted 20 percent of a decision-making body that operates by majority rule, the average woman took up only about 60 percent of the floor time used by the average man. Women were perceived — by themselves and their peers — as more quiescent and less effective. They were more likely to be rudely interrupted; they were less likely to strongly advocate their policy preferences; and they seldom mentioned the vulnerable. These gender dynamics held even when adjusting for political ideology (beliefs about liberalism and egalitarianism) and income.
In contrast, the men in our experiment did not speak up less or appear to lose influence when they were in the minority.
In our experiment, groups with few women set a minimum income of about $21,600 per year for a family of four — which is close to the federal poverty level for a family of four. But once women made up 60 to 80 percent or more of a group, they spoke as much as men, raised the needs of the vulnerable and argued for redistribution (and influenced the rhetoric of their male counterparts). They also encountered fewer hostile interruptions.
Significantly, they elevated the safety net to as much as $31,000. The most talkative participants in these majority-female groups advocated for even more government generosity: $36,000, enough to catapult many poor families into the ranks of the lower middle class.
In another study, we pored through a sample of minutes from more than 14,000 local school boards and found that the pronounced gender gap in participation shrank sharply when women’s numbers reached parity — a real-world confirmation of our experimental findings.
When legislators vote, parties and constituencies matter most — but gender ratios matter too. For example, analyzing the 1990 confirmation hearings of the Supreme Court justice David H. Souter, the political scientist Laura R. Winsky Mattei found that the all-male Senate Judiciary Committee, regardless of party, was twice as aggressive in questioning female witnesses as male ones.
I don't think women are trained to be submissive so much as they are often put in situations where they are a distinct minority. I work in an industry that's dominated by women, and also highly competitive - publishing. The women I know in the business are assertive and highly effective. I know very well the chilling effect being a minority can have on your ability to make yourself heard.
Training women to be more like men, or at least an idea of a man that does not appear to be supported by data is not a solution. Women are often forced to be MORE assertive in minority positions, because they face a lot of passive and ingrained sexism, such as the assumption that they are by nature meek, when it seems that they are only so situationally
Women have been performing better in school than men for a few years now, and people seem quick to turn this around on them as well, suggesting it is due to their meek nature.
Suggesting that women continue to be excluded from power because they are not assertive rather than because of the systematic disenfranchisement and exclusion by the existing power structure is... troubling to say the least.
That's really interesting. Of course, I can see people seizing on this part: "[T]he men in our experiment did not speak up less or appear to lose influence when they were in the minority."
That might suggest that by "masculinizing" women, we could make them less sensitive to being in the minority, and more likely to speak up and hold the floor.
My children will only be given formless beige clay to mold their own toys from.
We'll solve this problem once and for all.
Your son turns his into a gun. Your daughter throws a wedding for her clay blobs.
"Damn clay embodies gender stereotypes!!!"
I will definitely not say that.
Though I won't have toy guns in my house. At all.
My mom tried that. She says that one day while out in the yard playing I picked up a stick and started pretend shooting things with it.
Some children seem disposed towards turning things into weapons.
Something something Darwin something something Freud something something it's not just culture.
Are you suggesting that your exposure as a child to culture was so limited that the only reasonable explanation for your stick-as-gun-play is that you possessed some innate understanding of and affinity for "gunness"? That there is some essential part of you that knows the Platonic form of gun and finds it compelling enough that you had to seek out even the palest of representations to play with?
No. I likely saw a tv show where someone used a gun, or held a gun. But I had also seen tv shows where people used spatulas.
I didn't pick up the stick and pretend it was a spatula.
I wasn't fixating on the "gun" aspect so much as the "weapon" aspect. Children can pretend to have weapons even if you don't buy them toy guns or toy swords.
Right, "someone" used a gun. What are the chances that the gun-holding someones were men and boys, much like you? What are the chances that a spatula-wielding someones were women and girls, less like you? Could that perhaps have influenced your conceptions of appropriate play types?
Well, given my childhood, the "someone" was likely..
The Sunbow cartoons (G.I. Joe, Transformers, Jem, and My Little Pony) make for interesting comparisons. Two aimed at boys, two aimed at girls, all by the same animation company, and mostly with the same writers.
The Sunbow cartoons (G.I. Joe, Transformers, Jem, and My Little Pony) make for interesting comparisons. Two aimed at boys, two aimed at girls, all by the same animation company, and mostly with the same writers.
That leads to a chicken/egg sort of situation. My guess is the company was marketing a product to established clients, rather than constructing gender roles. The company exists to sell toys, not to construct cultural gender norms.
My children will only be given formless beige clay to mold their own toys from.
We'll solve this problem once and for all.
Your son turns his into a gun. Your daughter throws a wedding for her clay blobs.
"Damn clay embodies gender stereotypes!!!"
I will definitely not say that.
Though I won't have toy guns in my house. At all.
My mom tried that. She says that one day while out in the yard playing I picked up a stick and started pretend shooting things with it.
Some children seem disposed towards turning things into weapons.
Something something Darwin something something Freud something something it's not just culture.
Are you suggesting that your exposure as a child to culture was so limited that the only reasonable explanation for your stick-as-gun-play is that you possessed some innate understanding of and affinity for "gunness"? That there is some essential part of you that knows the Platonic form of gun and finds it compelling enough that you had to seek out even the palest of representations to play with?
No. I likely saw a tv show where someone used a gun, or held a gun. But I had also seen tv shows where people used spatulas.
I didn't pick up the stick and pretend it was a spatula.
I wasn't fixating on the "gun" aspect so much as the "weapon" aspect. Children can pretend to have weapons even if you don't buy them toy guns or toy swords.
Right, "someone" used a gun. What are the chances that the gun-holding someones were men and boys, much like you? What are the chances that a spatula-wielding someones were women and girls, less like you? Could that perhaps have influenced your conceptions of appropriate play types?
Well, given my childhood, the "someone" was likely..
So, robots with generally masculine bodies and masculine voices.
The Sunbow cartoons (G.I. Joe, Transformers, Jem, and My Little Pony) make for interesting comparisons. Two aimed at boys, two aimed at girls, all by the same animation company, and mostly with the same writers.
That leads to a chicken/egg sort of situation. My guess is the company was marketing a product to established clients, rather than constructing gender roles. The company exists to sell toys, not to construct cultural gender norms.
Its goal was to sell toys, its methods served to reinforce cultural gender norms.
But what if the knight only keeps his armor shining so he can see his FACE reflected in it??
On a different note, I know I've been talking about "pink this, pink that", but actually the genderization of color is something that makes me roll my eyes big time. "Pink is for girls, red is for boys" is particularly amusing since they're basically the same color, it's just that one has a little more white mixed in with it. Just like pale blue and royal blue are shades of the same color. I think we'd be off to a good start if we could stop conditioning children to draw their hands back like they've been scalded when they touch a color "for" the "wrong" gender. I think this has actually gotten worse the past few decades. I remember in the 80s guys could wear pink business shirts and no one would comment on it.
Pink and purple are the biggest men's colors now. Half my shirts and ties are pink or purple. Even stodgy old partners that wear seer sucker suits in the summer wear pink and purple shirts/ties.
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
J - if I have a daughter (and I really hope to), I will raise her to believe that she can do anything, and will enroll her in team sports alongside dance class. But I won't try to change the world to better accept feminine gender roles (that isn't a fight I can win). I will try to raise her to excel in the world we have. If my daughter wants to to play football, I will be the parent that sues to school to get her on the team, but if she wants to twirl batons or something, I'll encourage her but won't sue the school to make them give her a varsity jacket. Does that make sense?
+1
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spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
My parents did not want me to have toy guns, then I built one out of a toy screwdriver and a toy metal file, so my uncle went out and bought me a robot that turned into a rifle. My wife is anti toy gun, but she is ok with nerf guns, and right now those are the best guns anyway, do I think it's ok.
My 2-year old daughter loves my nerf guns. I set her up a gun emplacement out of couch pillows and blankets and she would fire the vulcan while cackling.
Posts
I don't think women are trained to be submissive so much as they are often put in situations where they are a distinct minority. I work in an industry that's dominated by women, and also highly competitive - publishing. The women I know in the business are assertive and highly effective. I know very well the chilling effect being a minority can have on your ability to make yourself heard.
Training women to be more like men, or at least an idea of a man that does not appear to be supported by data is not a solution. Women are often forced to be MORE assertive in minority positions, because they face a lot of passive and ingrained sexism, such as the assumption that they are by nature meek, when it seems that they are only so situationally
Women have been performing better in school than men for a few years now, and people seem quick to turn this around on them as well, suggesting it is due to their meek nature.
Suggesting that women continue to be excluded from power because they are not assertive rather than because of the systematic disenfranchisement and exclusion by the existing power structure is... troubling to say the least.
Are you suggesting that your exposure as a child to culture was so limited that the only reasonable explanation for your stick-as-gun-play is that you possessed some innate understanding of and affinity for "gunness"? That there is some essential part of you that knows the Platonic form of gun and finds it compelling enough that you had to seek out even the palest of representations to play with?
In no way does a boy using a Barbie as a gun imply that his behavior isn't cultural. What, are boys born with a "gun gene"? And also a "truck gene", maybe?
Yes, girls have a lot of wedding-related toys. Not coincidentally, for a long time getting married was the only viable way for a woman to move out of her parents house and start her own life. Under those circumstances, it's understandable why girls would think about weddings a lot. And even though women can now get jobs in the workforce, there is a continuity with the past that means we still have a lot of Wedding Barbies on the shelves.
Crosspost with Grouch.
No. I likely saw a tv show where someone used a gun, or held a gun. But I had also seen tv shows where people used spatulas.
I didn't pick up the stick and pretend it was a spatula.
I wasn't fixating on the "gun" aspect so much as the "weapon" aspect. Children can pretend to have weapons even if you don't buy them toy guns or toy swords.
Edit:
Perhaps a "dominance" gene or a "violence / combat" gene. Or at least a "doesn't pretend the stick is a spatula" gene.
Not a lot of culturally-weighted sword violence outside of fung-fu movies and Peter Jackson.
You should raise them to only use really random weapons. Somehow construct a childhood in which the only weapon they know of is a trebuchet.
Right, "someone" used a gun. What are the chances that the gun-holding someones were men and boys, much like you? What are the chances that a spatula-wielding someones were women and girls, less like you? Could that perhaps have influenced your conceptions of appropriate play types?
I like this.
"Okay, kiddos, pick your weapons. Morningstar, atlatl, or bolas?"
That's really interesting. Of course, I can see people seizing on this part: "[T]he men in our experiment did not speak up less or appear to lose influence when they were in the minority."
That might suggest that by "masculinizing" women, we could make them less sensitive to being in the minority, and more likely to speak up and hold the floor.
Well, given my childhood, the "someone" was likely..
That leads to a chicken/egg sort of situation. My guess is the company was marketing a product to established clients, rather than constructing gender roles. The company exists to sell toys, not to construct cultural gender norms.
So, robots with generally masculine bodies and masculine voices.
Its goal was to sell toys, its methods served to reinforce cultural gender norms.
I see.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Sanjiegun.
Pink and purple are the biggest men's colors now. Half my shirts and ties are pink or purple. Even stodgy old partners that wear seer sucker suits in the summer wear pink and purple shirts/ties.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)