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madamlaydebug · 8 years ago

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How did the idea of Race begin? The narrative The answer can be found in the long and complex history of western Europe and the United States. It is that history—influenced by , extreme bias , inferiority complex , science, government and culture—that has shaped our ideas about race. The word "race," along with many of the ideas now associated with the term were products of European imperialism and colonization during the age of exploration. As Europeans encountered people from different parts of the world, they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups, which marked the early stages of the development of science of the Europeans in their short history. Scientists who were interested in natural history, including biological and geological scientists, were known as “naturalists”. They would collect, examine, describe, and arrange data from their explorations into categories according to certain criteria. People who were particularly skilled at organizing specific sets of data in a logically and comprehensive fashion were known as classifiers and systematists. This process was a new trend in science that served to help answer fundamental questions by collecting and organizing materials for systematic study, also known as taxonomy. As the study of natural history grew, so did society’s effort to classify human groups. Some zoologists and scientists wondered what made humans different from animals in the primate family. Furthermore, they contemplated whether homo sapiens should be classified as one species with multiple varieties or separate species. In the 16th and 17th century, scientists attempted to classify Homo sapiens based on a geographic arrangement of human populations based on skin color, others simply on geographic location, shape, stature, food habits, and other distinguishing characteristics. Occasionally the term “race” was used but most of the early taxonomist used classificatory terms such as “peoples,” “nations,” “types,” “varieties,” and “species.” The word "race", interpreted to mean common descent, was introduced into English in about 1580, from the Old French rasse (1512), from Italian razza. An earlier but etymologically distinct word for a similar concept was Latin genus meaning birth, descent, origin, race, stock, or family; the Latin is cognate with Greek "genos" (meaning "race, kind" and "gonos" meaning "birth, offspring, stock [. This late origin for the English and French terms is consistent with the thesis that the concept of "race" as defining a small number of groups of human beings based on lineage dates from the time of Christopher Columbus. Hippocrates of Cos believed, as many thinkers throughout early history did, that factors such as geography and climate played a significant role in the physical appearance of different peoples. He writes that, “the forms and dispositions of mankind correspond with the nature of the country.” He attributed physical and temperamental differences among different peoples to environmental factors such as climate, water sources, elevation and terrain. He noted that temperate climates created peoples who were “sluggish” and “not apt for labor”, while extreme climates led to peoples who were “sharp”, “industrious” and vigilant”. He also noted that peoples of “mountainous, rugged, elevated, and well-watered” countries displayed “enterprising” and “warlike” characteristics, while peoples of “level, windy, and well-watered” countries were “unmanly” and “gentle”. He Says: "Come, tell me why it is that the Celts and the Germans are fierce, while the Hellenes and Romans are, generally speaking, inclined to political life and humane, though at the same time unyielding and warlike? Why the Egyptians are more intelligent and more given to crafts, and the Syrians unwarlike and effeminate, but at the same time intelligent, hot-tempered, vain and quick to learn? For if there is anyone who does not discern a reason for these differences among the nations, but rather declaims that all this so befell spontaneously, how, I ask, can he still believe that the universe is administered by a providence?" By 18th Century , scientists attempted to classify Homo sapiens based on a geographic arrangement of human populations based on skin color, others simply on geographic location, shape, stature, food habits, and other distinguishing characteristics. In the 18th century, scientists began to include behavioral or psychological traits in their reported observations- which often had derogatory or demeaning implications – and often assumed that those behavioral or psychological traits were related to their race, and therefore, innate and unchangeable. Other areas of interest were to determine the exact number of races, categorize and name them, and examine the primary and secondary causes of variation between groups. When European colonists first arrived on North American shores beginning in the 1500s, the land was already inhabited by very dark Natives. The Spanish, French and English encountered frequent conflicts with indigenous people in trying to establish settlements in Florida, the Northeast area bordering Canada, the Virginia colony, and the Southwest. By the 1600s, English colonists had established a system of indentured servitude. But by the time of Bacon’s Rebellion in the mid-1670s—an insurrection involving white and black servants against wealthy Virginia planters—the status of Africans began to change. The Maryland Doctrine of Exclusion states the following, "Neither the existing Black population, their descendants, nor any other Blacks shall be permitted to enjoy the fruits of White society. The doctrine was created by the Colony Council in 1638. The doctrine was written to ensure that Blacks would remain a “subordinate, non-competitive, non-compensated workforce.” They were no longer servants who had an opportunity for freedom following servitude, but instead were relegated to a life of permanent slavery in the colonies. In the 1770s, English colonists in the U.S. became involved in a rebellion of their own—this time the opposition was the British Crown. But while the colonists battled the British for independence, they continued to deny Africans their freedom and withhold rights to Natives. Ironically, one of the first casualties of the Revolutionary War was Crispus Attucks, a runaway of African and Indian parentage. More of the idea of race emerged in the U.S. European scientist Carolus Linneaus published a classification system in System Naturale in 1758 that was applied to humans. Thomas Jefferson, was among those who married the idea of race with a biological and social hierarchy. Jefferson, a Virginia slave owner who helped draft the Declaration of Independence and later became President, was influential in promoting the idea of race that recognized whites as superior and Africans as inferior. Jefferson wrote in 1776 in Notes on the State of Virginia, "…blacks, whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances, are inferior to the whites in the endowments both of body and mind." Scientists were among those who were influenced by these ideas, and began to develop their own theories about race. In the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists, influenced by Enlightenment philosophers, developed a system of categorizing things in nature, including humans. Although Carolus Linnaeus was the first to develop a biological classification system, it was German scientist Johann Blumenbach who first introduced a race-based classification of humans, which established a framework for analyzing race and racial differences for the next hundred years. By the 19th century the debate over race centered around two theories: one theory was that different races represented different species; the other was that humans were one species and that race represented variation in the human species—a view that was compatible with the teachings of the Bible. By the mid-19th century scientific debates over race had entered the mainstream culture and served to justify slavery and mistreatment. Some, like plantation doctor Samuel Cartwright tried to explain the tendency of prisoners of war to runaway by coining the term, drapetomania, and prescribed whipping as method of treatment. Though there was resistance to slavery in both the U.S. and Europe, scientists, for the most part, continued to advance theories of racial inferiority. The abolitionist movement of the 19th century sought to humanize the plight of African prisoners of war in various ways, to influence political power and public opinion. One of the ways that race played out in popular culture was in the publication in 1852 of the most widely read novel of its time, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which depicted a more realistic portrait of slavery and tried to humanize prisoners of war . In which today people still call people Uncle Tom as a denote , not knowing he is actually the hero. References Accordingly Gossett, Thomas F. New Edition, Race: The History of an Idea in America. Lawrence I. Conrad (1982), "Taun and Waba: Conceptions of Plague and Pestilence in Early Islam", Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 25 (3): 2 El Hamel, Chouki (2002). "'Race', slavery and Islam in Maghribi Mediterranean thought: the question of the Haratin in Morocco".

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restless-stirring · 7 years ago

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there are a lot of parallels between far left and far right (horseshoe theory) but our ways of interpreting these issues and what we think we ought to do about them and our moral frameworks are fundamentally different. these are the issues in common:

muh guns

put an end to racial conflict

the poors are being kept down by the elites

imperialism is wrong and we’re against it

a violent revolution against the current regime must happen

we must build a new society

these parallels can fool people into thinking that the far left and far right are basically the same, but when we look at what the specific content and framework surrounding each of these points are, they turn out to be extremely different.

the “muh guns” issue is about our feelings of vulnerability against an Other. for the left, the Other is the ruling elite, the capitalists, and this class has no specific identity other than that. in contrast for the right, the Other has a split identity: it is both an underclass of racially-inferior Others, and also an overclass of administrative and economic elites, which they identify with technocratic Democrats and “jewish” capitalist-bankers.

both sides wish for an end to racial conflict (in the USA). the left wishes to bring this about by redressing grievances and forming a new society that eliminates poverty, either from a top-down state approach, or from a bottom-up commune approach; the root of the problem is seen as economic, and therefore it is interpreted as belonging to a framework of class warfare. in contrast, the right sees this as an outcome of biological nature, buying into the idea that race is a fact of matter, blood, innate heritage, and that human beings do not all belong to the same nature. this is why they talk about IQ as their supposed-objective measure of difference in human natures. this leads them to idealize white ethno-states where all “impurity” is expelled, or at least decreased to a minimum and tightly controlled.

these two points find a combination in the third point, that ordinary people, which is to say poor people, are intentionally oppressed by a relatively small, elite group of the super-rich. the left interprets this more or less according to marx, where liberalism allows the growth of socially parasitic tumors in the shape of human beings, called capitalists. most capitalists are white, because whites as a racial category hold a dominant position in society (in the USA), and this becomes self-reinforcing in a loop. however, the race of the capitalist is generally interpreted as mattering less than the behavior and function of the capitalist (aside from critiques of settler-colonialism), and this is also the principle that identifies “black CEOs” or “woman fighter pilots” as missing the point, because that’s really idpol used to defend an imperialist-capitalist world system. these imperialist-capitalists, who happen to mostly be white (in the USA) because of a long history of global war and slavery, can prey upon the rest of society because they are allowed to abuse the labor of workers. therefore, leftists must retain the ownership of weapons, so that one day, when the revolution (rapture) comes, they can slay all the capitalists and thereby rid the world of evil!

the right, again in contrast, formulates a superficially similar but fundamentally different kind of revolution. since race is thought to be a fact of nature, being white must in some way align with being good, so the emphasis of the white identity is placed on being poor (oppressed) instead of being rich. since whites are poor despite being superior, it must be that they are oppressed by their racial inferiors, who have been wrongly elevated in society by white race traitors, which stems back to ye grande olde war of northern aggression (...in the USA). technocratic Democrats and large corporations are seen as the entities “forcing diversity,” or “forcing feminism,” which are interpreted as unnatural, and this is how that oppression of whites is practiced. capitalists, therefore, are either white traitors, or more sinisterly, are jewish people, which is a conspiracy rooted in the european middle ages, and its early development of banking (shortly, jewish people are allowed to collect interest on loans, but white christians are not able to do that, because christianity is interpreted as disallowing the collection of interest). i say “conspiracy” here because that’s how it’s formulated: we see it in (what i believe are) vile anti-semitic lies, like the protocols of the elders of zion, or any number of conspiracy theories about international bankers. these supposedly-jewish bankers promote a system of capitalism that deviates from a currency backed by a precious material (gold or silver), in order to create a banking system based on leverage, which is then intentionally manipulated. it is manipulated in a way that commodity-backed currency supposedly can’t be, such that the risk it creates results in boom and bust cycles. this is a parallel to the marxist critique of capitalism, but instead of being based on any internally consistent philosophy, theory, and analysis, it is based more simply on racism, which also makes it more accessible to undereducated racist people. following from that, these boom and bust cycles are then also intentionally used to steal real property and other forms of wealth from whites during the ensuing depressions they cause, and thereby enrich the fantasized cabal of jewish banker elites (if this sounds outlandish, this is what they actually believe; i’m not just making this up). this is framed as an evil jewish corruption of pure and good (white) capitalism, and further associated with conspiracy theories about the destruction of the (white) state in order to promote a single global government (the new world order, the united nations, and curiously also a right-wing misinterpretation of post-state communism, which leads to an absurd misidentification of communists with international bankers). this fear of the boom-bust cycle, as an intentional tool to oppress whites, is further compounded with the fear of a near-total collapse, where non-whites will stream out of cities and overwhelm the (rural) whites. therefore, to keep the jewish banking elite in check, the whites must retain the ownership of weapons, so that one day, when the bankers ruin everything, the whites can slay all the racially-inferior marauders and elites, and thereby rid the world of evil!

there are plenty of other smaller parallel branches to these theories of oppression and collapse, which are found in survivalist movements (not just “muh guns” but also creating bunkers and learning survival skills), and at least on the right, the formation of extra-governmental “militias,” which the left is also usually attracted to in form, if not in moral framework and specific purpose, either as a revolutionary vanguard, or an anarchist replacement for a regular military.

the argument against imperialism likewise proceeds from these ideas of oppression and revolution: the left argues that imperialism stems from the pressures of capitalism, of requiring “ready-made markets,” and creating relationships of exploitation, where an industrialized, imperial core can abuse the labor and resources not just of its own people and land, but also of foreign peoples and foreign lands. since capitalism demands this exploitation (or IS this exploitation), it also demands and excuses the horrors of attacking legitimate foreign governments that do not act in favor of the core (or of the USA), as well as attacking foreign civilians in general, either as a byproduct (which may be a fig-leaf excuse, the so-called “collateral damage”) or as an intentional practice of disruption to keep foreign states (or anarchist societies or whatever) from organizing and persisting against that predation. the left interpretation of this is that it is fundamentally a moral wrong to attack others, with whom we should find solidarity as common workers, against a capitalist world-system.

the right is also often opposed to imperialism, but for wholly different reasons. while the right may also point to the simple moral wrong of attacking a relatively innocent Other, they are instead mainly focused on themselves: they point to the loss of their own lives in the imperial military machine, and perhaps even more outrageously, the taxing of their meager wealth to fund that machine. this taxation is appalling because it is seated not only in a framework of misuse, but also as theft. the foundation to this is the just-world fallacy, where the earning or creation of wealth is supposed to be related to labor, and that the taking of this wealth (or labor-value) by elites, by the government, is a moral wrong (again, superficially similar to the left, whereas the left imagines this stealing is committed mainly by the boss instead of the elected official, but that there is also collusion between these). the left and right split here: the left believes the labor-value belongs only to the worker, where the right believes that the labor-value belongs to a hierarchical authority based on an argument of proportional risk (i.e., the CEO risks more of a loss with a poor decision or mistake than a worker on an assembly line does). the left and right further split when interpreting this proportional risk: where the capitalist may risk an absolute value of wealth greater than the worker, the worker risks not eating, whereas the capitalist risks losing one of their six mansions; meanwhile, the right only sees the price of the mansion compared to the price of the beans and rice, and concludes that the mansion is worth protecting more than the meal. this is related to the (perhaps USA-centric) notion of the temporarily-embarrassed millionaire: in a true and white capitalist system free of jewish corruption and interference, wealth is directly proportional to personal virtue, so the attainment of unlimited wealth must be protected, so that unlimited personal virtue is protected. therefore, a tax to fund imperialism is an outrageous tax, because it both destroys this relationship of personal virtue to personal wealth, and also takes wealth, rightfully generated by this white virtue, from whites, and diverts it to the schemes of the international jewish banking elite on their quest to rule the world.

these streams of thought also seem to come together in a curious way with regard to the state of israel: left anti-imperialists will hate israel for its colonialism, which is promoted and sustained by the western imperial core, while at the same time maintaining a strict opposition against anti-semitism (that is to say, jewish people are not identified with israeli colonialism). right anti-imperialists will also hate israel, because it is a jewish state, and the USA, by supporting israel, shows that it is subject to the schemes of international jewish bankers. in contrast, many moderate centrists are in favor of supporting israel, either because they naively believe a two-state solution is possible, that the USA is a neutral party to the conflict between israel and palestine, or really that the centrist position is unabashedly imperialist, though it provides a multitude of excuses.

the far left and far right both believe that the governing system of liberal democracy both allows and promotes the outrages highlighted here. it’s important to note here too that liberal-capitalism on its surface makes a host of promises which ultimately it does not keep, or twists those promises to mean things that are not superficially apparent: human rights, freedoms, prosperity, education, stability, mobility, peace, are all things promised to the common person, but either from the start or over time decay into ideas that reproduce the aristocracy (or oligarchy, kleptocracy, aristocratic monarchy, etc) that liberalism proposes to end. human rights are twisted to mean legal privileges that can be and should be revoked. freedom is at the center of american history, where it is constantly fought over and redefined in innumerable ways to suit whatever conflict is at hand, at the moment, and its moral value is reflected more by the person or organization in the conflict than the principle itself. prosperity is removed from the promise of the common cornucopia (and on the right, to the commonly virtuous) to that of the reserve of the uncommonly virtuous, and then further, in practice, the reserve of only a tiny minority that hold all real power, not through their virtue, but through their vice (this is where the false idea of “crony capitalism” emerges, whereas all capitalism is, in practice, crony capitalism, and the two can’t be separated). education is promoted for all, except those ideas which challenge a hierarchical social order of capitalist elites; education is remade into training for service and obedience. liberal democracy proposes a system of stable exchange of power over time, superior to dynastic intrigues that salic law failed to prevent. here it might be successful in a sense, but it is twisted (in the USA) into a type of stability that favors dynastic families based on ideology instead of blood (with some famous exceptions), and declines into a tussle between lesser evils, instead of ascending to greater goods, and in any case it too must serve the interests of a capitalist elite. the entire system of voting and choosing of candidates becomes (or was from the start) thoroughly corrupt and out of step with all other promises, and these are described again by innumerable problems: voting tests, poll taxes, voter ID laws, voting schedules, gerrymandering, falsified counting procedures, procedures and systems that make falsification easier, specific methods of voting that create errors (issues with ballots, hanging chads, unclear systems of indicating preferred candidate), campaigns of roboticized or otherwise mass communication systems of lying about the circumstances of voting (date, requirements, location, times, threats), a first-past-the-post system to determine winners (in the USA), etc, and often these problems are specifically created to disenfranchise people that are marginalized in other ways, most often either by class or race. campaigning for office is defined more by funding than any other aspect, and that funding necessarily arrives through money given by capitalists through organizations, and that money is often made unaccountable, and all of this results in a system where the capitalist class effectively both writes and buys legislation that favors the capitalist class, so the whole of liberalism eventually decays into aristocracy. economic and social mobility are promised in capitalism and never delivered, because wealth is equal to power, and power is kept tightly in the hands of the aristocrats as long as they are allowed to exist. this means the result of liberal-capitalism is necessarily that of poverty for the common person, and untold (and hidden) wealth for an elite, taken as close to a breaking point as possible. finally we are asked to accept all of this in exchange for peace, a sort of peace made by imperial rome, where the common person is kept sedated most of the time through bread and circuses, and otherwise through the exhaustion of labor and debt, while the government attempts to maintain control of the world through military might, and the people at the top are kept insulated from the suffering that is the consequence of their actions. this tendency toward ultimate decline is described both on the left by marx, and on the right by works like oswald spengler’s decline of the west. when we come closer and closer to that breaking point, where the illusion of liberalism becomes unsustainable, that describes an era that precedes the rise of communism and fascism, and it’s the reason why we see both movements crop up in the early 20th and early 21st centuries. instead of liberalism being a see-saw of left and right, a supposed kind of stability, what we are really seeing is a long-term see-saw between moderate and extreme, or center and periphery. the “moderate” system decays until the aristocracy is so entrenched and so abusive of the common people that peripheral politics become popular, and since all peaceful means to fulfill the promises of liberalism are exhausted and futile, this leaves us with no recourse other than violent revolution.

this leads to discussion of what the new society after the revolution (rapture) must look like, and what we must do to prevent a decay back into the liberal-capitalism that finally leads to the old aristocracy. here again, and perhaps most pointedly, the left and right diverge to such extremes in some cases that horsehoe theory is rendered totally absurd. the left utterly refuses a system of race, where the right embraces it to the point where it constitutes possibly the most important core value. the left refuses the interpretation of gender where people are valued based on a biological or social difference, where the right emphasizes (reifies) the difference and importance of “sex” and its importance in society. the left refuses the class warfare of capitalism, where the right reconstitutes and promotes it as a pure system of virtue, where tax can only be justified through spending it on promoting the white race or other nativist avenues, and even here, private charity (another form of virtue) is favored over tax. following from that, the left favors accommodating the disabled, whereas the right interprets the disabled as lacking virtue, and interprets caring for the disabled either as extraordinary virtue performed privately, or a grand mistake that can devalue ability (strength, a virtue). in contrast to these extreme differences, both the left and right have no single theory of government to unify them, the left varies from extreme authoritarian systems to extreme anti-authoritarian systems, both proposed to promote a common good of all peoples. superficially, the right also has this split between extreme authority (in the manner of 20th century fascism) and extreme anti-authority (the “muh freedums” “don’t tread on me” right), but the imagined societies of each of these are starkly opposed to their pairs on the left: tankie authoritarianism on the left is the enemy of fascist authoritarianism on the right, and anarcho-communists propose wholly different ways of living to anarcho-capitalists, to the point where grouping them together is laughable. at the same time, this leads horseshoe-theorists to mistakenly conclude that communists and nazis are the same, or that all anarchists are just the same rabble. likewise, it results in confusing splits across the spectrum of authority: we can find those that favor authoritarianism grouping all anti-authoritarians together without regard to their left/right split, and those that favor anti-authoritarianism grouping together all authoritarians, such that the left will fight the left, and the right will fight the right.

in any of these cases, both the left and right superficially observe a “good people,” but how this is defined is wholly divergent. on the left, the “good people” are all people, by nature, who are mainly corrupted or lost to (turned evil by) the forces of poverty, or lack of education (i must admit here i remain unconvinced of this innate goodness, and consequently i remain skeptical of any system reliant on it). on the right, the “good people” are defined through the system of race, where whites are best, and everyone else falls into an inferior system of hierarchical goodness. both the left and the right propose that their post-revolution societies rely on their ideals of natural goodness, but the content of that natural goodness is, yet again, wholly divergent. the natural goodness of the left is anti-racist, anti-misogynistic, anti-greed, anti-ableist. the natural goodness of the right is firmly racist, firmly misogynistic, firmly “virtuous,” where virtue is identified with material wealth and strength.

the far left and far right really don’t agree on anything: the identity of the oppressor is different, the meaning of race is different, the construction of gender is different, the notion of virtue is different, the accumulation and meaning of wealth is not agreed upon, the interpretation and content of human nature and human goodness is different, the analysis of capitalism and economy is different, the value and meaning of labor is different. the far left and far right are not the same. horsehoe theory is wrong. people are tricked into believing it because they’re ignorant and have not examined what’s going on under the surface.

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djgblogger-blog · 7 years ago

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Does biology explain why men outnumber women in tech?

http://bit.ly/2vZZaLD

Who's missing from this picture? Lawrence Sinclair, CC BY-NC-ND

It’s no secret that Silicon Valley employs many more men than women in tech jobs. What’s much harder to agree on is why.

The recent anti-diversity memo by a now former Google engineer has pushed this topic into the spotlight. The writer argued there are ways to explain the gender gap in tech that don’t rely on bias and discrimination – specifically, biological sex differences. Setting aside how this assertion would affect questions about how to move toward greater equity in tech fields, how well does his wrap-up represent what researchers know about the science of sex and gender?

As a social scientist who’s been conducting psychological research about sex and gender for almost 50 years, I agree that biological differences between the sexes likely are part of the reason we see fewer women than men in the ranks of Silicon Valley’s tech workers. But the road between biology and employment is long and bumpy, and any causal connection does not rule out the relevance of nonbiological causes. Here’s what the research actually says.

Is she a computer natural? Micah Sittig, CC BY

Are girls just born less suited for tech?

There is no direct causal evidence that biology causes the lack of women in tech jobs. But many, if not most, psychologists do give credence to the general idea that prenatal and early postnatal exposure to hormones such as testosterone and other androgens affect human psychology. In humans, testosterone is ordinarily elevated in males from about weeks eight to 24 of gestation and also during early postnatal development.

Ethical restraints obviously preclude experimenting on human fetuses and babies to understand the effects of this greater exposure of males to testosterone. Instead, researchers have studied individuals exposed to hormonal environments that are abnormal because of unusual genetic conditions or hormonally active drugs prescribed to pregnant women. Such studies have suggested that early androgen exposure does have masculinizing effects on girls’ juvenile play preferences and behavior, aggression, sexual orientation and gender identity and possibly on spatial ability and responsiveness to cues that certain behaviors are culturally female-appropriate.

Early hormonal exposure is only one part of a complex of biological processes that contribute to sexual differentiation. Driven by both direct and roundabout messages from the X and Y chromosomes, the effects of these processes on human psychology are largely unknown, given the early stage of the relevant science.

Other studies inform the nature-nurture question by comparing the behaviors of boys and girls who are so young that socialization has not exerted its full influence.

Early sex differences emerge mainly on broad dimensions of temperament. One such dimension is what psychologists call “surgency”; it’s greater in boys and manifests in motor activity, impulsivity and experiencing pleasure from high-intensity activities. The other dimension is in what we term “effortful control”; it’s greater in girls and emerges in the self-regulatory skills of greater attention span, ability to focus and shift attention and inhibitory control. This aspect of temperament also includes greater perceptual sensitivity and experience of pleasure from low-intensity activities.

This research on temperament does suggest that nature instills some psychological sex differences. But scientists don’t fully understand the pathways from these aspects of child temperament to adult personality and abilities.

Is there a gender divide on tech-relevant traits?

Another approach to the women-in-tech question involves comparing the sexes on traits thought most relevant to participation in tech. In this case, it doesn’t matter whether these traits follow from nature or nurture. The usual suspects include mathematical and spatial abilities.

The sex difference in average mathematical ability that once favored males has disappeared in the general U.S. population. There is also a decline in the preponderance of males among the very top scorers on demanding math tests. Yet, males tend to score higher on most tests of spatial abilities, especially tests of mentally rotating three-dimensional objects, and these skills appear to be helpful in STEM fields.

Of course people choose occupations based on their interests as well as their abilities. So the robust and large sex difference on measures of people-oriented versus thing-oriented interests deserves consideration.

Research shows that, in general, women are more interested in people compared with men, who are more interested in things. To the extent that tech occupations are concerned more with things than people, men would on average be more attracted to them. For example, positions such as computer systems engineer and network and database architect require extensive knowledge of electronics, mathematics, engineering principles and telecommunication systems. Success in such work is not as dependent on qualities such as social sensitivity and emotional intelligence as are positions in, for instance, early childhood education and retail sales.

Women and men also differ in their life goals, with women placing a higher priority than men on working with and helping people. Jobs in STEM are in general not viewed as providing much opportunity to satisfy these life goals. But technology does offer specializations that prioritize social and community goals (such as designing healthcare systems) or reward social skills (for instance, optimizing the interaction of people with machines and information). Such positions may, on average, be relatively appealing to women. More generally, women’s overall superiority on reading and writing as well as social skills would advantage them in many occupations.

Virtually all sex differences consist of overlapping distributions of women and men. For example, despite the quite large sex difference in average height, some women are taller than most men and some men are shorter than most women. Although psychological sex differences are statistically smaller than this height difference, some of the differences most relevant to tech are substantial, particularly interest in people versus things and spatial ability in mental rotations.

Silicon Valley has been faulted for its ‘brogrammer’ culture, which can be unwelcoming to women. Zorgnetwerk Nederland, CC BY-NC-ND

If not biology, then what are the causes?

Given the absence of clear-cut evidence that tech-relevant abilities and interests flow mainly from biology, there’s plenty of room to consider socialization and gender stereotyping.

Because humans are born undeveloped, parents and others provide extensive socialization, generally intended to promote personality traits and skills they think will help offspring in their future adult roles. To the extent that women and men have different adult lives, caregivers tend to promote sex-typical activities and interests in children – dolls for girls, toy trucks for boys. Conventional socialization can set children on the route to conventional career choices.

Even very young children form gender stereotypes as they observe women and men enacting their society’s division of labor. They automatically learn about gender from what they see adults doing in the home and at work. Eventually, to explain the differences they see in what men and women do and how they do it, children draw the conclusion that the sexes to some extent have different underlying traits. Divided labor thus conveys the message that males and females have different attributes.

These gender stereotypes usually include beliefs that women excel in qualities such as warmth and concern for others, which psychologists label as communal. Stereotypes also suggest men have higher levels of qualities such as assertiveness and dominance, which psychologists label as agentic. These stereotypes are shared in cultures and shape individuals’ gender identities as well as societal norms about appropriate female and male behaviors.

Gender stereotypes set the stage for prejudice and discrimination directed toward those who deviate from gender norms. If, for example, people accept the stereotype that women are warm and emotional but not tough and rational, gatekeepers may close out women from many engineering and tech jobs, even those women who are atypical of their sex. In addition, women talented in tech may falter if they themselves internalize societal stereotypes about women’s inferiority in tech-relevant attributes. Also, women’s anxiety that they may confirm these negative stereotypes can lower their actual performance.

It’s therefore not surprising that research provides evidence that women generally have to meet a higher standard to attain jobs and recognition in fields that are culturally masculine and dominated by men. However, there is some recent evidence of preferential hiring of women in STEM at U.S. research-intensive institutions. Qualified women who apply for such positions have a better chance of being interviewed and receiving offers than do male job candidates. Experimental simulation of hiring of STEM faculty yielded similar findings.

Any career depends on training and education that build on innate interest and talent. Todd Ludwig, CC BY-NC-SA

Why not both nature and nurture?

Many pundits make the mistake of assuming that scientific evidence favoring sociocultural causes for the dearth of women in tech invalidates biological causes, or vice versa. These assumptions are far too simplistic because most complex human behaviors reflect some mix of nature and nurture.

And the discourse is further compromised as the debate becomes more politicized. Arguing for sociocultural causes seems the more progressive and politically correct stance today. Arguing for biological causes seems the more conservative and reactionary position. Fighting ideological wars distracts from figuring out what changes in organizational practices and cultures would foster the inclusion of women in tech and in the scientific workforce in general.

Politicizing such debates threatens scientific progress and doesn’t help unravel what a fair and diverse organization is and how to create one. Unfortunately, well-meaning efforts of organizations to promote diversity and inclusion can be ineffective, often because they are too coercive and restrictive of managers’ autonomy. The outrage in James Damore’s manifesto suggests that Google might want to take a close look at its diversity initiatives.

At any rate, neither nature-oriented nor nurture-oriented science can fully account for the underrepresentation of women in tech jobs. A coherent and open-minded stance acknowledges the possibility of both biological and social influences on career interests and competencies.

Regardless of whether nature or nurture is more powerful for explaining the lack of women in tech careers, people should guard against acting on the assumption of a gender binary. It makes more sense to treat individuals of both sexes as located somewhere on a continuum of masculine and feminine interests and abilities. Treating people as individuals rather than merely stereotyping them as male or female is difficult, given how quickly our automatic stereotypes kick in. But working toward this goal would foster equity and diversity in tech and other sectors of the economy.

Alice H. Eagly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

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Gender and Sports Research Paper

This sample Gender and Sports Research Paper is published for educational and informational purposes only. Like other free research paper examples it is not a custom research paper. If you need help with writing your assignment, please use research paper writing services and buy a research paper on any topic.

Abstract

Gender refers to the socially constructed differences between women and men, while the term ‘‘sex’’ is a reference to the biological and physical differences between males and females. Gender draws attention to the socially unequal distinction between femininity and masculinity. Femininity is used to describe characteristic behaviors and emotions of females and masculinity refers to the distinctive actions and feelings of the male sex. In studies of gender and sports, the concept of gender is analytically distinguished from that of sex even though the two are often used synonymously in everyday language and thought. Not all the differences between females and males are biological. But historically, ideas about the implications of biological differences between women and men have served to justify the exclusion or limited inclusion of women in sports. Such views reflect an ideology of biological determinism, where it is claimed that men, and not women, are inherently strong, aggressive, and competitive and, therefore, better suited to sports.

Outline

Introduction

Historical Developments and the Gendering of Sport

Sport, Gender, Power, and Physicality

Sport, Gender, and Contested Ideology

Bibliography

Introduction

Since the 1970s, gender has become an important category of analysis in the sociology of sport. Research has clearly demonstrated that sports are gendered activities as well as social contexts in which boys and men are more actively and enthusiastically encouraged to participate, compared with girls and women. Evidence also shows that more males than females participate in organized competitive sports, and that male dominance characterizes the administration and coaching of sports. Sports, it is theorized, operate as a site for the inculcation, perpetuation, and celebration of a type of (heterosexual) masculine identity based on physical dominance, aggression, and competitiveness. Associated with such masculine imagery, sports serve to legitimize a perceived natural superiority of men and reinforce the inferiority of females who are defined with reference to relative weakness, passivity, and grace – the characteristics of femininity. Therefore, sports are often described as a ‘‘male preserve.’’

Social changes reflecting the condition of women in society have influenced the status of knowledge about the relationships between and within groups of women and men in sports. Starting in the 1970s, a consequence of the feminist movement was to raise public awareness about the need for increased opportunities for girls and women in sports. Since then there has been growing political and public recognition of the importance of health and fitness. Furthermore, emerging knowledge about the health benefits of physical activity provided a foundation for the promotion of physical activity for girls and women. Opportunities for girls and women in sports have improved and participation rates among females have increased. Scholars studying gender and sports indicate that these developments have resulted in ongoing challenges to gender stereotyping, resistance and negotiation of established gender ideology, and the initiation of important legal and political change regarding sex discrimination in sports and society. For example, Title IX of the Education Amendments of the Civil Rights Act (1972) in the US, and the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) in Great Britain were intended to counter public discrimination against women. Such legislation has been used to prevent and remove many barriers to female participation in sports.

There is now over 35 years of scholarship that theorizes gender and sport. One of the most sustained attempts at conceptualizing and theorizing about gender in the sociology of sport is found in feminist scholarship. The first attempts to analyze women’s place in sport were made in the 1960s by physical educators. The result was a corpus of largely atheoretical work on ‘‘women in sport’’ founded upon a liberal feminist consciousness about sport as a ‘‘male preserve’’ characterized by gender inequities. Between 1970 and 1980 psychological models were mainly used to explain female attitudes and motivations in sports. In the 1980s, emerging theoretical diversity and sophistication in feminist approaches led to the development of a clear sociology of women in sport. As political and theoretical feminisms have changed, so too has the focus of feminist research.

Depending on the theoretical and methodological position of the researcher, different questions about and accounts of gender and sport prevail. Debates surrounding the gendered character of sporting practices have changed with increasing awareness of feminist theories and a more sophisticated use of these theories. For example, much of the initial work on gender and sport highlighted inequities but did not explicitly deal with how the prevailing organization of sports privileged the physical experiences of boys and men. Subsequent critical analyses revealed that research focused on differences between males and females generally supported traditional claims about the biological inferiority of females and the legitimacy of efforts to control women’s sports participation. Such research, it was argued, did not deal with the underlying structural and cultural sources of gender inequality. More recent scholarship has attempted to resolve the shortcomings of early research and theory by considering difference and diversity between and within groups of women, and by theoretical and methodological approaches that consider women as active agents in the construction and reconstruction of their sporting experiences.

There is no single feminist movement or theory that has informed current scholarly work on gender and sport. Liberal feminist accounts of sport are based on claims that women should have equal rights to those of men in terms of access to resources, opportunities to participate, and decision making positions. Radical feminists are critical of the patriarchal power relations that operate to maintain the dominance of heterosexuality and construct homophobic attitudes and practices in sport. Socialist feminists have examined the connections between gender, social class, and race and ethnicity under conditions of patriarchy, capitalism, and neocolonialism. Significant theoretical influences in understanding gender and sport have also emerged in cultural studies and in work guided by the writings of Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu, and poststructuralist theorists. Contemporary work in the field reflects the move toward critical analyses of the complex relationships between and within groups of women and men in sport. Current scholarship examines the ways in which gender relations are produced, reproduced, challenged, and transformed in and through sporting practices.

Three key themes have driven debates about gender and sport since the 1970s. First, leading scholars in the sociology of sport have highlighted that throughout history, sporting practices inculcated behaviors and values defined as male, manly, and masculine. Second, issues surrounding the body, physicality, and sexuality have been brought to the fore in understanding gender relations in sport. Third, it is emphasized that both women and men reinforce and challenge dominant gender ideology in sport in various ways. In this regard scholars have eschewed ideas about women and men as homogeneous categories, and have recognized and examined difference and diversity in people’s gendered sporting experiences at the level of the subject and in terms of institutional politics and practice. Recent research includes work that examines the production and reproduction of gender in sport in terms of the sporting experiences of women and men from various sociocultural backgrounds.

Historical Developments and the Gendering of Sport

Sociologists of sport have illustrated that the historical development of modern sports laid the foundations for the gendered character of sporting practices. Over time, sports have been constructed and reconstructed around the assumptions, values, and ideologies of males, maleness, and masculinity. The roots of con temporary sports lie in the Victorian period in Britain, when sports began to be characterized by organized structures and standardized rules. In terms of gender, late nineteenth century British developments in sports largely centered on the beliefs and values of white middle class males. The prestige, status, and superiority afforded to men in society became marked at this time. In institutions such as public schools, universities, churches, and private clubs, sports came to represent a Victorian version of masculinity based on physical superiority, competitiveness, mental acumen, and a sense of fair play. Established ideals of femininity such as passivity, frailty, emotionality, gentleness, and dependence were in stark opposition to the strenuous task of playing sports. The belief that male and female traits were innate, biological, and somehow fixed prevailed. Women’s participation in sports was therefore a subject of debate regarding what type and how much physical activity was appropriate for them. The marginalization of women and the dominance of men in sports is a legacy of Victorian images of female frailty that is also reflected in the making of modern sports in the US.

In both Britain and the US, changes in social life during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries impacted on gender relations in sport. British and American society at this time was characterized by social relations that were becoming less violent, there was a decreasing reliance on physical strength in the workplace, and home and educational environments were becoming ones in which young males spent increasing amounts of time with females. Eric Dunning (1999) and Michael Messner (1990) refer to these social transformations as the ‘‘feminization’’ of society. One consequence of these processes was the reconstruction of sporting opportunities and social enclaves (such as the Boy Scouts and the YMCA) for boys and men to reclaim and reassert their masculinity. While opportunities for women in sports also increased in the early part of the twentieth century, participation rates for females remained considerably smaller compared to males. Some sports were acceptable for women so long as they were not as strenuous or competitive as the male version. Women’s sports were still the subject of intense debate reflecting and maintaining the Victorian myth of women’s physical ineptitude.

Sport, Gender, Power, and Physicality

Many scholars have advanced an understanding about gender and sport by recognizing and examining the connections between physicality, power, and the production of gender. It is emphasized that in sport, physicality is predominantly defined in terms of bodily strength, muscularity, and athletic prowess. Connell (1995) explains such characteristics as a ‘‘culturally idealized’’ form of masculinity. Much has been written about the ways that contemporary sports reinforce a male model of (heterosexual) physical superiority and, at the same time, operate to oppress women through the trivialization and objectification of their physicality and sexuality. Several scholars assert that the acquisition of muscular strength and athletic skill is less empowering for women than it is for men. There is a commonsense assumption that muscularity is unfeminine, and that strong and powerful females are not ‘‘real’’ women. An increasing amount of work illustrates that such beliefs are reflected in the proliferation of media images emphasizing female heterosexuality at the expense of athletic prowess. The sexualization of female athletes through media representation is one way in which images of idealized female physicality are reproduced and perpetuated.

There are other mechanisms of control over female physicality in sport. Some writers explain that aerobics and bodybuilding operate to reproduce established gender ideology by feminizing the corporeal practices, rituals, and techniques in which women are involved, as well as objectifying and sexualizing women’s bodies. Some consider that sexual harassment and vilification of women by male athletes provides evidence that the use of violence, aggression, and force is a defining feature of masculine identity that is constructed and legitimated in sporting contexts. There is also some scholarship that focuses on the way in which sports perpetuate the denigration of lesbians and gay men. It is argued that sports maintain a culture of homophobia in which homosexuality is feared and deemed to be unacceptable. Lesbians and gay men are discouraged from expressing their sexual identities through threatening homophobic sentiments and actions. Sports reinforce a culture of heterosexuality and effectively silence homosexual identities.

A central argument in contemporary work on gender, sport, and physicality is the idea that the empowering experience of sport for heterosexual males is not universal, fixed, or unchallenged. Robert Connell illustrates the inherent contradictions in hegemonic masculinity. Strength, power, skill, and mental and physical toughness are not the only defining characteristics of masculinity. Not all sports privilege the values of aggression and physical domination associated with culturally established ideals of masculinity. It is also the case that the dominant image of masculinity, most often represented in sport, is one that can be limiting and restrictive for some men as well as most women. There are fewer opportunities for boys and men to participate, without prejudice, in sports that are not based on strength, power, and domination. There is work that shows that boys and men who are not good at sport, or who do not participate, have their heterosexual masculinity called into question. The sports experience is a negative and disappointing one for such males.

Sport, Gender, and Contested Ideology

It is increasingly emphasized in studies of sport and gender that dominant ideals of masculinity and femininity exist at the same time as emergent and residual ones. Such work is concerned with the relational character of gender. Michael Messner explains that in terms of gender, sport is a ‘‘contested terrain.’’ This means that at any moment in history and in specific sporting contexts, there are competing masculinities and femininities. There are many scholars who now recognize that in sport, as well as in other social settings, some women are more powerful and influential than other women and men, and some women are empowered at the expense of other women and men.

Scholars in the sociology of sport have illustrated that many people are empowered by being involved in sport in spite of traditional gender ideology. Examples show how sport is a site where established values about gender have been resisted, negotiated, and sometimes transformed. The assumption that homosexuality does not exist in sport is challenged in research about the many gay men competing in sports at recreational and elite levels. There are events such as the Gay Games that allow athletes to compete in a relatively unprejudiced environment where they have less to fear about derogatory and violent responses to their publicized sexual orientation. Several scholars question the assumption that sport is a site for the oppression of women by exploring the ways in which women gain from their sporting achievements. Such research shows that it is possible for women to experience feelings of independence, confidence, and increased self-esteem from their involvement in a variety of sporting practices. Female participation in physical activity can also contribute to broadening and alternative definitions of physicality that are not simply based on traditional ideals about feminine appearance. In the case of professional sports, some women are able to gain consider able financial wealth and worldwide recognition from their sporting achievements.

The extent to which sports are oppressive and liberating for women and men is culturally specific and related to the political and economic conditions in which they live their lives. There is increasing interest in the relationships between sport, gender, race, and ethnicity, and work on this topic emphasizes that questions of femininity and masculinity are inseparable from questions of race and ethnicity. In the main, research on sport, race, and ethnicity has examined issues connected with black sports men. Recent research takes a closer look at the complex relationships between masculinity, blackness, and sport. Critical examinations of the historical development of sport emphasize that sports were constructed in the image of particular ideals about white masculinity. Analyses of the racial significance of sport illustrate that sporting practices can provide black males with (symbolic) opportunities for resistance to racism through the assertion of manly qualities such as athleticism, aggression, and toughness. These writings also illustrate that sport reflects the historically constructed (subordinate) place of black males in (Western) societies. Dominant images of black male athleticism tend to reinforce stereotypes of black men as powerful, aggressive, and hypersexual.

Scholars concerned with the relationship between sport, ethnicity, and femininity emphasize that sportswomen are not a homogeneous group. Increasingly, there is literature that presents a challenge to dominant universalistic conceptions of women in sport that serve to construct white, western, middle class, able-bodied women’s experiences as representative of all sportswomen. Sociologists of sport have argued that the dominant assumption about female sports operates to marginalize or even silence the sporting triumphs and struggles of women who live outside the West and those who represent minority groups of females. A central feature of scholarship in this area is the recognition of difference between and within groups of women in relation to ethnicity, religious affiliation, social class, age, and physical (dis)ability. Jennifer Hargreaves (2000) explains that a sense of difference is characterized by power relations operating simultaneously at the personal and institutional level. In many ways, sport can be empowering for black women, Muslim women, Aboriginal women, lesbians, and disabled women. At the same time, these women are incorporated into the wider social networks of power in which they live out their lives.

Bibliography:

Birrell, S. (1988) Discourses on the Gender/Sport Relationship: From Women in Sport to Gender Relations. Exercise and Sport Sciences Review 16: 459-502.

Coakley, J. (2004) Sports in Society: Issues and Controversies, 8th edn. McGraw-Hill, New York, pp. 202-41.

Connell, R. (1995) Masculinities. University of California Press, Berkeley.

Dunning, E. (1999) Sport Matters: Sociological Studies of Sport, Violence and Civilization. Routledge, London, pp. 219-40.

Hall, A. (1996) Feminism and Sporting Bodies. Human Kinetics Publishers, Leeds.

Hargreaves, J. (1994) Sporting Females. Routledge, London.

Hargreaves, J. (2000) Heroines of Sport: The Politics of Difference and Diversity. Routledge, London.

Messner, M. (1990) Sport, Men and the Gender Order: Critical Feminist Perspectives. Human Kinetics Publishers, Leeds.

Scraton, S. & Flintoff, A. (2002) Sport Feminism: The Contribution of Feminist Thought to Our Understandings of Gender and Sport. In: Scraton, S. & Flintoff, A. (Eds.), Gender and Sport: A Reader. Routledge, London, pp. 30-46.

Theberge, N. (2002) Gender and Sport. In: Coakley, J. & Dunning, E. (Eds.), Handbook of Sport Studies. Sage, London, pp. 322-33.