As it turns out many women do suffer from discrimination in their field of expertise. But where does this discrimination comes from? Does it come from the gender or does it come from somewhere else?
"Having children is still viewed in many professions as an indication of a lack of seriousness and commitment on the part of women."
"When forced to choose between their profession and family by virtue of inflexible policies and standards,
women and men who choose to be doctors are not able to satisfy fully their parenting obligations."
"Medicine, and society as a whole, will benefit from institutional policies that value family and childbearing"
http://www.ama-assn.org/resources/doc/code-medical-ethics/9035a.pdf
TABLE I
| Response to: "How do you think these people feel about your going to (being in) graduate or professional school?" | |||||
| Very favorable | Somewhat favorable | Not too favorable | Don't know | ||
| Yourself | M W | 66.9% 67.6% | 24.1% 23.1% | 6.1% 4.1% | 2.9% 5.2% |
| Father | M W | 74.6% 47.5% | 18.7% 37.0% | 4.6% 6.1% | 2.0% 6.1% |
| Mother | M W | 79.1% 49.3% | 17.3% 33.4% | 1.0% 10.9% | 2.6% 6.4% |
| Siblings | M W | 52.7% 33.8% | 31.3% 27.4% | 1.5% 5.2% | 14.5% 33.6% |
| Other relatives | M W | 61.1% 20.8% | 25.2% 30.6% | 1.1% 13.7% | 12.6% 34.9% |
| Most friends opposite sex | M W | 43.4% 22.9% | 37.6% 45.8% | 1.7% 10.8% | 17.3% 20.5% |
| Most same-sex friends | M W | 42.9% 30.7% | 39.9% 45.1% | 2.5% 7.5% | 14.8% 16.7% |
| Spouse, boy- or girlfriend | M W | 64.5% 62.8% | 26.4% 23.4% | 2.7% 6.0% | 6.5% 7.8% |
| Male faculty member | M W | 46.7% 32.2% | 20.0% 22.8% | 2.1% 5.2% | 31.3% 39.8% |
| Female faculty member | M W | 37.1% 34.8% | 15.8% 12.7% | 0.9% 1.0% | 46.2% 51.4% |
| Any significant older people | M W | 56.2% 44.9% | 19.1% 21.1% | 1.4% 3.3% | 23.3% 30.8% |
TABLE II
| |||||
Response to: "How do the following people feel about your having a career?" by sex
| |||||
| Very Favorable | Somewhat favorable | No too favorable | Don't know | ||
| Yourself | M W | 60.3% 75.3% | 24.1% 15.1% | 11.1% 6.1% | 4.4% 3.5% |
| Father | M W | 77.0% 47.5% | 19.0% 37.0% | 0.8% 6.1% | 3.1% 9.4% |
| Mother | M W | 79.1% 17.3% | 17.3% 33.4% | 1.0% 10.9% | 2.6% 6.4% |
| Siblings | M W | 52.7% 33.8% | 31.3% 27.4% | 1.5% 5.2% | 14.5% 33.6% |
| Other relatives | M W | 61.1% 20.8% | 25.2% 30.6% | 1.1% 13.7% | 12.6% 34.9% |
| Most friends opposite sex | M W | 43.4% 22.9% | 37.6% 45.8% | 1.7% 10.8% | 17.3% 20.5% |
| Most same- sex friends | M W | 42.9% 30.7% | 39.9% 45.1% | 2.5% 7.5% | 14.8% 16.7% |
| Spouse, boy-or girlfriend | M W | 62.0% 51.1% | 29.4% 32.2% | 2.1% 7.8% | 6.5% 8.9% |
| Male faculty member | M W | 46.3% 26.6% | 26.6% 30.6% | 1.1% 1.9% | 26.0% 41.0% |
| Female faculty member | M W | 35.3% 26.6% | 22.3% 19.5% | 0.7% 0.6% | 41.6% 53.3% |
| Any significant older people | M W | 53.8% 35.5% | 25.0% 28.1% | 0.3% 1.8% | 21.0% 34.6% |
Many people have felt discrimination against which doesn't have to do with being men or women, but only with being different.
"Stereotyping often leads to discrimination; discrimination is when you treat someone differently from others, in the same or similar circumstances. A stereotype is a generalization about a person or group of persons. We develop stereotypes when we are unable or unwilling to obtain all of the information we would need to make fair judgments about people or situations."
"Racism against African-Americans is still prevalent in the United States. Despite laws and other protections against discrimination, African-Americans still face discrimination in housing, employment, and education. African-Americans are still victimized by insurance red-lining, and the racism of whites and others is exploited by block-busting, a practice which is illegal in Pennsylvania and many other states. Although racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan have small memberships, they have been actively recruiting and holding rallies in Pennsylvania and other states and spreading their messages of hate against African-Americans, Jews, Catholics, and other minorities.
http://remember.org/guide/History.root.stereotypes.html
"Could it be that men just don’t tell (or complain) enough? Are they scared to put their names and faces out there in fear of becoming the joke of the week? Let’s see, how would you feel if the popular news reporter and talk show host Anderson Cooper was kicked to the wayside and instead a top female took his spot? He’d surely be graceful, even if he did cry in private."
http://www.brighthub.com/office/human-resources/articles/126773.aspx
There is a very known article by Eileen Pollack which initiated a discussion about.
"For example, when drawing up a shortlist for a position, does a department simply look for people who look like them, their own unconscious biases thereby restricting the diversity of those whom they interview and subsequently appoint? A recent study has reinforced earlier findings that CVs labelled with a woman’s name fare less well than those identified as male, even when they are identical. Worse, since many institutions will have photographs on the walls of their successful ‘old boys’, who will typically be male, then women entering the building may feel a sinking feeling of being ‘different’ and actually underperform due to the well-researched problem of ‘stereotype threat’. The working environment may continue to reinforce male, typically competitive if not actually laddish, culture. Many women will simply not want to battle on against job insecurity in a climate like that, however gifted they may be.
Nevertheless, the cultural expectation that a scientist is male, reinforced daily through print and visual media, is deeply ingrained. Our schools too often perpetuate that myth, encouraging girls to go on work experience in a hairdressers or retail outlets, and sending the boys to garages or factories to broaden their minds. Cultural conditioning seems to start almost from birth in the toys we buy for our children and the subliminal messages we collectively give."
http://www.fabians.org.uk/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science/
"Common in workplaces in which women are rare is the Tug of War pattern: women pitted against other women.
She recalled "woman wars" where someone strives to prove "she is better: she can give more, she can do more, and there were games played along those lines." "That happened over and over again," she said. A third described a monthly meeting in which the only other woman in her group "pretty much focuses attention on the men." She added, "rarely she'll look at me. I'm thinking she might be one of those type of women where, okay, there's only room for one." Studies document that when women experience discrimination early in their careers, many respond by distancing themselves from other women. "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-williams/why-are-there-so-few-wome_b_4045757.html
And as Eileen Pollack said "Surprisingly, female scientists were as biased as their male counterparts."
"I’m in a special position with respect to this question, since my institution, l’école polytechnique féminine was formerly for girls only. Up to the 1980′s, the vast majority of french female engineers were formed in this “grande école”.Then, since the other grandes écoles were gradually more and more open to girls, the EPF began to be perceived not as “the engineering school for girls”, but “the engineering school for girls who can’t go anywhere else”.It reacted by opening itself to boys, while keeping its name “féminine”. Few boys came at first, but the proportion gradually rose, until a point where the EPF was not anymore perceived as a “girl only” institution. Then the boys massively came. There is a now about 60% boys among the students, a proportion which is roughly constant for the last 10 years.
The proportion of girls is still the highest in a school of engineers, and when you ask a student why she came, a very frequent answer is that it is precisely because she knew there would be many other girls. Another interesting aspect is that among the top 25% of the students, the proportion is rather inverse :60 % of the best students are girls. The reason is that the best among the girls could have applied to one of the more selective “classe prépas” but refrained to do so for fear of being confronted to a stressful environment, with a lot of competition and… boys. Many of them seem to underestimate their chance of success in such an environment.
Lastly, in the final year of our formation (which is the fifth), the students must choose an option that will largely determine their future career. We offer a wide range of choices, from aeronautics to medical engineering and computer sciences. It is a fact that girls do not evenly distribute themselves among these different options. However, there is a fair amount of girls in each one of them.
So my experience largely confirms that the “negative feedback” effect of having too many samples of a single sex in a class acts as a magnifying glass on the small differences of taste between boys and girls, which nevertheless do exist. Also, the girls tend to underestimate their talents."
As we see there is discrimination throughout the world. The discrimination has to do mostly with being different. But in the case of women it is more complex because the have their own family and in many cases their own mothers, not supporting them to uprising. So the main thing to be done here first to convince the families of young girls and especially the mothers to give their child a chance.
But where does this come from? For me everything starts from within. As Dr. Irena Milentijevic said in her article about it. If women try to believe them selves then also the world will. Do not get stressed, "ta det lungt" as the Swedish say and everything will come to place.
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