ChapterPDF Available

Women, Men, and the Sciences

Authors:
Jerre Levy at University of Chicago
Jerre Levy
Doreen Kimura
Doreen Kimura
Doreen Kimura
  • This person is not on ResearchGate, or hasn't claimed this research yet.
Download full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation
Content uploaded by Jerre Levy
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Jerre Levy on Jul 20, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
InTheScienceonWomeninScience.Editor:ChristinaHoffSommers,
TheAEIPress,Washington,D.C.2009.
1.
... Debates about the causes of male predominance in the natural sciences commonly point to social factors, such as job arrangements, competition, and social expectations (Halpern et al., 2007), and to biological factors, namely abilities assessed by the Scholastic Assessment Test required for admission to universities, in which men consistently show better scores (Levy & Kimura, 2009;Wainer & Steinberg, 1992). We fully agree with concerns related to these social and biological factors, however, much less attention in such debates has been paid to a possible bias in the language and methods of these sciences, potentially leading to a bias in the aptitude tests used as a passing card to science. ...
... The fact is that historically the notations, descriptors, logics, presentation of findings and overall language of mathematics, physics and other natural sciences were created and designed by men. Coincidently, talented men, when given a choice, have less interest in the life and social sciences, where mechanical reasoning is less applicable (Levy & Kimura, 2009), but talented women do not mind dealing with the life sciences, which have rather fuzzy, fluid and "messy, in terms of variables" objects. This is consistent with findings that in communication men have a tendency to use language in a more instrumental way, choosing object-oriented descriptors while women use more words related to social processes (Newman, Groom, Handelman, & Pennebaker, 2008). ...
Who is in charge of science: Men view “Time” as more fixed, “Reality” as less real, and “Order” as less ordered
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2012
  • COGN SYST RES
There is a controversy about the factors underlying male predominance in mathematics, natural and engineering sciences. Our study of meaning attribution, conducted in Canada, China and Russia showed that men had a consistent tendency to estimate natural phenomena (even time-related) as more fixed and limited, less real (even “Reality”) and less complex (even “Complexity”) than women. Concepts related to classical mechanics received significantly more positive estimations by men than by women, but phenomena related to development and reality were assessed more positively by women than by men. We argue that the methods and language of science, which historically were developed by men, were affected by a tendency of men to reduce natural phenomena to structures with Lego-like components, and to mechanical aspects of their interaction.
View
Gender bias in funding evaluation: A randomized experiment
Article
Full-text available
  • Sep 2023
Gender differences in research funding exist but bias evidence is elusive and findings are contradictory. Bias has multiple dimensions, but in evaluation processes bias would be the outcome of the reviewers’ assessment. Evidence in observational approaches is often based either on outcome distributions or on modelling bias as the residual. Causal claims are usually mixed with simple statistical associations. In this paper we use an experimental design to measure the effects of a cause: the effect of the gender of the principal investigator (PI) on the score of a research funding application (treatment). We embedded a hypothetical research application description in a field experiment. Subjects were the reviewers selected by a funding agency and the experiment was implemented simultaneously to the funding call’s peer review assessment. We manipulated the application item that described the gender of the PI, with two designations: female PI and male PI. Treatment was randomly allocated with block assignment and response rate was 100% of the population, avoiding problems of biased estimates in pooled data. Contrary to some previous research, we find no evidence that male or female PIs received significantly different scores, nor any evidence of same-gender preferences of reviewers regarding the applicants’ gender. Peer Review https://www.webofscience.com/api/gateway/wos/peer-review/10.1162/qss_a_00263
View
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.