http://www.campbell-kibler.com/Stereo.pdf

This report was written for the general public, it is based on information more than a decade ole. In fact, more recent studies confirm what you'll find here.

It disturbed me to get the impression there are women ITF who believe that being born with two X chromosomes means you are likely to be less adept at quanititative skills like math.

There are scholarly studies that I have no access to, but this, while a bit simplified and written for the purpose of fighting the development of stereotypes, does give accurate info.

I hope you will take the time to read a few pages of this, if I run across some of the more recent research online, I'll post it ITT.

It's true that there are very real differences between the chromosome types. Most of what we believe is a "real" difference, though, is just culture noise, I fear.

http://psychology.tamu.edu/Faculty/blanton/bcd.02.pdf

This is a scholarly study (in a separate post to make it easier to rspond to different but related issues) that actually deals with the black doll phenomenon. That refers to a study in the late 50s, I think it was, when black children were shown several babydols, all exactly alike, except one was "white" and the others "colored" - or dark. The children were asked to point to the doll that was prettiest, smartest, the doll that was "bad" or "good." The children attributed the positive traits to the white doll and the negative ones to the black dolls

One of the results of cultural stereotyping, is that the group tends to fracture, as the individual cannot be better than the superior outsider group, they tend to draw distinctions within the group. So, at that time, being a light-skinned black was thought, by the black community in the United States, to be much superior. Thus they demonstrated the belief that blacks were not as good as whites, but "I am lighter-skinned, so I am more like a white person and less like a black person."

This study lead straight to the "black is beautiful" movement of the sixties/seventies.

Women do the same as a culturally defined and stereotyped group when they self-identify as "one of the boys" or decide that poker playing women are somehow different than the average XX human. The belief they exhibit is: women are not as good as men but I am more like a man and not like most women. The study above is about exactly that in terms of mathematical ability and gender. Here is the abstract, I added the bold:

like most of your writing I find this intriguing. I tend to be fascinated by the limiting or in fact, self-limiting beliefs of folks and groups about how they are supposed to stack up. As part of a very small minority group that is represented as being on the very bottom of the socio-economic ladder I'm always curious as to how this plays out. I've certainly allowed my own limiting beliefs to hold me back for far too long.

All of my math teachers from Jr. High through High School (AP calculus) were women. Therefore I concluded from my very small sample size that math was a women's field that they should excel in. Somehow I escaped the cultural message that girls are supposed to suck at math or be intimidated by it.

On the other hand, I've noted - with some misgivings in a way, that in competitive sports in general there is a stereotype that makes being "too competitive" or "too aggressive" rarely OK for women, mostly only if they still fit in the looks department.

I don't want to repeat or amplify any of the stuff that gets said about the LPGA or the Women's tennis tour, but I heavily identified with Billie Jean King as a youngster and was less than surprised when she came out. I was also, quite sadly, not shocked when most of her sponsors abandoned her.

Being aggressive and winning Wimbledon = good, being proactive and starting the Virginia Slims Tour = great. Beating Bobby Riggs = excellent publicity - you go girl, you are woman hear you roar! Having a girlfriend = bad bad girl. No more Yankee dollars for you. BJK was one of the few women on the tour without an equipment or clothing contract once she was "out." Of course, she was far from the only bi/lesbian woman on the circuit. But being "out" was a liability.

I really feel that this still plays out both in how competitive women allow themselves to be, and how the rewards are stacked. If you are a pretty young thing that can play some poker, there is a site waiting to throw money at you. If you are Linda Johnson, Kathy Liebert or Barbara Enright with a full size (non-women's tourney) WSOP bracelet, less so. I see women who are far less talented than Vanessa Selbst but are better eye candy getting far greater rewards. I don't blame them, you take what you can get from the capitalist running dogs. But the deck is indeed stacked.

I still see, both in the general public and in most of these forums, the double standard that men are judged on talent and women on looks. And I think that this plays out both on how women are valued in the poker world and how they value themselves.

Sorry if I'm rambling. I really shouldn't post after drinking.

Shauna

As I understand it, science has studied the notion of "are females worse than males at science / math?" and that it's not that women aren't as good at the subjects, it's likely that they lose interest in it when they're younger than guys.

I also remember a psychological study when women are reminded of the stereotype (that women are bad at math) they perform worse than they normally would.

There was a really interesting study referenced in the book Predictably Irrational that took a group of Asian women and gave them a math test. Basically, they split otherwise equal women into two groups and asked them to answer questions about either their gender or their race, and then subsequently administered a math test to each group afterward. The women who were reminded that they were female underperformed considerably versus the women that were reminded they were Asian. IDK if that's the same study you're referencing but I think it really speaks to how much we are influenced by social/environmental factors.

I have also read articles speculating that women just don't find math/science as rewarding, which has particularly been an issue in my field (finance) since we already make up less than 20% of the field and that number is actually getting worse amongst women under 30, not better. Obv some of it that has to do with an overall decrease in finance jobs in general but women have been a lot less likely to enter or stick with the field while number of young men continues to increase. Hard to say if that's true or not but it seems possible that could be part of the problem as well.

This was the study I was referring to

THE SCIENCE OF GENDER AND SCIENCE

PINKER VS. SPELKE

A DEBATE

This video is reallllly long, but at least it will give 2 viewpoints and will be less tedious than the 15 page pdf link above.

One of the reasons to post the link to the tedious pdf file (and most journal articles are tedious) is that one of our mods said to someone who posted a gender stereotype that they would have to post some scientific back-up for those kinds of statements. I think this particular one will be repeated rather often here in the coming months and years and this thread, I hope, will be available to be linked as an answer.

Let 'em try and wade through some real science if they want to claim superior knowledge.