5 ms·

Girls believe brilliance is a male trait, research into gender stereotypes shows

26 points by kafkaesq 10y ago

eruditely 10y ago
Reminds me of a study that showed that the most anti-women bias online came from other women.
- fizwhiz 10y ago
  Citation?
  - legostormtroopr 10y ago
    Its actually quite a recognised phenomenon, its just not talked about very often. Not sure why. http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/04/womens-inhumanity-to-women/ http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/04/womens-inhumanity-to-women/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-robert-lusson/womens-bias-against-women_b_5602367.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-robert-lusson/womens-bias-a...
    - EliRivers 10y ago
      Perhaps because men are generally in power and generally set the topic, and men don't experience being female and doing this. Alternatively, maybe it's talked about every day but amongst women.
      - fdsaaf 10y ago
        More likely, I think, is that it contradicts the feminist narrative that every gender disparity that disadvantages women is the fault of the patriarchy and every gender disparity that favors women is evidence of inherent female virtue.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        EliRivers 10y ago
        That's part of your simplistic narrative, propping up your beliefs. It's not reality.
- tornadoboy55 10y ago
  Not only online. If a girl (especially a pretty one) is having a lot of sex, other girls will be the first to call her a slut (mostly behind her back). It has always amazed me how vicious girls are to eachother, even in groups of supposed friends.. guys tend to shoot the shit, but they do genuinely stick up for eachother.
  - EekSnakePond 10y ago
    It's a mating strategy. If a girl has acquired a capable mate, then the other females only stand to benefit by successfully undermining that relationship. Upon doing so, the capable mate chances to be distributed across the girl's social network are significantly increased, thus, increasing collective survival.
    - gizmo686 10y ago
      Then why do we see this behavior in girls, and not boys. In fact, wouldn't we expect to see this behaviour more in males because males can have multiple mates to a greater extent than females can.
      - EekSnakePond 10y ago
        Both sides have their strategies to maximize fertility. This is the female strategy, which enhances the male strategy of sexual aggression.
rdlecler1 10y ago
>The findings show that boys and girls were equally interested in the “hard” game, but girls were less interested than boys in the game for “smart” children. Males and females have different mating strategies -- in humans how much is nature and how much is nurture is difficult to untangle. It makes me wonder to what degree the boys attraction status-seeking games is nature vs nurture, or alternatively to what degree are girls discouraged from status-seeking games either from nature or nurture. It may, for example, be more evolutionarily advantageous for females to allocate their time to mastering social interactions and cooperation (let the boys fight it out). Alternatively, society could be discouraging girls from competing with boys.
Isamu 10y ago
> The study also found that, unlike boys, girls do not believe that achieving good grades in school is related to innate abilities.
fdsaaf 10y ago
This belief is accurate. Men and women have similar IQ means, but men have greater variance. This difference implies that there are more low-IQ men than there are low-IQ women, and also that there are more high-IQ men than high-IQ women. Denying reality, even with the best of intentions, ultimately does everyone a disservice. We should of course encourage intelligent and driven women to succeed. We can do that while acknowledging that, yes, brilliance is more common in men.
- kafkaesq 10y ago
  Except that "brilliance" != high IQ.
  - cjlars 10y ago
    And what would be a better measure? We can't assess the validity of the belief without one.
    - kafkaesq 10y ago
      And what would be a better measure? I don't know, right off. May well be there isn't any such "measure", for the higher end. Especially none as highly contention as that provided by so-called IQ tests (which in any case were initially intended to sift out mental retardation or developmental disabilities -- not for stack-ranking cognitive performance in upper-tier adults, for which their applicability is even more suspect). The bigger point is that it doesn't do much good to just pretend that it's a valid, object measure of "brilliance" when most likely it isn't.
- scotty79 10y ago
  So children's opinion is possibly accurate. However if current state is not the desired state we may choose to educate children in a way that does not reflect current state of affairs but rather such that will lead to the desired one.
  - fdsaaf 10y ago

26 points by kafkaesq 10y ago

eruditely 10y ago

Reminds me of a study that showed that the most anti-women bias online came from other women.

fizwhiz 10y ago
Citation?
- legostormtroopr 10y ago
  Its actually quite a recognised phenomenon, its just not talked about very often. Not sure why. http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/04/womens-inhumanity-to-women/ http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/04/womens-inhumanity-to-women/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-robert-lusson/womens-bias-against-women_b_5602367.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-robert-lusson/womens-bias-a...
  - EliRivers 10y ago
    Perhaps because men are generally in power and generally set the topic, and men don't experience being female and doing this. Alternatively, maybe it's talked about every day but amongst women.
    - fdsaaf 10y ago
      More likely, I think, is that it contradicts the feminist narrative that every gender disparity that disadvantages women is the fault of the patriarchy and every gender disparity that favors women is evidence of inherent female virtue.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - EliRivers 10y ago
        That's part of your simplistic narrative, propping up your beliefs. It's not reality.
tornadoboy55 10y ago
Not only online. If a girl (especially a pretty one) is having a lot of sex, other girls will be the first to call her a slut (mostly behind her back). It has always amazed me how vicious girls are to eachother, even in groups of supposed friends.. guys tend to shoot the shit, but they do genuinely stick up for eachother.
- EekSnakePond 10y ago
  It's a mating strategy. If a girl has acquired a capable mate, then the other females only stand to benefit by successfully undermining that relationship. Upon doing so, the capable mate chances to be distributed across the girl's social network are significantly increased, thus, increasing collective survival.
  - gizmo686 10y ago
    Then why do we see this behavior in girls, and not boys. In fact, wouldn't we expect to see this behaviour more in males because males can have multiple mates to a greater extent than females can.
    - EekSnakePond 10y ago
      Both sides have their strategies to maximize fertility. This is the female strategy, which enhances the male strategy of sexual aggression.

rdlecler1 10y ago

>The findings show that boys and girls were equally interested in the “hard” game, but girls were less interested than boys in the game for “smart” children. Males and females have different mating strategies -- in humans how much is nature and how much is nurture is difficult to untangle. It makes me wonder to what degree the boys attraction status-seeking games is nature vs nurture, or alternatively to what degree are girls discouraged from status-seeking games either from nature or nurture. It may, for example, be more evolutionarily advantageous for females to allocate their time to mastering social interactions and cooperation (let the boys fight it out). Alternatively, society could be discouraging girls from competing with boys.

Isamu 10y ago

> The study also found that, unlike boys, girls do not believe that achieving good grades in school is related to innate abilities.

fdsaaf 10y ago

This belief is accurate. Men and women have similar IQ means, but men have greater variance. This difference implies that there are more low-IQ men than there are low-IQ women, and also that there are more high-IQ men than high-IQ women. Denying reality, even with the best of intentions, ultimately does everyone a disservice. We should of course encourage intelligent and driven women to succeed. We can do that while acknowledging that, yes, brilliance is more common in men.

kafkaesq 10y ago
Except that "brilliance" != high IQ.
- cjlars 10y ago
  And what would be a better measure? We can't assess the validity of the belief without one.
  - kafkaesq 10y ago
    And what would be a better measure? I don't know, right off. May well be there isn't any such "measure", for the higher end. Especially none as highly contention as that provided by so-called IQ tests (which in any case were initially intended to sift out mental retardation or developmental disabilities -- not for stack-ranking cognitive performance in upper-tier adults, for which their applicability is even more suspect). The bigger point is that it doesn't do much good to just pretend that it's a valid, object measure of "brilliance" when most likely it isn't.
scotty79 10y ago
So children's opinion is possibly accurate. However if current state is not the desired state we may choose to educate children in a way that does not reflect current state of affairs but rather such that will lead to the desired one.
- fdsaaf 10y ago