Thank you for your thoughtful reply. We more or less agree with all that you’ve written and are delighted that you’ve underscored some concerns and issues that we were ignoring or obscuring. We have little to add and are happy to let yours should be the last word – that is, unless others have more to contribute.

best,
Jon & Mike

Thanks for your very thorough and thoughtful response. I’ll try to do my part to carry on this conversation – I hope the exchange continues to be fruitful to you as it has been to me.

Of course there is a problem if what’s attractive about women is merely subservience and meekness. And to the extent that human desire is culturally malleable, I wholeheartedly endorse trying to create a world where women are valued for being self-actualized and good human beings. We’d do well to try to value men on that metric to a much greater extent than we currently do too.

I think we oversimplify (perhaps necessarily so in an area where understanding is so provisional) if we assert that math and science are good, and anything that does not further them are bad. I think you’re correct in describing contemporary society as placing greater burdens on women who wish to be mathematically and scientifically excellent than we do their male counterparts – that they likely face higher costs. I also think that given the finitude of every individual, some degree of compromise is unavoidable when a person values more than one goal, and the two are not mutually reinforcing. But when you imply that we ask our daughters and sisters and wives to be too kind, I can’t help but wonder whether the problem isn’t that we don’t ask our sons and brothers and husbands to be kind enough.

You two see the situation as plastic, and advocate that we change it so that women are not disadvantaged in math and science. I agree that this is a laudable goal. But I’d add that this is not the only goal we ought to be trying to attain by changing the situation. In the limiting case where we were able to completely reformulate human desires and expectations through removal of situational sources of prejudice and stereotype, we’d want to create a situation where the choices made between valuable ends are made freely, and the costs required by compromising between ends are minimized. We wouldn’t take for granted that women have to choose between being smart and being likable to a greater extent than men do, we’d try to get rid of that disparity, not just name all our daughters Robert or Thor.

I think people need to be sensitive to each other, and interested in maintaining their relationships. I do not think that by any reasonable objective measure a life is well lived if it is lived in ignorance of the desires of others, outside of community and wholly without long-term bonds. To the extend that our male stereotypes legitimize such sterile and non-communitarian values, so much the worse for our male stereotypes. Lets tear them down along with the constricting stereotypes about women, instead of aspiring to everyone being a math savant, and no one caring about anyone else.

I know the ad you are poking fun of is dripping with stereotype and vulgarity. I don’t mean to be championing it. I just mean to challenge the tacit assumption of your discussion – that the world would be better if we changed womens situation in a manner that promotes their being economists, without changing male behavior or allowing women to make that choice without forgoing other things of value more than is absolutely naturally necessary. Haven’t you met enough economists to see that being one isn’t nearly enough, in itself, to aspire to?

Thanks very much for your comment. You raise interesting points, but we worry that you have either misunderstood the post’s point or that you’ve underestimated the extent of the interplay between the two domains that you’ve highlighted.

We should be clear at the outset that our post was not intended to encourage people to make themselves unattractive or to disregard their familial relationships for the sake of pursuing math puzzles (nor is this caveat intended to suggest that math puzzles don’t have their charms).

The evidence and the ad reveal a powerful double-bind (one of many) that women face in our culture – caught between the masculine associations of certain pursuits/careers (math, science, and economics among them) and the roles, expectations, and schemas of her gender.

Behavior that makes a woman “attractive” as a mathematician, scientist, or economist may make her “unattractive” in contexts in which “feminine” women are advantaged. The fact that a feminine name can influence one’s chances of success in a masculine field illustrates that double bind.

We’ll get back to that. First, it may be worth emphasizing what few would deny: stereotypes played a significant role regarding who our mothers and fathers became and who we are becoming, in part by shaping expectations about what counts as “attractive.” Given that, there is every reason to suspect that similar stereotypes are influencing who our children will become.

Now, to connect to your example: Yes, you might be pleased to discover that a man who is good at math is also charismatic. But the example raises its own problems. A “charismatic” man (one who is perceived as authoritative, venerable, and charming) may be more pleasing to many than a “charismatic” woman. And behavior that might be viewed as “charismatic” for a man might be construed as unattractive or inappropriate for a woman.

To be sure, there are “charismatic women,” but the number is — because charisma is associated with leadership and leadership is associated with men — likely smaller than that of “charismatic men.” (Although this is clearly not science, it’s it’s the best we can do for now: a quick google search turned up 58,300 websites containing the phrase “charismatic man” and only 15,000 including the phrase “charismatic woman.”) Relatedly, we suspect that “math,” “charisma,” and “man” are more readily associated with each other than are “math,” “charisma,” and “woman.”

If that seems right, shouldn’t we be concerned that our daughters might have “to deny” their charisma in order to be attractive?

Perhaps we’re straining a bit far with our example. There’s an easier version that relies on the significant and growing evidence that descriptive and prescriptive gender stereotypes play a significant role in influencing women’s options and, therefore, their behavior.

For an illustrative sample of that evidence, take a look at the abstracts of articles entitled “Gender Effects on Social Influence and Hireability
Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes and Backlash Toward Agentic Women” (at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0022-4537.00239) and “What Women and Men Should Be, Shouldn’t Be, Are Allowed to Be, and Don’t Have to Be: The Contents of Prescriptive Gender Stereotypes” (at http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1471-6402.t01-1-00066?journalCode=pwqu) or read the article entitled “Identity bifurcation in response to stereotype threat: Women and mathematics” co-authored by Situationist Contributor Emily Pronin (at http://weblamp.princeton.edu/~psych/psychology/research/pronin/pubs/Pronin%20Steele%20Ross.pdf). Such studies indicate, among other things, how “agentic women” face a backlash effect in some contexts, a negative evaluation for not demonstrating feminine niceness.

So here’s the question: shouldn’t we be concerned if, on top of being merely competent at math and science, our daughters also have a greater burden than a man to be nice, selfless, and nurturing, etc., lest they somehow seem significantly less attractive as “women”? If that is true, at what cost to their careers or to their relationships must they balance each? Or what if they have to eschew such behaviors in order to be successful in math or science? Shouldn’t we try to ensure that our math-competent daughters have the same chances and prospects as our math-competent sons and aren’t discriminated against precisely because they are (or are not) “nice”?

That brings us to your wish that you “don’t want [your] daughter to have to deny her sexual and familial desires in order to embrace math and science.” You are assuming that she can have both without a tradeoff. Unfortunately, that may not be so. Again, women face a double bind.

The story and the ad described in our post help illustrate the horns of their dilemma. The story suggests that to succeed in science, a woman might want to call herself Alex. The ad indicates (though this is a guess, given that we haven’t pursued the link), however, that to succeed “with men,” a woman might prefer to be called Elizabeth. For women, two identities must be juggled. For most men in most situations, it’s one name fits all.

We focused on the ad in part because it was there and in part to highlight how incredibly robust the stereotypes remain and something about the forces that promote them. Even in the midst of article describing the distorting consequences of stereotypes, we see an advertisement that seemed to us to be contributing to them.

We hope you found this reasonably responsive. Thanks again for your comment.

Jon & Mike

Let’s focus on getting more women active and passionate about math and sciences first.

I shied away from overly “feminine” names in part because of the associations they may bring, because I didn’t want assumptions coming before my daughters abilities. I wonder if there is a difference in perception between men and women…