Women in the Public Eye

I saw a screenshot of a Tweet today – it said “Don’t tell me ‘gender isn’t a factor’ when Hillary Clinton is more despised for being cheated on than Donald Trump is for cheating.”

Political ideologies and candidate preferences aside, this Tweet points out a repugnant truth – the moral, physical, and behavioral standards for female public figures are different than those of their male counterparts. While people poke fun at the Donald’s orangey skin and coiffed hair, they are incessantly critical of Clinton’s pantsuits (at one point alleging that she wears pants to hide blood clots), her demeanor (but, as she points out, one should not be excited to talk about ISIS), and her health. Instead of discussing her policy prerogatives, news stations focus on her age, her makeup, her seemingly tired face, and her husband’s extramarital affair.

Female politicians face this ridiculous scrutiny all the time. If their voice is too screechy they are labeled annoying, if it’s too deep they’re too manly. If they’re too pretty they can’t be smart, but if they’re not pretty enough that won’t do either. They have to be serious, but not too serious. They have to know the issues, but not come on too strong because it’s “off-putting.” Their ability to run a country or represent a district is questioned because they have a menstrual cycle. They are labeled “too emotional” simply because they were born women.

This absurd phenomenon is in no way limited to political figures – the Olympics saw reporters forgetting past successes of female athletes, attributing medal-winning successes to husbands, and general sexist commentary about appearance. Female celebrities are chastised for having multiple suitors over the years, while male celebrities are lauded as playboys, “successful with the ladies.” Women in the military experience obstacles to assimilation because they “distract men,” or “disrupt cohesion”.

With the number of women in journalism and media, it is incredible – as in worthy of awe – that the descriptions, analyses, and representations of women are this skewed. Women should undergo scrutiny based on merit, experience, and individual capability. They should not be held to a different set of rules or expectations, and they should never have to justify their right to a position because their gender is perceived as a handicap.

Grit

Psychological studies suggest that for disadvantaged children – with disadvantages ranging from social perceptions of race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, family structure, etc. – resilience, or “grit,” is one of the most important factors in determining their success in overcoming social, personal, and financial obstacles. The knowledge that there are traits that can increase a child’s chance to rise above poverty, overcome adversity, and navigate other obstacles is in some ways encouraging – it provides hope that there are ways a child can succeed even when the odds are not in their favor.

On the other hand, defining resilience as a key character trait for success is dangerous. People may take to the idea that resilience equals effort: if you work hard enough, you succeed. This misinterpretation of what resilience is and what the finding means could result in less assistance to disadvantaged neighborhoods or at-risk children. People might think that the relative lack of success for some children is because they weren’t tough enough, or didn’t try hard enough. This perspective negates research proving that certain groups face challenges that other groups do not, and that these challenges present barriers to success that are extremely different to overcome.

The implications for these findings are unclear – promoting grit and resilience at the semantic level, without context, could prove dangerous and disadvantageous for those who need the characteristic most. The problem is that many obstacles to disadvantaged groups are systemic, engrained in bias and historically institutionalized. For children growing up in schools, communities, and systems with preconceived ideas of their potential, it may take a lot more resilience to overcome stereotypes and societal expectations than is reasonably expected from one individual. In a world where the answer might be changing the entire system, is “grit” worth promoting at the individual level?

Where do you stand on this?

16 Life Lessons

By Dr. Jonathan Wai:

At the heart of wisdom lies a paradox. On the one hand, our homegrown instincts about the world can be deeply flawed; the bias built into each of us is exactly what the methods of science are designed to overcome. At the same time, wisdom proceeds directly from personal, lived experience. With these two forces in mind, Psychology Today sought life lessons from leading behavioral scientists, those whose expertise encompasses both. In this article, you will likely glimpse something personal about each of the contributors [Editor’s note: including wisdom from CMC Psychology Professor Ron Riggio!] – but also encounter valuable counsel for a meaningful life.

Read the rest of the article by Dr. Jonathan Wai, former CMCer and now Berger Institute Faculty Affiliate. Dr. Wai is a research scientist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program and a visiting researcher at Case Western Reserve University. He did his postdoctoral work at Duke University, holds a doctorate from Vanderbilt University, and graduated from Claremont McKenna College. He lives with his wife, kids, and cat. You can find his CV here.

Lynn Karoly: Informing Investments in Early Care and Education Programs

This week, I had the honor of attending a talk by Lynn Karoly, senior economist at the RAND Corporation, at Pitzer College. Professor Karoly’s research focuses on child and family well-being and early care and education programs. At RAND, she conducts nonpartisan, policy-driven research within these fields.

Today, the key puzzle in early care and education (ECE) is how to provide access to high-quality early learning programs to children. Numerous factors must be taken into account in order to build a robust early education system: the monitoring and incentivizing of ECE services, strategies to grow and support qualified ECE workforce, and ensuring the system is aligned with standard K-12 education.

However, all of this extensive work is worth it. Professor Karoly’s research has proven that high-quality pre-school programs raise school readiness skills. These gains, moreover, are consistent across different races and ethnicities, as well as income levels. A rigorous evaluation of national, state, and local programs revealed mostly favorable significant effects in pre-math, vocabulary, and print awareness of pre-schoolers.

Unfortunately, this romanticized view does not portray reality properly. Once in school, children who are better prepared are overlooked as teachers try to get farther-behind students caught up. This reveals a caveat in the system: investing in ECE programs will not work unless these efforts are adopted on a nationwide scale. Thanks to the Quality Rating and Improvement System (QRIS), progress is on the way. In numerous states, the QRIS institution specifies minimum ECE program features through licensing and constantly monitors preschools for compliance. In fact, the state of California is currently being evaluated. Please join me in praising Professor Karoly’s efforts and hoping for advances in early care and education.

For more information, please visit http://www.rand.org.

Black Masculinity at the Ath

Yolo Akili Robinson delivered a poignant speech at the Ath last night. He addressed mental health issues induced by unhealthy social constraints imposed on black males. Black males oftentimes are expected to be “stoic, rigid, and emotionally sparse.” They are expected to love sex with women and love sex with women without respecting them. These unhealthy norms, Robinson believes, have deep roots which lead back to slavery and the white-black/men-women dynamics in this system.

He told us five stories to illuminate some societal problems. The first story was about Robinson’s grandson who as an eight month fell and cried. This young boy’s father scolded Robinson for his comforting of this boy and said this boy needs not “grow up like a punk.” Robinson says this hypermasculinity is rooted in the inability to express emotion as slaves and leads to deep social problems today. For example it leads to rage which is turned into a way to express emotion “without expressing emotion.” It also leads to homophobia and sexism. Robinson elucidated this problem in black men, but many of these problems, he says, is caused by white men and are equally applicable to white men and represent issues with masculinity in general.

As men, we have the responsibility to treat women with respect (and this requires a lot more thought than this phrase implies) and as heterosexuals we need to treat homosexuals with dignity.