Women are not as creative as men. They are not as artistic,
not as original, and not as innovative. At least, not according to public perception
— an idea that was developed and abstracted by students from Duke University.
Recent research shows that people tend to associate “stereotypically masculine traits (such as decisiveness, competitiveness, risk-taking, ambition and daring) as being more important to creativity than stereotypically feminine qualities (such as cooperation, understanding and support of others).” This has been confirmed by both real-world experimental and observational
studies. A fictional male architect’s work is described as more creative and avant-garde
by some people, while the same structure is described as
being less so when presented as a fictional female architect’s work. Male
managers, when presented identically to female managers (aside from gender),
are rated “not only as being more creative, but as having more agency and being more deserving of rewards.”
This obviously becomes a problem for women, as even our
government agrees that “the jobs and industries of the future ... [invest] inthe creativity and imagination of our people." And what can be taken from that, in conjunction with the associative biases
surrounding creative norms, is that this trend has the potential to limit working
opportunities for women even further — despite seemingly enriching
opportunities for inspired minds as a whole. After all, if the best creative
thinkers are all male, what place is there for women in industries of
innovation at all?
Margaret Mead (1901-1978) — cultural anthropologist, unapologetic
feminist, and radical thinker extraordinaire (at least for her time) — had a
more deliberate response to this. She argued that women working in creative
fields were fundamentally disadvantaged due to contextual social constructs.
And this was an argument that she made over
50 years ago (or 52, to be exact). Women were actively constrained by working with “forms that were created by men, or else struggle against special odds to develop new forms.” She develops her argument by pointing a finger towards educational systems and
their inherently gender-biased curriculums, stating the following:
“Until
we have an educational system that permits enough women to work within any
field — music, mathematics, painting, literature, biology and so on — so that
forms which are equally congenial to both sexes are developed, we shall not
have a fair test of this third possibility.”
That said, Mead came from a time when ideas similar to the
picture above were considered to be fact, and not just the satirical attitude
it was actually designed to show.
Interestingly enough, her point is countermanded by
modern-day reality: today, “girls outnumber boys at arts schools by [a great] margin.” The actual numbers show that “Schools that specialize in the arts ... are now 64 percent female and 36 percent male, a disparity that has grown slightly larger over the last five years [emphasis added].” And yet, despite this, women are still
considered to be less creative than men, while men continue to rise above women
doing equal-or-greater work than men.
Ultimately, the Coca-Cola Company has what seems to be the
most reasonable point of view. Through their analysis, they show that “Men andwomen are equally talented when it comes to creativity.” They actually present a slightly different approach, saying that it is critical
to continued innovation to actually have men and women work cooperatively
together (gasp — such a novel concept!).
The two different approaches with which men and women approach creativity help
balance and complement one another, and overall produce better results as a whole.
This ties back to our class through a comparison of the
struggles which women face today expressing their creativity and having it be viewed
equally to men’s, and the struggle that women face in The Handmaid’s Tale with expressing themselves in any way at all — not
being allowed to read, write, or (presumably) create anything. Tasks like that
are, after all, best left to the “more creative, innovate, out-of-the-box-thinking" men, right?
- What sort of long-term consequences do you think might occur as a result of these gender biases in fields of design and innovation?
- Why do you think that females are perceived as less creative in a post-school setting, despite having more opportunities for creativity in school environments?
- What do you think can be done to balance out and correct these misperceptions?
Links:
http://school-stories.org/2015/06/gender-disparities-found-in-many-of-new-york-citys-science-math-schools-and-arts-communication-schools/
No comments:
Post a Comment