Nov 22 2009
Gender Roles and the Two Hats of the Behavioral and Social Sciences
A bit of new research caught my eye recently for two reasons. The article title read, Rethinking sexism: A daughter-father team examines how society maintains the status quo.
The finding -
both men and women respond in a more hostile way to a woman who violates sex-role expectations, than to one who adheres to them. Secondly, that the more an individual supports social hierarchy in general (that some people should have more power and resources than others), the more hostile they responded toward a woman who violated sex-role expectations.
Interesting stuff.
1) Any of you familiar with my “An Almighty Alpha” project know that I am quite interested in human hierarchical behavior. It is fascinating how status, power and sex and gender are inter-related.
As an aside, allow me to offer a couple conjectures about the above finding. First, both men and women reacted strongly because both are a part of the social group that roles and hierarchies bring some stability and predictability to. Second, the greater reaction to female violation of sex-roles makes perfect sense to me. My guess is that female sex-role violation involves a more “upward movement,” so to speak, than male sex-role violation. An upward movement in power and potential status presents a greater challenge to a group than downward movement.
2) The second reason the article caught my eye was due to article quotes by the researchers — the scientists — like this:
“It’s important for women to understand that judgment hurts everyone and that sexist judgment hurts women in particular.”
I don’t think I’m being sexist when I say that statements like the above strike me as non-scientific. Substitute “men” for “women” in the above and it would have struck me the same way. I’m pretty sure.
Why “non-scientific”? Because the #1 hat a scientists wears (or needs to) is that of an objective researcher. The over-arching goal is to discover what is. A strong belief or desire about what should be can get in the way of optimally objective science.
Of course, in the social sciences we find this dual role of professionals quite often. They do science and they do applied science. The try to understand the world and they try to solve problems in the world. For their to be a problem in the world, there must be a should not condition. Which is a value judgment, and values can insidiously influence the working of our minds.
Behavioral and social scientists have a tough task. They must often wear two hats. When doing the applied science, yes, keep the pure science hat on as well. Wear them both at once. But when doing the pure science, take off that “my job is to fix the world hat.” It could obscure your vision.
