Introduction:
Remarkably,
even in today's society, still men are raised to have deep-seated
confidence and belief in their own abilities, whereas women (more and
more the more they get older) are disadvantageously made by instilled
second nature to — thanks no less to the unfortunate sexist social
stigma exclusively at blame here, notably — to ever self-doubt.
They are constantly told they can't do thing after thing ultimately
just because they were born female (although this is most usually
conveyed but subtly,
as well as repeatedly, into girls' subconsciousness), and
subsequently end up becoming conditioned to stand down and just
accept such parameters as simple fact. Women as a whole are far, far
more inclined to be immensely apologetic about their thoughts and
feelings, whether wrong or right immediately inclined to submit to
the correction of male counterparts, and as a collective have
substantially less self-esteem built into them. Essentially, once
grand-totaled, this very much alive sexist stigma, which includes
many more sexisms that too add significantly to society's impediment
on women, is overall the result of a rather particular and quite
"hush-hush", basically ignored social formula that
universally sets women up to be the victims of society's unobstructed
undermine.
One great practical, real-life demonstration of such undermine in action is that when men take IQ tests they always score significantly lower
than what they expected, whereas women in reverse score significantly
higher than their typical (sad as it may) dismally low expectations.
In truth, we live in a society where it is basically commonplace,
unjustifiably as it would so seem, that a man says the word 'the',
and automatically everyone thinks he's a genius. (It is unbelievable
but I'm almost not even exaggerating in making note of this, which
alone really does emphasize the severeness of the matter.) On the
other hand, a woman who is authentically very intelligent will so
often still concentrate heavily on much more trivial weaknesses, and
no matter what will find reasons to think her husband, brother,
father, male coworker (etc.) is somehow smarter than she is. Parallel
studies have sadly re-proved this finding again and again (Traywick,
2012).
Consecutively,
men are quite privy in general to be taken aback or uncomfortable
when faced by a woman who instead declines to be all these enfeebling
characteristics: best described as the assertive, ideal modern woman,
men are intimidated because she does not "need" them to
complete and validate her, and moreover has no problem standing
beside them in much contrast to most as a refreshed, challenging
equal. Nonetheless, such facts notwithstanding, repeated studies have
also shown that women revoltingly will play dumb when they first meet
men in order to placate their wish of feeling superior and smart—
THIS
INFURIATES ME.
Degrading oneself, intentionally cutting down one's own personhood,
on sheer behalf of assuring a male counterpart maintains his desired
ego (precedented or not), that rather than unapologetically
displaying her own personal, GENUINE talents or giftedness, is one of
the saddest, most detestable things I ever (and with nothing short
intense frustration no doubt) have come across in my years of
dedicated gender studies. Henceforth,
the following assertions are sound, repeatedly-proven facts
pertaining critically to the condition and state of modern society,
whether harmonic or not to the ears. And with such said, hereby I now
present a college paper I wrote on the subject for my Developmental
Psychology class:
"Female Intelligence: Undermined in an Ever-Sexist America"
By Jordan Adorno
Although it’s become the misfortunate typical belief depraving our society, the assumption America's overall progressed and succeeded past sexism
is dangerously inaccurate. Women still suffer disadvantages of sexism
underneath patriarchal order, the face withdrawing them from enabling
social equality next to men. As starting proof, is it not commonly
conceived that laws eradicated widespread recurrences of career
discrimination long ago? It sure is, but truthfully that precise
standby notion is the quintessential sexism which, in its dismal
societal misconstruction, has unintentionally left the American
people to the futile misunderstanding of their own society! Barring
women today are the same degrading, sexist paradigms that society's
proliferated all-throughout the scope of history, amazingly. Such
anti-woman lies explain why most people are SO shocked upon finding
out that female workers earn on a national average, seventy-seven
cents to every dollar earned by male workers (Alexander, 2010).
Crucially,
a common trend of rampant misunderstanding about today’s women
doctors, lawyers, police officers and the like exemplifies nowadays:
importantly, these women who have risen to eminence are quite often
considered proof that females have equal opportunities in the
workforce, and that it’s just a matter of women choosing continuous
integration or not. In reality, such careers are parts to the
constricted bubble of socially acceptable careers for America’s
modern women. Urgently, however, the big picture of gender inequality
is perpetuated by a widespread, sexist pretext that restricts women
as a collective
(sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously): the counterfeit
societal belief that women are inferiorly intelligent, or if softer
said, just "less inclined" to certain intellectual areas
(i.e. just 'less so' in math and science - a more popular of lies),
and thus are unmeant for a vast spread of male-dominated careers.
From a modern superficial lens, it's quite easy to be misguided into
believing that boys and girls are offered all the same opportunities,
and that by girls' choice alone many eminent fields severely lack
women’s input. What's so inaccurate about that preclusion is it
fails to consider how boys in our patriarchal society grow up with
more favor and encouragement overall by far, which boosts their
self-confidences and broadens their potentials early-on.
Consistently, for a matter of sheer fact, illuminating; studies
decade-after-decade prove parents think their sons are automatically
more intelligent than their daughters (Blakemore, Berenbaum, &
Liben, 2009).
Society instills into boys from a very early age, the "freedom-to-be"
if you will, a limitless slate of open potential, but oppositely
stigmatizes into girls a limited scope of confidence, rather, in
their potential. To specify, young males are blessed with mostly high
approval in pursuing any prestigious work, whereas young females
often suffer societal disbelief in their competency. How can equality
be named when our boys are not nearly as misled to self-doubt? How
when, in stark contrast, girls suffer a stigma that, so ravishingly
perpetuated in society, condescendingly questions female
intelligence?! Therefore, although women might in (approximately) a
decade outnumber or at the very least long have equaled men in a
field like law (which has become very much appropriated to women in
recent times), men - across every eminent field, from math to
language, science, business and so on pretty unanimously - remain if
not predominant, a still substantial number of the overall makeup.
And what's so abominable about this sexism is that disbelief in
women's intellectual potential is inaccurate, unfounded, and
irrelevant according to all credible institutions of science. In
fact, many modern-day researchers are now oppositely concerned with
the findings of up-to-date, empirical data regarding boys and their
academic performances: transparently, recent years reveal that girls
outperformed boys throughout school, were likelier to attend and
finish college, and were far less likely to drop out of high school
than boys (Sommers, 2010).
Another prevailing sexist paradigm that society still purports is one which has never been NEARLY as likely to riot controversy as it should: the
claim that a biological wire predetermines males to just 'be'
better in Math than females is a widely accepted, absolute
fallacy!!!!!
Contrary to popular belief, this is still not proved by any brain
scientist, and has even been proven insignificant
by several credible studies recently conducted across schools
nationwide! The largest of such recent studies empirically analyzed
tests scores of over 7 million students and concluded boys are NOT
outperforming girls in Math class nationwide (Hansen, 2008).
Surprisingly, even in 1988 psychologists concluded there was only a
trivial gap between boys’ and girls’ math abilities, but they
admittedly also found that high school boys were more adept to
tackling complex math problems. In contrast, however, elite
psychologists in recent years have re-consolidated their conclusions
based on updated educational data: it all safely proves that these
exacerbated, so-called “superiorities” are losing their already
feeble trend according to current generational analysis of females'
math performances (Malakoff, 2008). So sad to consider that this myth
has been a rampantly damaging prejudice against women despite
twenty-two years of opposite findings (at least, anyway)!
How then, it MUST be stipulated and demanded, can society claim equality when men are left to pursue their all-choosing potentials, told they're capable of anything, while women are deemed socially
acceptable for only a certain fixed area of prestigious careers at a
SLOW-TO-PROGRESS pace?! The contrast should make obvious that until
the slow-to-expand belief in women’s competency is acknowledged and
promoted everywhere, the status of American men and women will remain
unequal. For example, in spite of boys’ and girls' equal
performance in science classes and the increasingly evident uprising
of eminent females in various science fields, it was found that
parents were three
times more likely
to engage their sons in intellectual conversation about each exhibit
at a large-scale science center than their girls (King, 2007)!
Parents substantially placing less importance and esteem on their
girls has shown its greatest fracture on young gifted girls – a
composition equaling that of gifted males by elementary school - whom
originally score higher on IQ tests than boys, even. Somehow, these
remarkable talents are inconceivably likelier to be downed by
society’s too familiar disapproval, each girl a grandiose
illustration of society’s great intimidation and uneasiness for
females who outwardly demonstrate their grander intelligence without
timidity toward their male counterparts (Gurian, Ph.D., 1998).
Ultimately, one ironic, baffling question shiningly illuminates the senior principle of America's sexism: WHY hasn't society unlearned its sexist pretexts, unlearned its perpetuated myth that women are
"intellectually inferior"!? This abusive degradation of women has been damagingly pronounced upon society for millenniums, and deserves nothing but immediate abolishment. If each American just dared to embrace an ACCURATE perspective on our sexist America, the moral ultimatum to restructure ourselves would undoubtedly arise. We
as Americans must evolve into a nuclear unit of demanding crusaders
for COMPLETE gender equality! Sheer proof of every parent’s
performance would then easily be shown in whether there is adequate
concern that both their boys and girls grow into men and women who
had all the same chances. As such, in being the most remarkable
proposed course of action in regards to combating the issue of
society's widespread sexism even today, thus every boy and girl would
turn into men and women whose independent pursuits — life goals
based on their freely chosen interests and exploration without stigma
— were sought without the taint of sexist, unfair societal
inclinations. Indeed, this idealized version of society is surely the
quintessential picture we must all work very speedily to make a
reality NOW.
Blakemore,
J, Berenbaum, S, & Liben, L. (2009). Gender
development.
New York, NY: Psychology Press.
King,
Laura. (2007). The Science of psychology: an appreciative view.
McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages.
**