Month: September 2016

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.

Stressed?

The beginning of a new semester comes with a return to time management, a heavy workload, and rotating obligations. Impending deadlines and mounting assignments are already starting to stir up familiar feelings of stress for a lot of students, and we’re still in the first month of school. A USA Today study showed that over a quarter of students feel stress has “negatively affected their academic performance,” with 85% indicating that at some point they felt overwhelmed by all of their responsibilities.

Yet with all of this, there are ways to counter the semester stress:

  • Make thoughtful choices about academic and extracurricular activities.
  • Determine whether you are making use of campus resources.
  • Don’t procrastinate.
  • Eat well, stay hydrated, and get enough sleep.
  • Leave time for yourself.

These are things our parents and friends tell us. These are the things we try to tell ourselves. And we should take our own advice…

But here I am, it’s 11:30pm and I need to be up at 5am for work. I didn’t finish the paper I tried to start today, or the reading that needs to be done by this evening. I didn’t take the dog for a walk, and I definitely didn’t make it to the gym. But I did the dishes, cleaned the living room, and read half of the reading I needed to finish. I handled some paperwork, and celebrated one year of living in my townhouse. And I managed to binge-watch two seasons of Wentworth.

At the end of the day, I do the best I can. But choosing to be okay with what I did get done is what makes it possible for me to make a new list and start again tomorrow… after I get home from work.

An Ideal Leader?

©2013 Ben Gebo Photography

Amanpour, like Clinton, misses the real problem buried in this event: the myth of the ideal leader. The ideal leader, like the ideal worker, is never sick, is always available, and will make extreme (often unnecessary) sacrifices to avoid rethinking the mission or timeline.

When Amanpour asks, “Leading the world in sickness and in heath; if the boys can do it, why not the women?” she reinforces this unrealistic concept of leadership, one where leaders take risks with themselves and their responsibilities in order to avoid acknowledging their humanity. In truth, just because men do it doesn’t mean women should seek to emulate that self-destructive leadership style.

Berger Institute Faculty Affiliate Ken Matos, Ph.D., in The Huffington Post.

Marriage and Success: A Complicated Picture for Women

During the Spring 2014 semester, I took a class called “The History of American Families.” One of the biggest trends discussed was the shift in perceptions and expectations of marriage. As a freshman in college with a serious boyfriend and plans to get married before I graduated – which I did – it was a compelling topic: what does marriage mean in 21st century America, and what trends are people seeing for women in particular?

Earlier this week an Economist article from November 2015 popped up on my timeline: Most Americans would get married, if only they could find someone suitable. The article reemphasized many familiar themes: people are now more likely to marry for emotional reasons, less likely to marry young, and women (who are increasingly matching and even surpassing their husbands’ earning potential) are most likely to bear the brunt of household duties.

It’s a familiar dynamic: even as more women graduate college and find themselves climbing the career ladder, they’re bogged down with more domestic responsibilities than men. In addition to working full-time, women  are often expected to cook, clean, and make schedules for their spouses or families. The stigma around and feminization of “domestic duties” has placed unnecessary stress on women who are tasked with an increasingly complex work-life balance. Happily, increasingly diverse family arrangements have driven workplace policy towards the more inclusive, flexible side of the spectrum (woohoo, San Francisco!). This doesn’t alleviate all of the stress of an unequal distribution of household responsibilities, but it does increase a woman’s ability to manage work, personal life, stress, and career goals.

So what’s next for American working moms and spouses? Logic seems to suggest that the deterioration of traditional gender roles within the home will continue as women become more selective about their spouses. As the Economist article points out, marriage is essentially a market: “people buy in if the price is right.” Women capable of supporting themselves are going to marry for personal reasons – and men who bring something different to the table (perhaps a willingness to help with laundry or grocery shopping) are going to be the best-looking options. Over time, this will likely lead to a more natural, equal distribution of household duties and a general decrease in stress felt by working women. Because, after all: happy wife, happy life. No really – it’s a thing.

Transmitting Trauma – Genetics

Psychology and history look at events affecting large numbers of people – psychology to understand behavior, and history to document it for posterity. A fairly recent convergence of the two fields comes in the forms of a study about how trauma can be inherited by the children of parents who experience it. The study (link to study) looks at how the trauma experienced by Holocaust survivors affects subsequent generations genetically – the idea being that these children are genetically vulnerable to PTSD, anxiety disorders, and possibly more.

While the science is complicated, the implications are even more nuanced. It raises a lot of questions, including how many generations could be affected (a case for slavery) and what the interplay is with race, socioeconomic status, culture, etc. With socioeconomically driven tension on the rise in America, what does this mean for how we understand generational disadvantages, social cycles of inequality, and neighborhoods characterized by violence? The emergence of this information, while still scientifically contested, raises more questions than answers; but the questions being asked seem to be ones that can challenge preexisting assumptions, structures, and norms – which could mean the kind of social progress and understanding we need.

There is an “I” in Marriage

At the end of my freshman year at CMC, my boyfriend came home from a 13-month deployment and proposed. It wasn’t a surprise, and almost all of my friends expected me to start my sophomore year of college with a fiancé. Yet even with this knowledge, many approached me with more judgment than joy.

What baffled me the most were the weird assumptions people started to make when I came back to school following my wedding. Instead of asking how my classes were going, people asked me whether I felt tied down, regretted my decision to get married young, and how I thought it would affect my success in the future. Instead of engaging with me about course material, people wondered if I had to learn to cook so my husband wouldn’t starve, and how soon we were planning on having children.

Many of these questions were asked candidly, out of pure and non-malicious curiosity. To be completely honest, they often showed me perspectives I hadn’t yet considered. I respect that. But mostly, they were incredibly frustrating. Instead of the strong, independent, intellectually curious young woman I perceived myself as, many of my peers made me feel as if I were a novelty, a little housewife with a completely different life and trajectory now that I had a wedding band on my left hand.

People seem to think that getting married means sacrificing your personality, individual self-worth, or independence. But that’s just not true. Marriage is a partnership – a team. I didn’t sign up to be a cook, or a maid, or an assistant. I signed up to hang out and have fun with my best friend for the rest of my life. Romance aside, it was pragmatism. We work well together and complement one another in ways I had never imagined possible. I’m a bookworm, by-the-book history nerd with a penchant for cooking, and he’s a comic book loving fireman-engineer in the Navy who can fix anything and is incredibly innovative. Everything just works.