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Lately, I’ve been working on some research projects that have me thinking a lot about overcorrection in the spaces of gender and sexism and how this overcorrection plagues workplaces, including my own.
Women were frequently subject to abject levels of sexism in the workplace for most of the 20th century. They were excluded entirely from certain occupations and organizations or relegated only to secretarial and other support roles. The notion that women were less intelligent than men was widely accepted as fact.
Today, when individuals believe that one gender is smarter than the other, the scale is tipped in favor of women. While some might celebrate this as progress, I find it grating. Disdain for women appears to have swung so far in the opposite direction that it’s common and even encouraged to view women as superior in many respects to men. A famous saying tells us that “women do everything men do, but backwards and in heels.”
I place this and related sentiments in the category of “girlboss feminism.” Girlboss feminism endeavors to empower girls and women to believe that they can competently lead at work and take control of their careers, but unfortunately it doesn’t rest in that perfectly reasonable (and obvious) place. Girlboss feminism wants to convince us that XX chromosomes contain magic. Women aren’t like regular bosses; they’re cool, superwoman bosses!
Meanwhile, this occurs alongside efforts to deny the existence of any gender difference that does not favor women (e.g., that women generally show less interest than men in leadership roles). There’s a clear double standard: It’s sexist to suggest that women have different characteristics, skills, or preferences than those of men unless those differences paint women in a more favorable light than men—in which case those differences should be shouted from the rooftops.
Anyone thinking critically should sense that girlboss feminism protests too much. Beneath its sequined shell is the soft bigotry of low expectations. After all, if we truly believe that women are just as capable as men, would we need to gas them up in such patronizing ways?
I have an interest in this issue because I believe that research on gender would be more nuanced and accurate if this double standard didn’t exist. In a previous post, I explained why behavioral research journals may be biased against studies that fail to tell a tidy, consistent, and statistically significant story about human behavior—a result of which is that many scholars have been tempted to massage or even fabricate their data. The bias doesn’t end there; it’s been my experience and the experience of others that journals are biased against research that doesn’t paint women in a favorable light.
For example, a few years ago an article suggesting that junior women scientists published more impactful research under the mentorship of men scientists was pulled because of outrage over its conclusions. Many appear to have taken issue with the fact that co-authoring research with more senior scientists was used as a proxy for “mentorship.” This is a fair criticism, and perhaps the authors should have stated their findings more plainly and directly. Indeed, this would have been an easy edit for them to perform, and one that should have been requested by the reviewers.
But can anyone reasonably argue that this article would have attracted any criticism at all if it had concluded that young women scientists fared better under the “mentorship” of other women scientists? On the contrary, the article would have been upheld as evidence of the imperative that more women enter science. Suggestions about how men scientists could become better mentors of women scientists would have been made and shared widely.
Had this article been allowed to see the light of day, it might have elicited interesting and productive discussions about why junior women’s research is less impactful when it is co-authored with senior women scientists. Perhaps the work of women scientists simply gets more attention from others when it is co-authored with senior men scientists, thereby enabling it to exhibit a greater influence over later work. Wouldn’t this be a good thing to know if we hope to eventually correct such a bias? And even if the true explanation is that senior women scientists somehow provide worse supervision to junior women scientists, shouldn’t we want to know and correct this? Women should not and do not need to be protected from this information, and to act like they do is insulting and infantilizing.
I was drawn towards research on gender not because I want to be a lobbyist for women, but because of a genuine fascination and interest in gender, especially in findings that make some people (including me) uncomfortable but that can also provoke rich conversations and better understandings.
After all, isn’t this what researchers are meant to be doing—enabling a better understanding of our world and the people in it? Then it’s up to the activists and policymakers to push forward, armed with complete and accurate knowledge rather than a bunch of half-truths. That’s the path that leads towards true equality—and away from empty platitudes like those made by girlboss feminism.
