Sexist Attitudes

Decent Essays
Looking back on high school, it is obvious that there were some strong underlying sexist attitudes in the STEM departments. I was a sophomore in when I had my male chemistry teacher told me that he, “didn’t think I would be able to handle honors molecular biology,” and he proceeded to advise me to take an astronomy class instead, one that wouldn’t be too difficult. I had a 95% in his class and when I went against his judgement, I received an 88% in biology. He underestimated me even though I had the intelligence and the drive to do well in that honors biology class. I wondered why that was until I noticed that I was one of the few girls in that chemistry class.
To this day, I am still angered by his words and I know many other women would

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Gender And Stereotypes

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Negative attitudes and stereotypes are a part of society; they become bigger issues when these thoughts and beliefs turn into actions, such as discrimination and aggression. Over the last decade strides have been made to change societal ideals and norms but research shows discrimination among particular groups remains high. The results of a study done by The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force shows that members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community experience high rates of discrimination and violence (Grant et al., 2011). Theories on the formation of attitudes and stereotypes include Social Learning, Social Cognition, Implicit Association. Resent studies have started to examine the effects media can have on attitudes…

    • 742 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Women have it harder than men… Women aren’t treated equal… Society is dominated by men”. Has society even thought that maybe men don’t have it as easy as society thinks? Society has focused too much on women's rights movement that they forgot about men. Media has affected gender roles throughout generations.…

    • 607 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The human race is over 200,000 years in the making, and we still struggle with treating women as someone who is equal to men. Sexism is not hard to find look around. It is probably happening right now. Women experience some type of sexism at least once a week, if not on a daily basis. No one is born a sexist, people are taught to be sexist.…

    • 1463 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ilm Field Research Paper

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages

    I interviewed my aunt Ruth Saavedra, and she explained how she faced challenges when she was in nursing school at Hartnell College because of her gender. She stated that when women would take science courses with men, women in the class wouldn’t have the voice to speak up and answer the questions, but men did. This proves the idea of women not feeling confident enough to speak their opinion because of the judgment they will get. According to Fuselier-Thompson, Diane Rowman, and Ezella McPherson, they claimed how: “The unwelcoming environment often starts in the classroom with young girls and continues as they become women and decided to major in the STEM fields. There are a number of factors, such as a lack of support, the attitude of professors, discrimination, poor communication, a lack of respect, stereotypes, and negative interactions with peers that contribute to the low number of women in STEM”.…

    • 1104 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Many women are afraid of entering STEM careers because of how male-dominated they are. As young children, many of us are told the gender stereotypes and what is considered "normal". Looking back on my childhood, I had the fortune of growing up with uncles and brothers and they taught me that my gender would not define my career choice in the future. I believe that if we introduce STEM classes younger, it would become more "normal" for the next generations. Currently, these classes are only offered at higher grade levels and many girls already shy away.…

    • 283 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Throughout history, men and women does not treat equally. Men had more privileges and rights, such as being able to vote, able to get a better job and able to get higher education. Even though, we have improved our livings as time goes by, sexism still exists today in our society. Gender types refer to the roles, behaviors, and expectations our culture assigns to those bodily differences. We are taught that gender differences are natural; therefore we didn’t notice how much we have been socialized in to them.…

    • 88 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Taking Women Students Seriously In Rich’s speech, she asserts that women students are not taken seriously, this is true because, me, as a female student can speak on the issues that the author states about females not being taken seriously. “I see my function here today as one of trying to create a context, delineate a background, against which we might talk about woman as students and students as women” (Rich 443). This speech was spoken by Adrienne Rich, who has strong solutions to the way female students are treated in and out of the classrooms as well as in society in the 1940s, by stating examples and some of her personal experiences as a female student and as a women teacher living in a world that looks down upon women as if…

    • 1379 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The STEM field has been historically male-dominant, and social barriers against women still largely discourage female participation. I was among twenty percent of the…

    • 783 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Sexist Behavior

    • 1368 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Analyze the different ways that sexist behavior is handled in the formal and informal bureaucracy. Bureaucracy: Bureaucracies were around, in diverse forms, for lots centuries (assume Catholic Church). It becomes sociologist Max Weber who first understood the importance of the bureaucratic employer and its an increasing number of pervasive influence on present day society. In keeping with Weber, who like many sociologists, turned into interested in the sweeping social changes taking vicinity at some point of the Industrial Revolution (against anthropologists, who have been greater inquisitive about old, conventional societies and lifestyle), the paperwork changed into an organizational variation of a system he known as an explanation.…

    • 1368 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    While growing up, we are all told that we can do anything we set our minds to. We can be singers, actors, and astronauts. Not even they sky is the limit to us. So why is it that when women join a STEM field, they are met with bias at every turn, just because of their gender?…

    • 502 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Transitioning from a small catholic elementary school with roughly sixty peers in my graduating class to Hudson High School was a shock. For the first time in my life I was surrounded by hundreds of unfamiliar faces, many of which looked nothing like mine. At first it was extremely easy for me to fall into the stereotypes of a large public school- categorizing my peers as populars, loners, jocks, and nerds. It was in having personal relationships with people from these different social groups that I discovered that the differences between us were minuscule.…

    • 493 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Sexism Against Women

    • 618 Words
    • 3 Pages

    There is also the issue of female sexual assault. Research done by renowned international commissions indicate that some of the factors which motivate perpetrators of female sexual abuse include hatred for women and the need to inflict psychological trauma on women. Cases of rape have become the order of the day in the world. The women are seen as unwanted subjects in the society and hence sexual harassment and abuse is used against them primarily to punish them and make them feel inferior. The most hurting part is that the perpetrators of these acts go unpunished in many countries.…

    • 618 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Meritocracy could be construed to be flawed, as it is basing Australia to be a classless society that rewards its citizens for their abilities and talents. Kimball (1995) relates working concepts of meritocracy are closely linked to science. Science is believed to be true and objective, a more ‘meritorious’ type of knowledge that accurate people, methodologies and ideas. Science automatically assumes that science is elevated above other forms of knowledge which becomes apparent in scientists one way method of communication, and that there is nothing to be gained by a non scientific person (Kimball, 1995, p.141).…

    • 1139 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Any female in the STEM field goes in knowing that she will be a part of the minority. Most girls are told be prepared to be in classes where the majority is boys. Most adults tell them that they should not get distracted by the boys, and their fellow girls say that they are so lucky to be surrounded by boys. It is as if girls cannot be in a class to actually learn, but instead their only focus is on being around boys. A female in STEM is already fighting the stereotype because the STEM field is predominantly male.…

    • 1890 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Gender socialization is so broad that it allows for many different viewpoints of the same topic. One theorist could be using Role congruity theory to analyze how people conforming to their societal gender roles effects their participation in STEM, while another theorist could be looking at how being expected to do well, and valuing doing well, could effect STEM participation and overall perception in STEM, and yet both would be using gender socialization to analyze the topic. In spite of the fact that gender socialization allows for a variety of theories to be used, it doesn’t always account for the gender gap between women. By using an intersectional approach researchers have been able to bridge this gap a little. There still is not extensive research done on minorities in STEM, but there are a few and that is a start.…

    • 1630 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays