There are few women at the most prominent levels of science, medicine, business, law, and academia. Women are sparsely represented among keynote speakers at conferences and in groups like the National Academy of Sciences. Why?
Two concepts - gender schemas and the accumulation of advantage - together explain women's slower advancement compared to men's. A review of current observational and experimental data suggests that although people have meritocratic and egalitarian intentions, those very intentions can interfere with meritocratic and egalitarian behavior.
Gender schemas – held by men and women alike – produce subtle over-valuations of men and undervaluations of women in professional are-as. As a result of many small differences in evaluations, men accumulate advantage more quickly than women.
There are remedies – both at an institutional level and at an individual level. Institutions can improve their procedures for hiring, retaining, and promoting men and women to achieve genuinely fair organizations that make full use of everyone's talents. Individuals can act more in keeping with their values and be more effective in their professional lives.
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Virginia Valian is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at Hunter College and is a member of the doctoral faculties of Psychology, Linguistics, and Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is the director of Hunter College Gender Equity Project (GEP) and the Language Acquisition Research Center (LARC).
Dr. Valian works on gender equity and on the psychology of language. In gender equity Dr. Valian performs research on the reasons behind women's slow advancement in the professions and proposes remedies for individuals and institutions. She is the author of Why so slow? The advancement of women, and co-author, with Abigail Stewart, of An inclusive academy: Achieving diversity and excellence.
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Columbia, Barnard and Teachers College students, faculty and staff members are welcome to attend the public talk at 5-6:30pm.
This event is hosted by the Office of Faculty Development & Diversity, Arts & Sciences, and co-sponsored by the Faculty Diversity Initiative of the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement.
