| Abstract: |
Women are conspicuous by their absence at the most prominent
levels of science, medicine, business, law, and academia. Women
are sparsely represented on the editorial boards of leading
journals, on the steering committees of professional
organizations, and in groups like the National Academy of
Sciences. Women are thinly represented among full professors at
major research universities. Virginia Valian, professor of
psychology at City University of New York, discusses research
on the social-cognitive processes that disadvantage women and
advantage men even though the participants sincerely hold
egalitarian and meritocratic attitudes. She reviews
experimental data that demonstrate how gender schemas - held by
men and women alike - produce subtle overvaluations of men and
undervaluations of women. As a result of many small
differences, men are able to accumulate advantage more quickly
than women.
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