Ha! We Knew It All Along

We knew this all along but we'll let you in on the secret.  A majority of Americans think women are just as competent as men, if not more so, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Among the 25% of respondents who did perceive a gender difference in smart, most said that women were more intelligent and competent than men, the LA Times reported.

This all came out of a scientific study published Thursday in the journal American Psychologist that examines Americans’ perceptions of women over the past 70 years.

“It’s a pretty dramatic shift,” says Alice Eagly, a social psychologist at Northwestern University in Illinois who led the work, at the site. “If you think women are still seen as less capable than men, then forget it. That is not the case.”

Where did it ever come from, this idea that women can't do the same work as men?

Pretty simple.  It all comes down to three things.

"Eagly and her co-authors analyzed 16 public opinion polls spanning from 1946 to 2018 to see how gender stereotypes have evolved over time. Specifically, they looked at three clusters of personality traits that they define as competence, communion and agency," the newspaper notes.

Competence traits include being organized, intelligent and capable.

"The communion cluster includes traits generally associated with good social skills — warmth, compassion, expressiveness, generosity and altruistic impulses," the story goes on.

Agency traits are more self-oriented and include assertiveness, decisiveness and even aggression.

To assemble enough data to be statistically significant, three researchers categorized each of the questions to see which cluster of traits they best fit. Responses to a question about whether men or women were more organized were put in the “competence” category. A question about who was more likely to stay calm in an emergency went in the “agency” category.

Eventually, clear trends emerged.

Eagly points out at the web site that it was not much of a surprise that the perceived competence of women steadily increased over time. As more women entered the workforce in the second half of the 20th century, more Americans had an opportunity to observe women in roles that require organization, intelligence and ability, she explains.

“Back in the ’40s, the public didn’t see women working as journalists or professors, and they were not famous in the sciences,” she says. In addition, women now earn more bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees than men — another shift from decades ago.

The bigger surprise was the discovery that over the same period, women were increasingly likely to be seen as more compassionate and socially skilled than men.

The whole thing can be explained, Eagly says is due to the way women and men are segregated within fields, with women often filling roles that require skills associated more with communion than agency.

Peter Glick, a social psychologist specializing in gender discrimination at Lawrence University in Wisconsin, is quoted at the LA Times as cautioning that while the “female competence advantage” may feel like a win for women, it doesn’t mean discrimination is dead.

“Discrimination is a bit like that ‘whack-a-mole’ game,” he said. “Gains in one area get offset by other routes toward inequality popping up.”

Even though women are now perceived as just as competent as men, they aren’t seen as assertive enough to be promoted into leadership roles.

“Despite all the social changes, women remain the ‘nurturers’ and men still dominate leadership positions in business, politics, etc.,” he said.