pinkscience101

[pinkscience101]

How Are Game Development Companies Adapting to Progressive Culture?

          From Super Mario Bros 2’s Birdo in 1988 to Life is Strange’s Chloe in 2015, the gaming community is seeing a large influx of diverse characters in gaming. More and more game development companies are riding the wave of progressive culture, using it to normalize LGBT characters, embody progressive trends, and even target an audience that craves a greater representation of diversity. While these intentions are well-meaning, they have landed several companies in precarious positions and sparked controversy. This is especially likely to occur when character personalities and interactions are almost exclusively built upon diverse character identities.

          These practices are known for stripping the character of any engaging, unique characterization, and replacing them with the ongoing insistence of their own racial and/or sexual identities. On the other hand, a subtly implied characteristic or light musing on someone’s queerness can serve as a building block to a tasteful, powerful scene, which could fiddle with a player’s heartstrings. These can definitely add another layer of character immersion to any story-driven title. But only if done right. Over the past 2 decades, we have a wealth of examples, including the good, the bad, and the (quite literally) ugly. Let’s look at how game companies have explored their own implementations of progressive culture, and pick apart how these experiments can make or break their final product.

          We’ll start off with the ugly. Bioware is known for creating rpg titles with massive fantasy worlds, immersive characters, and impressive storytelling. Two big franchises come into mind when considering how Bioware has experimented with diverse characters: Dragon Age and Mass Effect. Both of these franchises contain huge open worlds and are well known for revolutionizing the fantasy and rpg genres, especially Mass Effect. Let’s focus on Mass Effect: Andromeda. This game was under controversy for an excruciatingly long time for its very forced, contrived messages about beauty expectations and portraying women especially.

          Now, anyone looking at the game can tell what BioWare’s aim was with these characters. But at the same time, anyone looking at the game can understand that these characters came across as strange, unnatural-looking, and in many cases, just downright ugly and undesirable as playable character models. They could have made them look trendy and diverse in their own stylistic ways, but instead they made the models’ faces very bulbous and imperfect, deliberately so (BioWare and the Unfortunate Faces of Diversity). This video highlights how a lot of mainstream game development companies (particularly BioWare in this case) have reacted to feminist critiques of ideally drawn character models that attract the male gaze.

          This has led them to change a lot of their models (especially the female ones) in the latest Dragon Age and Mass Effect to be much less flattering and suggest a closer fit to realistic standards, with more colored characters dragged in as well. These have actually led to a significant rise in girl gamers taking part in the Sci-Fi RPG genre, but with how blatantly terrible most female models look in Mass Effect: Andromeda, it’s unquestionable that this was a very rushed, desperate attempt to better fit progressive ideals (BioWare and the Unfortunate Faces of Diversity). This could have been handled much more tastefully.

          Speaking of tasteful, let’s move onto some well done progressive adaptations from game companies. Characters are a massive driving force in RPG and adventure genres in terms of presentation and character development. Modern games have set the bar extremely high for presenting main characters. It’s basically a given that finished products must boast amazing character model designs, which is one of the things that seriously restricted the potential of the aforementioned Mass Effect: Andromeda. One of the best ways to build upon characters with diverse identities is to spill more of their personality into the plotline incrementally, especially during deeply emotional scenes.

          Life Is Strange paved the way for this formula with its original game and crystallized it to an even greater level in the prequel, Life is Strange: Before the Storm. This adventure game is driven by a sequence of unique choices, each of which have ambiguous consequences that propel the story forwards. In Life is Strange: Before the Storm, the level of intimacy the protagonist develops with Rachel is stringently dependent on the player’s choices, giving the players a new sense of agency and liberty in their decisions (Favis). In a plotline that transitions through motifs of enduring grief, dread, and unpredictability, forming an unshakeable bond between two implicitly lesbian characters serves as a safe haven from surrounding chaos (Favis). Rather than presenting itself as a decision-making adventure title with queer themes thrown in irrelevantly (as many RPGs have failed doing), it fundamentally ties the intimacy between diverse characters into a very emotionally-invoking story of dreamlike proportions. Successful queer adaptations of characters can also be uncovered through little hints as a game progresses, which is the case for one of Gearbox’s most popular franchises: Borderlands.

          Borderlands 2 serves as a popular example of how LGBT characters can be subtly implied, adding a quirky bonus to their personality without having their sexual identity be their sole defining characteristic. This game featured a couple of gay and lesbian characters, not in a very overt fashion, but just as a little cherry on top of their personalities, which grew as the player uncovered more of their backstories. Axton from Borderlands 2 was an inadvertent example of this LGBT character inclusion, but his bisexual identity was then later added upon through a DLC campaign to solidify his suggested queerness (Shaw). This was a nice addition to Axton’s chill, carefree spirit, and was built in as a subtle easter egg.

          Sticking with Borderlands 2, we also have Tiny Tina who is suggested to be a lesbian character. Being a spontaneous, goofy, and fun-loving personality that she is, this is another great little spoon of sugar on top of an already iconic character, who often takes on the face of the game’s advertisement banners. She points her original reason for helping the protagonists towards her crush on Moxxi, another female character allied with the player, which ties together Tina’s motives and the secret of her identity in a pretty smooth fashion (Shaw). Both of these characters’ sexual identities are completely unknown to the player when they are presented, and are later uncovered through whisper-quiet clues to embellish the moving plotline and character backstories.

          This, in a nutshell, is exactly the way in which a company should approach the inclusion of diverse characters, namely LGBT ones. These examples have taken great strides in normalizing the LGBT presence in modern game characters, tying diverse identity traits with their already-rich personas. The above examples share a common goal of having the player uncover these diverse aspects of characters themselves, rather than having progressive ideas or faces be a fundamental trademark of a title’s presentation. So, given how Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, Borderlands 2, and other games have successfully translated the changing progressive culture into video game themes, how will companies adapt to the need for diverse characters in the future? As long as these attempts at inclusion are done meaningfully, will the gaming community become more open to progressive game adaptations in the future?

Sources:

BioWare and the Unfortunate Faces of Div. Produced by Game Objective, YouTube, 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-0nCsE2zMA. Accessed 3 Dec. 2018.

Favis, Elise. "Opinion – Life is Strange: Before the Storm Is The Queer Love Story I’ve Always Wanted In A Game." www.gameinformer.com, Game Informer, 24 Nov. www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2017/11/24/opinion-life-is-strange-before-the -storm-is-the-queer-love-story-ive-always-wanted-in-a-game.aspx. Accessed 3 Dec. 2018.

Shaw, Adrienne. "Axton in Borderlands 2." lgbtqgamearchive.com, LGBTQ Video Game Archive, 15 June 2018, lgbtqgamearchive.com/2018/06/15/axton-in-borderlands-2/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2018.

Shaw, Adrienne. "Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2." lgbtqgamearchive.com, LGBTQ Video Game Archive, 15 June 2018, lgbtqgamearchive.com/2018/06/15/tiny-tina-in-borderlands-2/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2018.

[pinkscience101]

How is Racial Representation in Film Changing in the 21st Century?

          As we venture further into the 21st century, new trends in racial representation are emerging in film each year. Black Panther and Get Out are two movies in particular that have revolutionized the way we perceive the racially-induced power dynamic in movies and television, especially in regards to presentation. Both of these films sought to alter our perceptions of the working world, put new spins on traditional standards of race, and challenge what we define as “normal” when portraying Black characters.

          The concept of “afrofuturism” encompasses a slew of hypothetical scenarios such as, “what if African Americans were never captured and colonialized?” and “what if Africa was home to the most technologically adept nation there ever was?” (Reese). These questions are thoroughly examined in the atmospheric world of Black Panther, in which the fictional nation of Wakanda serves as an exemplar of those hypotheses. This nation is by far the most technologically advanced nation in the entire world, and has somehow concealed its futuristic advances from the rest of the globe.

          The surrounding narrative of this fictional world serves to challenge the traditional ideas of Europeans establishing themselves as the most powerful, advanced, civilized groups on the planet, seeking to conquer other nations and colonize them in a conquest to expand their empire (Reese). It instead delineates this fictional nation as a country which is by far the most modern, but also has no intention of conquering other nations, nor do they engage in spreading their technological advancements.

          This film carries a huge mission on its back, if not several. Given that it relies heavily on race and puts a spin on power dynamics in relation to our own history, it can be considered a blaxploitation film. These films, as well as afrofuturism, serve to capture and beautifully put into film what a target demographic would like to be explored within a movie, and especially one that follows an agenda. This agenda is to redraw and redefine the standards of archetypal African American characters within television and film.

          Much of the previously defined archetypes and stereotypes alike of African American characters rely on historical relevance, such as the “Tom” role, which refers to being the stereotypical submissive, obedient slave character in any historical film (“African American Film Stereotypes”). Another classic trope that we’ve seen in traditional portrayals is the “Brutal Black Buck” character. This role is often characterized by irrationality, triviality, short-temperedness, shallowness, and hypersexual tendencies (“African American Film Stereotypes”).

          Aside from the temporary relief that these archetypes provide to the viewer, they continually perpetuate misconceptions regarding the Black community. They are not particularly representative of Black individuals, and Black actors who played the roles of these typical characters in the past have openly disapproved of their impact on film audiences (“African American Film Stereotypes”). In addition to being misrepresentative, they also insist on displaying the racial division between Whites and Blacks, rarely showing interracial association in films, unless the film is fundamentally based in interracial collaboration and achievement (such as in Remember the Titans and Glory Road).

          By having a predominantly Black cast in Black Panther, the audience had a myriad of diverse personality types to draw from, which helped steer away from the common stereotypes. These established a new set of personalities that film audiences could apply to their schema of archetypal Black characters, in a manner that presented them as noble as T’Challa, as ingenious as Shuri, as calculating as Killmonger, and as ruthless as M’Baku. Though the film’s reputation can be easily interpreted as a blaxploitation film which appeals to a growing demographic which craves representational reform, it has made a lot of ground in film as a movie to challenge traditional racial power dynamics and implement afrofuturism. While it puts a spin on these power dynamics, Get Out experiments with more traditional ideas on race and power.

          Get Out, from start to finish, explores a multitude of traditional power dynamics within race and experiments with them as the film progresses. These elements include family dynamics of an interracial relationship, a Black man’s service in the TSA, and Black servants housekeeping for a wealthy White family. The movie takes a dark turn when we learn that the protagonist’s girlfriend, Rose, is searching for healthy, strong Black men’s and women’s bodies to use for brain transplants for elders in her community. These White elders would hold auctions for each body, and would essentially replenish their youth by assuming control of these younger, stronger bodies.

          Nearly all of the Black characters portrayed, aside from those that are practically being used as automatons, are rather accurate representations of Black individuals in their characteristics and behaviors. This essentially explicated the film from reverting back to the common tropes discussed above. Since the Armitage family’s Black servants have the mind of Rose’s grandparents and live within younger Black bodies, they cannot be critiqued as authentic Black roles.

          Much of the film’s critical acclaim comes from it’s incredible plot and realistic, relatable characterization, which is due in part to its varied cast. All of the roles seem pretty on point and make for a zany, otherworldly, and yet very believable sequence of events. Chris, the protagonist, is calm, quick, caring, careful, and clever, which is especially appraised and critiqued in a horror movie, where characters are traditionally naive and much too often, they hopelessly fail to avoid danger. His friend Rod works as a TSA agent, and hears Chris out when Chris witnesses the eerie behavior at his girlfriend’s family get together. He catches onto Chris’s situation and tracks down where he really is, confirming (at least parts of) his speculations. The heroes are shrewd and competent. Even if not for the sake of designing a brilliant horror movie, these believable, true, modestly authentic roles take the audience’s attention away from any distractions or inadequacies that may otherwise be within its presentation. Their attention is then re-channeled with full force into the atmosphere and realm of the film itself, which is a testament to the film’s greatness as well as the accuracy of its representation.

          Moving past the stellar characterization of Black characters in this movie, the behavior of the White community associated with Rose’s family is quite alarming, and deliberately made so. At the family gathering, Chris is incessantly confronted and badgered with absurd questions, yet weirdly relevant ones. These elderly White folk channel their interests towards one thing and one thing only, and that is the salubriousness, strength and capability of Chris’s body and lifestyle. After all, Chris is the candidate who is currently being auctioned for his body. This can be interpreted as a slave analogy, in which he himself is a tradeable piece of property. He is inevitably being appraised for his worth as a body and a specimen.

          The final scene of the film has been redone before the current version, in which the protagonist's friend Rod shows up in a police vehicle, already up to speed on the situation (Chitwood). He was prepared to rescue Chris from the horrific family. Had this been the original cut, Chris would have been arrested by an unknowing police officer (Chitwood). This ending would have dramatically altered the movie's message as well as its reception. In fact, the film may have packed a stronger punch had it kept the original ending, showcasing how Chris's race and bloody trail could still make him the villain, despite all the trauma he fought through. The surrounding White community is a wealthy, niche community. They are quite isolated, living lives with few diverse figures or even completely devoid of people of color. The residents would more than likely be seen as the victims, leaving Chris to be framed as the real murderer (Chitwood). The deer accident scene of the film suggested the bias of the local police early on, which could then serve as an omen had the original ending been kept.

          These films and many more ushered in a new wave of blaxploitation movies, redefining the standards we hold for Black characters in film. They challenged traditional power dynamics by illustrating hypothetical retellings of history, implementing afrofuturism through two starkly different concepts. They made viewers wonder how these unique styles of racial representation will endure the next decade, and if their overall reception will remain positive.

Sources:

"African American Film Stereotypes." UKEssays.com. 11 2013. All Answers Ltd. 11 2018 <https://www.ukessays.com/essays/film-studies/reviewing-the-stereotyped-african-american-actors-film-studies-essay.php?vref=1>.

Chitwood, Adam. "‘Get Out’ Filmmakers Explain Why They Changed the Ending." collider.com, Collider, 22 Feb. 2018, collider.com/get-out-alternate-ending-explained/#jordan-peele. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018.

Reese, Hope. "How the Afrofuturism behind Black Panther and Get Out combines social justice and sci-fi." How the Afrofuturism behind Black Panther and Get Out combines social justice and sci-fi, Vox, 27 Feb. 2018, www.vox.com/conversations/2018/2/26/17040674/black-panther-afrofuturism-get-out. Accessed 5 Nov. 2018.

[pinkscience101]

How Do Diversity Hiring Initiatives Affect the Culture of Canadian Universities?

          As Canadian universities continue to usher in more and more diverse student populations, accommodating for various minority groups continues to be a challenge. In terms of creating a safer, more accessible learning environment for minority students, Canada has arisen as the nation with perhaps the most welcoming universities to nearly every minority demographic. While these schools have excelled in meeting the needs of minorities, the fundamental structure of hiring faculty and admitting students has become increasingly influenced by equality of outcome initiatives. These initiatives seek to appropriate staff positions and student admission on the basis of factors such as race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.

          While these diversity hiring practices can gain ground in diversifying the staff and student body, the potential concern of university boards valuing inherent characteristics of diverse candidates more than seeking academic and performative merit remains. This is not at all to say that diverse candidates are not as qualified as qualified as any other, but the criteria in university hiring and admissions has been greatly influenced by the push for diversity. To examine how this culture has shifted up until 2018, let’s examine the history of how Canadian universities have met challenges of increasing educational access to diverse students and staff. From there, we can dissect the processes through which diversity initiatives have changed academia.

          Over the last 50 years, university demographics have drastically shifted from being dominated by White males to increasing in diversity of every kind, including differences in ability, ethno-cultural backgrounds, citizenship, class, and sexual orientation (Michalski 66). It is crucial to note that the pacing of this dramatic shift to a much more heterogeneous composition depends on what each university values in their admissions and hiring practices. In terms of bringing in more teachers of color to the field of education, many scholars and schools have pushed to hire more faculty of color. The initiative of diversity hiring often stems from the idea that more people of color in positions of power can serve as mentors and role models to youth of color who need it for growth as scholars (Ryan 594).

          As more “visible minority” teachers find employment, most of them tend to gravitate towards large cities, where progressive ideals and diversity are promoted the most (Ryan 597). This keeps the ratio of visible minority teachers to minority citizens at much lower rates outside of the larger cities (Ryan 597). Even within the population of minority immigrants since 1991, we see that 80% of them are visible minorities and that a whopping 70% of them are of Asian ethnicity, which is expanding much faster than the white population (Ryan 599).

          With all of these rapid changes in demographic, the culture of Canadian universities began steering more deliberately towards equality of education. More affirmative action and scholarships exclusively to minorities emerged. These equality of opportunity initiatives were pushed to accommodate for the rising “visible minority” populations in Canada, especially in larger cities like Toronto, Ontario, and Vancouver (Ryan 597). While many universities sustain their fight for a diverse student and staff body, they often fall short of desirable results through natural hiring means. This leaves minorities underrepresented in faculty and leaders (Chen 4). This urges a more deliberate initiative: to strive for equality of outcome. As opposed to equality of opportunity initiatives, equality of outcome initiatives aim to put inherent traits like class, gender, and race on a hierarchical ladder. They actively seek out candidates with highly diversified backgrounds in accordance to these factors, and aim to put them in positions of power on that basis.

          These initiatives and the ongoing diversification of modern Canadian universities offers a myriad of advantages as well as drawbacks to the sustainability of academic disciplines. The goals of equity initiatives are moving towards equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity. So, what exactly does fostering racial diversity in general do to benefit a university? The heterogeneity of the student and staff body can do a great deal to enhance the intellectual dialogue on university campuses, offering a wider host of lived experiences for students to draw from (Chang 176). Campus diversity also appropriately prepares students for the reality of life beyond college, wherein many fields of labor are growing in diversity (Chang 176). Interacting with peers and mentors of varied backgrounds can make networking and collaboration much easier during and after college years.

          In a study performed involving “Student Socialization and Discussion of Racial Issues as a Function of Campus Diversity”, the effects of racial diversity are isolated and measured on student likelihood of interracial interaction (Chang 181). Results showed that multiracial diversity is a positive predictor of a student’s chances of building interracial bonds and of overall willingness to discuss race and ethnicity (Chang 181). Although the findings did not have a very overt, strong correlation between these factors, the relationship is still substantial and has definitely made its impact on modern university students. In Canadian universities where multiculturalism and multi-racial diversity is often a precedent over many other college values, this enhances students’ social openness and willingness to engage in ethnocentric discussions to a great degree.

         Despite all of the pros that accompany the heightened presence of diverse students and staff in Canadian universities, some colleges have facilitated a culture of radical leftists to a startling degree. These highly progressive cultures are prevalent particularly in large cities like Toronto and Vancouver (Ryan 597). Diversity hiring initiatives are becoming more prevalent in humanities and social justice-centered courses, in which predominantly left voices resound almost exclusively with little room for idea clashing. While conservative people of color attend these schools as well, little to no room is given for them to voice their own input in Canada.

         One great example of the left-wing radicalism produced by student ideologues is the Toronto pronoun debate incident, in which militant groups of students march on behalf of nonbinary transgender rights (Canada university under fire for gender pronoun debate). This incident put a professor and the University of Toronto on the radar as a site of radical left activism with its videos of incessant, overbearing shouts of protest by the students. This also occurred at McMaster University and others with near- mirror image environment of crazed, angry students at the same point of contention. Many of these protesters probably did not even understand the professor’s motives or intent in his actions, but proceeded to shout and chant as an automated response to someone merely challenging their ideology.

          These predominantly liberal college environments often foster a culture of isolation from the working world, such that meritocracy and performative success are devalued while group members of marginalized class, race, indigenous status, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other factors are praised and respected. This ideology often goes hand-in-hand with equality of outcome initiatives in that professors and students associate value with their innate traits and identity groups. In addition, these obstinate university learning environments often shut out the input and knowledge of any other intellectual approaches, thus simply compounding on the same ideology that they already adhere to. This is especially true of certain disciplines like psychology, in which liberals in academia are overrepresented, which increases the progressive standards in a research-based field (Redding 206)..

          In Canada’s larger cities, that growing radical university voice is from the left, speaking out more prominently on the behalf of oppressed groups than perhaps any other nation. Entire disciplines and career funding appropriations are given to these diversity-oriented members of college boards. This is essentially a showing of how diversity hiring initiatives and hierarchical value of minority groups can drastically change the all-inclusive, relatively unbiased disciplines that all universities should ideally strive for. STEM disciplines tend to be the least susceptible to these sociopolitical influences, while humanities, social sciences, sociology, and psychology especially have become the most affected by them. Psychology fields in general have been affected by the dominance of liberal faculty (Redding 204).

          As the liberal voices of these large city universities have gone from loud to deafening, the impact of conservatives and moderates have fallen from muffled pleas to muted whispers. This is true not only in the student body, but in professors and department chairs as well. Richard E. Redding of the University of Virginia highlights the conservative absence in the field of psychology and its potentially harmful consequences. For some perspective on the vast underrepresentation of conservative faculty, 85 professors and graduate students were surveyed in the University of Virginia (Redding 206). Results showed that 74% of them were Democrats and just 5% were Republicans, and on a 1 to 8 scale from “very liberal” to “very conservative”, the mean average was a 3.1 (Redding 206). That’s just the University of Virginia. A similar survey of psychology faculty at Stanford University found zero Republicans outright (Redding 206). These stats serve as a benchmark for the same survey criteria as in Canada, with Canada’s numbers being even more heavily skewed due to a greater degree of progressive ideals and predominantly liberal culture. Beyond that, a former American Association of Psychology president insisted upon radical leftist ideals and to “explicitly blend our data and values” in an effort to push the kinds of radical liberal change that was thought to be needed (Redding 206).

          This is indicative of unbalanced numbers in terms of political affiliation, and now we’ll jump into the implications of that imbalance. When considering how liberal hegemony in universities can directly affect research ethics, much can be said about how the lack of sociopolitical diversity in faculty can be immensely detrimental to an entire discipline. Much of the accumulated research finding no negative effects of gay parenting on child development is statistically flawed, drawing from self-selected samples, self-reports, and suffers from other experimental biases (Redding 207). Severe long-term consequences emerge as a result of these politically-induced design flaws in research. As a sort of negative feedback loop, these flawed studies are used as examples and influence future research methodology to an even greater degree of bias.

          Symbolic racism is indicated as a bias as well, since this methodology equates racism to classic conservative, traditional values such as individualism and personal merit, meaning that conservatives are seen, in and of themselves, as racists and vice versa (Redding 207). This can cause students to oppose, or even enemize conservative values and people in the during and after their college journey. If a school’s sociopolitical composition is predominantly liberal and a field’s research methodology is suffering from it, wouldn’t diversity hiring for liberal contributors only add to the library of flawed research? In any care-oriented discipline (especially psychology and medicine), how can we expect graduates to serve conservative clients if they are taught to undermine the integrity of conservative values?

          The above examples and a number of supporting data points tell us that the sociopolitical composition of universities is in a state of transformation for multiple disciplines, and not just humanities. This is especially true of highly progressive schools with diversity hiring initiatives to seek out more liberal, diverse faculty. The irony in this is that the goal of pushing diversity is to expand the array of experiences from which students can draw from, which it indeed does. As previously established, it also prepares them for successful interracial interactions beyond their college years and expands their intellectual horizons. But liberal biases of Canadian colleges (especially in larger cities like Toronto), which are shown in their biased research methodology and flawed studies, can contribute to research that prioritize liberal agendas over true, objective knowledge. This can be applied to Canada as studying the U.S.’s highly liberal disciplines and understanding shows the fundamental flaws of lacking sociopolitical variance in faculty. This insistence of diversity actually pushes predominantly liberal universities further and further away from true diversity, since conservative contributors remain vastly underrepresented (almost absent) in faculty. It doesn’t matter how diverse a university becomes in terms of race, sexual orientation, disabled status, or gender identity if there is no variance or respect for the diversity of political affiliation.

          These trends are present in U.S. universities and are seen in Canadian universities to a much greater degree, especially in larger cities with progressive ideals. As the inequalities in sociopolitical composition of professors become more apparent, it only begs the questions: how will the differences between liberal and conservative research methodologies affect the future of psychology and other disciplines? How can we balance the influence of differing political lenses when conducting research? Should we limit diversity hiring in Canadian universities that are already filled with diverse, liberal faculty members? Would this help to avoid the emergence of biased research? These questions are the framework for balancing political affiliations in university faculty. They will influence the reliability of a university’s research and the success of its students.

Sources

"Canada university under fire for gender pronoun debate." BBC News, BBC, 21 Nov. 2017, www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42070202. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.

Chang, Mitchell J. "The Positive Educational Effects of Racial Diversity on Campus." EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC), U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 2001,https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED456198.pdf. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.

Chen, Dianbing, and Xinxiao Yang. "Reaffirming Diversity in Higher Education through Faculty Hiring: A leadership Perspective." EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC), U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION , 2013, files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED543017.pdf. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.

Michalski, Joseph H., et al. "The Diversity Challenge for Higher Education in Canada: The Prospects and Challenges of Increased Access and Student Success." digitalcommons.humboldt.edu, Digital Commons @ Humboldt State University, 2017, digitalcommons.humboldt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1011&context=hjsr. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.

Redding, Richard E. "Sociopolitical Diversity in Psychology: The Case for Pluralism." American Psychological Association, APA, 2001, psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2001-00465-001.html. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.

Ryan, James, et al. "Teacher Diversity in Canada: Leaky Pipelines, Bottlenecks, and Glass Ceilings." Canadian Journal of Education, vol. 32, no. 3, 2009, pp. 594-99, www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/canajeducrevucan.32.3.591.pdf. Accessed 16 Oct. 2018.

[pinkscience101]

Why is the Glass Ceiling So Difficult to Break?

     Although women have taken major strides in reaching higher rungs on the corporate ladder, they still occupy less than 5% of Fortune 500 CEO seats and even less positions as the heads of boards in the EU (Paustian-Underdahl). At this point, we’re all familiar with the gender pay gap question, but what happens to women’s numbers in senior and executive positions? Why do women struggle to move beyond managerial positions in the workplace? Are there any fundamentally biased corporate hiring practices or preferences that restrict aspiring female executives from succeeding? It is crucial to examine the longevity of full-time labor in men and women to understand why women are underrepresented at the top of the corporate ladder. How can variables like race, education level, gender and age affect women in terms of networking? Let’s explore the various factors that influence a woman’s ability to achieve elite positions.

     Due to the relative homogeneity of male executive managers, the challenge of isolating the pure effect of gender on standard employee compensations from all other factors can be difficult. One huge advantage that studying executive compensation has had is the overall ease of finding compensation data, since all publicly traded companies of the US must release this info (Shin). Some data reveals more about what having women in executive positions can do to the gender pay gap of the entire corporation. For example, rather than having women in top management, greater numbers of women on the board of directors is shown to boost the compensation of women in top management, lessening the pay gap among high executives (Shin).

     In addition to the underrepresentation of women in executive positions as a whole, women are also much more likely to be managing companies specializing in social services, health, and trade (Bertrand). At first look, this may seem to concur with our findings in our first piece on the underrepresentation of women in STEM. However, this alleged segregation shows no definitive data to suggest systematic placement of women in any low-wage industries (Bertrand).

     Aside from these findings, a woman’s lifestyle choices, namely the one to become a mother, can take a huge toll on her ability to enhance her position and her compensation. Lack of flexible work arrangements to support a woman’s motherhood is immensely detrimental to her chances of being considered for promotional opportunities, and she often struggles to build momentum when re-entering her career (Johns). In addition to all of the crazy demands of childbearing, women suffer from societal paradigms that see motherhood and maternal leave as the “death" of a woman’s career. This is devastating to women’s aspirations of being hired as senior managers and executives, especially due to all the constant labor, networking, and momentum that is needed to build(or rebuild) one’s image.

     Speaking of networking, much of the informal networking that serves as a crucial pipeline for promotion tends to exclude women. This is where some of the gendered trends in behavior, character and mindset come into play. In the healthcare industry, an estimated 48 percent of men have lunch with other managers on a monthly basis, as opposed to 33 percent of women (Johns). This disparity(and other similar ones) in networking often stems from differences in confidence and long-term ambition between men and women, which also contributes to the lack of women in higher positions. Sponsors can promote and sell skills to larger figureheads in an organization, assisting to combat the challenges of being promoted. Women tend to downplay the importance of having a sponsor or simply fail to capitalize off of them, which may be partially attributed to the reluctance to negotiate with senior male sponsors, since it is often misunderstood as a sexual interest (Johns).

     To combat all of the above challenges of. building momentum, women often need employers with commitments to gender diversity and equity before the glass ceiling can be broken (Johns). Companies that have been successful in dismantling barriers to entry(for women) tend to display these characteristics: tracking of progress, addressing preconceptions and stereotypes, encourage effective pipelines that promote women, create flexible work arrangements(especially for mothers), and enforce mentorship programs (Johns). Even with all of these resources and committees set forth to help break the glass ceiling, many companies still struggle with reaching parity(or even with ameliorating the gap). These studies suggest that gender diversity must comprise the fundamental work culture in order to make significant progress. 

     Stepping back from the practices that can assist companies in balancing men and women in higher positions, it may be feasible to say that men are more naturally suited towards these senior and executive level positions. But if this is true, how so? All of the fundamental arguments still stand as we mentioned earlier: women are hindered by their motherhood; they often lack networking partners and sponsors to promote themselves effectively; they face gender discrimination and are held to higher standards of evaluation for overall competence; they lack mentors and role models in large corporate offices to inspire them to aim higher; they generally tend to be less consistent in their full-time labor as they get older(while men tend to stay quite consistent at older ages). But beyond all of these deterrents that women struggle with, men tend to benefit from implicit demands of work culture in terms of hiring in general and executive hiring in particular.

     Many studies have been undertaken to remove potential biases from associating a gender with elite leadership positions. RCT, or randomized control trials, act as balancing measures to view gendered positions of leadership without institutional biases and stereotypes(i.e. like how managers are thought to be men, secretaries are thought of as women). RCT emphasizes the importance of an appropriate fit between the demands of leader roles and the gendered behavior of the aspiring applicant, estimating the success of male and female leaders on how closely they can replicate these leadership demands (Paustian-Underdahl).

     Organizations with men as the majority and demand a masculine culture produce inherent barriers for women due to the incongruity of these demands with societal expectations of women (Paustian-Underdahl). These implicit barriers are shown to hold true for organizations dominated by women as well, which are considered to be more feminine in culture and in which more women are represented than men (Paustian-Underdahl). Due to the nature of most elite networks in today’s companies, much of the balancing problem is rooted in the vast majority of businesses sustaining a masculine culture and strongly insisting on male figureheads at elite levels.

     One point of contention in literature on gender and leadership is the use of self-ratings versus other ratings of leadership skills. Due to the traditional, historical view of women as homemakers and men as breadwinners over the years, shifting past gender role paradigms can be a hidden challenge (Paustian-Underdahl). This is because employees have instilled such ideas for years, and men often rate themselves as highly suited in a workplace environment while dissociating women from the workplace (Paustian-Underdahl). Similar to trends in behavior during job interviews, women tend to rate their performance more consistently with peers and colleagues, while men tend to overrate and boast about their performance, which often comes from their overall higher self-esteem (Paustian-Underdahl).

     We’ve examined numerous reasons why women struggle to make it to the top. But how much harder is the journey for women of color, and how does their lack of representation affect the growth of businesses?

     Female executives tend to be younger than male executives, which is often criteria to lower a female executive’s wages. Robert B. Reich, a member of Obama’s transition board, emphasized that businesses that made commitments to support the success of minorities and women achieved an average annualized return on investment of 18.3 percent, as opposed to just 7.9 percent for those with more homogenous compositions (Beckwith). Due to the competitive nature among Fortune 500 companies’ elite seats, African women often face exclusion from informal networking and report having conflict relationships with other women, namely white women (Beckwith). Much of their struggle comes from the same challenges that white women face(lack of sponsors, lack of informal networking, little flexibility in work schedule, and lack of mentors), but to a greater degree since added isolation exacerbates their chances to be visibly successful and gain momentum with networking (Beckwith).

     After taking all of these arguments into account, it is feasible to say that for companies to reduce the gender pay gap for elite positions, a deliberate, focused effort must be put forth to implement gender diversity into work culture. This is typically done through programs of mentorship, sponsorship, and peer networking. The challenges in battling traditional gender roles in the workplace coupled with demands of masculine leadership in many modern businesses contribute to the ideal archetypes of men in the hot seats. It would be easier for women to rise to these challenges if more workplaces had flexible work arrangements, but jobs demanding long hours of labor and ongoing momentum(characteristic of many higher level positions) can draw women away just by their nature. As we keep finding more and more answers to the same questions, new questions reveal themselves. How can we teach women in managerial positions to improve their workplace networking skills and embrace potential sponsors? How can we improve the gender diversity of work culture to encourage more women to aim high? How can we teach women to over-promise in interviews and boast in self ratings? If we did, would the incongruity between the behavior and societal expectations negate its benefits? Moving forward, our ability to effectively test and implement solutions to these challenges will frame the gender diversity of modern businesses.

Sources:

Beckwith, Dr. A L., et al. "The Underrepresentation of African American Women in Executive Leadership: What’s Getting in the Way?" Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 4, 2016, pp. 117-23, jbsq.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/June_2016_9.pdf. Accessed 22 Sept. 2018.

Bertrand, Marianne, and Kevin F. Hallock. "The Gender Gap in Top Corporate Jobs." Cornell University ILR School, DigitalCommons@ILR, 1 Oct. 2001, digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=hrpubs. Accessed 22 Sept. 2018.

Johns, Merida L. "Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Structural, Cultural, and Organizational Barriers Preventing Women from Achieving Senior and Executive Positions." NCBI US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, NCBI, 1 Jan. 2013, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3544145/. Accessed 22 Sept. 2018.

Paustian-Underdahl, Samantha C., et al. "Gender and Perceptions of Leadership Effectiveness: A Meta-Analysis of Contextual Moderators." Journal of Applied Psychology, vol. 99, no. 6, 2014, pp. 1129-33, www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/apl-a0036751.pdf. Accessed 22 Sept. 2018.

Shin, Taekjin. "Gender and Race Inequality in Management: Critical Issues, New Evidence." The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 639, 1 Jan. 2012, pp. 258-62, www.jstor.org/stable/41328600?read-now=1&seq=3#metadata_info_tab_contents. Accessed 22 Sept. 2018.

[pinkscience101]

Why Aren’t There More Women in STEM Careers?

     As we progress through the early 21st century, women have continually increased their representation in pharmacy, marketing, law, academia, and a plenitude of other disciplines since the 90s. More women than ever before are graduating from universities, and their representation only continues to grow as we approach 2020. Despite their rise in numbers, STEM fields continue to be dominated by men at disproportionate rates, in careers and universities alike.

     In 2015, 47% of the workforce was occupied by women, while women only accounted for 24% of all STEM careers, with a percent of increase of hardly 2% since 2009 (Noonan 3). Given that more women are showing higher rates of academic achievement, why do women remain underrepresented in these traditionally male-dominated STEM careers? Several socioeconomic, cultural, and biological factors can help explain why the gender gap in STEM seems more stagnant than most other disciplines.

     Though much of the raw abilities of students are a product of environmental and social factors through one’s development, it is of substantial significance to note the biological predispositions to particular interests. For example, several large-scale studies have definitively proven some gender-unique skills to be relevant when studying verbal, quantitative, and visuospatial skills in the sexes. In relation to average writing scores, a study from the U.S. Department of Education found: “Females have consistently outperformed males in writing achievement at the 4th, 8th, and 11th grade levels between 1988 and 1996. Differences in male and female writing achievement were relatively large. The writing scores of female 8th graders were comparable with those of 11th grade males.” (Halpern). These studies regarding writing scores were referenced to show the unique advantage women display in verbal abilities. These results are internationally definitive, meaning that the superiority of the average woman’s score is statistically significant in more than 30 countries (Halpern).

     In contrast, our library of research regarding visuospatial information processing has shown different results, but they seem to be definitive in their conclusions once again. Examinations such as the Mazes subtest of the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence, as well as mental rotation tests produced results which showed that boys had significantly better results as early as age 4½ (Halpern). This shows that women and men are, by a significant margin, initially dominant in language-oriented and visuospatial skills respectively, but another data point tells us even more. Negligible sex differences in mathematical abilities are shown through most primary school years, but an unambiguous advantage in men is shown post-primary school, when concepts such as geometry, calculus, and linear algebra are usually taught (Halpern).

     This is crucial to our understanding of the role of biological predisposition to STEM fields, namely in our review of how men and women respectively benefit from their strengths and pursue corresponding fields throughout college. As men are proven to display substantially higher degrees of competence in spatial reasoning and higher-level math, it is understandable that a higher number of them are drawn to STEM majors and careers out of playing to their strengths. In a similar manner, many women are drawn to careers that demand excellence in verbal and writing abilities, such as health, education, social work, language and communications, which would decrease from the percentage of women in STEM in and of itself. This does NOT definitively spell out why the gender gap exists due to the presence of numerous environmental factors, but it does provide some invaluable insights on why the gender gap in STEM may appear more fixed relative to other fields from a biological perspective.

     Now that we’ve looked at biological influences at work, let’s explore the environmental factors that influence women in STEM. Many competitive pressures that permeate workplaces in these fields arise from a male attitude of superiority in which women are seen as questionable or even outright incompetent, and are constantly scrutinized for proof of their capabilities. These biases have been shown to be present in the employer’s mind during hiring. They also tend to linger in the minds of colleagues during everyday work. This is especially harmful for women of color in STEM fields, as they rarely have any role models of color, let alone women who function as mentors. A study from the PNAS(Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA) showed how stereotypes can harm women’s chances of being hired in math and science-based careers. Their study methods discovered the presence of biases within hiring parameters by using the Implicit Association Test, or IAT (Rueben).

     The IAT is composed of tasks that require subjects to categorize images and text, which acted as a means to preclude influences of social desirability bias that the subject may have i.e. pairing majors or career with the categories of male and female. 4 initial tests in this study combined with the IAT showed innate bias to hire men over women. This bias was prominent within the 4 tests, in which men tended to overshoot with their future performance(a factor often overlooked by the employers, as women tend to be more honest with their future capabilities), as well as the IAT. In addition, this bias was prevalent in men as well as women, meaning both genders see men as more competent in a hypothetical arithmetic-based career (Rueben).

     Now that we’ve looked at biases within the hiring processes, let’s navigate through the actual daily workplace experiences of women in STEM. The following study provides sufficient data to suggest that the above biases against women are further exacerbated when a STEM employee is a women of color. A study from the Harvard Business Review conducted a survey of 557 women scientists with comprehensive interviews questioning 60 women scientists regarding their experiences in the STEM workforce.

     Unique experiences regarding harmful biases in the workplace were disclosed, particularly showing the impact on women of color in STEM workplaces in 5 major types of bias. One prominent pattern shown through this study is the “Prove-It-Again” behavior in which women are constantly scrutinized for legitimacy and have their expertise challenged (Williams). Black women were substantially more prone to dealing with this behavior, with nearly 75% of black women experiencing it. The stereotype of Asian-Americans as highly intelligible in STEM fields may have helped the Asian women’s chances of avoiding this behavior. Another bias includes the fallacy that maternal responsibilities severely hinder or outright diminish a woman’s competence in the STEM workforce. A black microbiologist noted that much of these belittling attitudes are rooted in the stereotype that women only work in STEM until they marry a financially competent partner and bear children (Williams).

     Contrary to what may be extrapolated from the idea of women finding other female allies in the workplace, conflict arising from varying generations of women in the workplace can cause its own trouble (Williams). This is due to the pressure that women feel to fight for the “women’s spot” in a male-dominated environment, which impedes on finding common ground and support. One bias particularly relevant to black and Latinx women is the isolation issue. These intersectional women feel pressured to sheathe the details of their personal lives in order to put up a face of professionalism. They often feel excluded from everyday social interactions due to the innate fear of colleagues of “offending” them or coming across as insensitive (Williams). Exclusion may also be attributed to colleagues being afraid to confront people of color, leading them to avoid interaction with black women whenever possible (Williams). If these indirect behaviors aren’t enough to show the unequal treatment of women of color in STEM, perhaps the prevalence of stunningly juvenile racist remarks will prove sufficient.

     A black biologist in the Harvard Business Review study retold an incident in which an advisor questioned, “Hey, do you have any family on drugs or in jail?” (Williams). Many Asian-American women discussed how colleagues assume they are foreign, as many colleagues ask where they are from and end up dissatisfied hearing that they are from the U.S. Nearly 50% of black women and Latinx disclosed that they were mistaken as custodial staff, which is nearly double the amount as described by white and Asian-American women scientists (Williams).

     We have explored the roles of biological predisposition and environmental factors affecting women’s interest in STEM careers. In terms of seeking a STEM degree in college, many social factors influence a woman’s success rate as well. The common stereotypes may suggest that fewer women of color would pursue degrees in STEM than white women, but this has been refuted (Ong). At the same time, women of color are less likely to achieve their degrees and graduate from STEM majors due to various factors inhibiting their growth and interest in math and science (Ong). Much of these factors are rooted in attitudes of internalized segregation from peers, lack of support and encouragement from family(this is especially true for Latinx women), and loss of interest due to the aforementioned reasons. Social stratification in STEM classrooms and labs often arises due to preconceived notions about women of color, which are often constituted by low expectations, racial stereotypes, and the reluctance of women of color to participate when they are discouraged by the above factors. This hindrance to their participation only exacerbates their image in the face of other students.

     In addition to the lack of identifiable peers within STEM(especially within computer science/math and engineering careers, which women constituted only 26% and 14% of, respectively), family conflicts played an immensely influential role in terms of pushing women toward or away from STEM. Although the degrees to which family guidance and community expectations differs among women of color in STEM, the absence of familial support is quite prevalent. Black and Latinx women often are questioned in terms of their long term goals and pressured into traditional norms of bearing children and entering the workforce early, whereas Asian American feel supported only in a restrictive set of career choices that are strongly pushed by parents (Ong). These negative pressures were not without their positive counterparts. For example, women of color who pursued college educations in STEM fields felt the need to place strong personal importance when it meant bringing back honor and success to their communities (Ong). These women who felt that positive pressure was a driving force were more likely to complete their college years and eventually be successful.

     We have examined the numerous forces at work regarding the under-representation of women in the STEM workforce. As we move towards 2020 and beyond, we can further examine the impact of social and environmental influences on women’s representation in STEM majors and careers, as we have established the significance of biological predispositions. So, we often find ourselves asking the question, why aren’t there more women in STEM careers? While we might instead ask, should there be more women in STEM? Or even, how can we implement ways to foster more welcoming STEM environments within colleges and workplaces to encourage women to pursue STEM careers, rather than be repelled by the prospect of them? If we did, would it change their numbers by any significant margins? Only time will tell.

Sources:

Halpern, Diane F., et al. "The Science of Sex Differences in Science and Mathematics." National Center for Biotechnology Information, NCBI, 1 Aug. 2007, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4270278/#R102. Accessed 9 Sept. 2018.

Noonan, Ryan. "Women in STEM: 2017 Update." U.S. Department of Commerce Economics and Statistics Administration Office of the Chief Economist, ESA, 13 Nov. 2017, www.esa.doc.gov/sites/default/files/women-in-stem-2017-update.pdf. Accessed 9 Sept. 2018.

Ong, Maria, et al. Inside the Double Bind: A Synthesis of Empirical Research on Undergraduate and Graduate Women of Color in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Harvard Educational Review, 2011, pp. 180-87,otl.wayne.edu/wider/inside_the_double_bind.pdf. Accessed 9 Sept. 2018.

Reuben, Ernesto, et al. "How stereotypes impair women's careers in science." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, edited by Anthony G. Greenwald, PNAS, 25 Mar. 2014, www.pnas.org/content/111/12/4403.full. Accessed 9 Sept. 2018.

Williams, Joan C. "The 5 Biases Pushing Women Out of STEM." Harvard Business Review, HBR, 24 Mar. 2015, hbr.org/2015/03/the-5-biases-pushing-women-out-of-stem. Accessed 9 Sept. 2018.