Why so slow? : the advancement of women /

The central thesis of Valian's book is that a set of implicit hypotheses about sex differences, called gender schema, play a central role in shaping women's and men's professional lives. These schema are nonconscious yet affect expectations of men and women, evaluations of their work, and their performance as professionals. In most organizations women begin at a slight disadvantage. Very small differences in treatment can accumulate and result in large disparities in salary, promotion, and prestige that advantage men and disadvantage women. Valian's thesis is based on statistical and experimental evidence. Among the topics discussed are how children learn gender schemas; the role of hormones in behavior and cognition; the impact of schemas on perception and evaluation; the impact of schemas on behavior; the role of qualifications in advancement of women; and statistical differences between men and women in the professions and academia. The last chapter suggests several ways to nullify the negative professional consequences of gender schemas and to equalize men's and women's ability to accumulate advantage. Valian's proposals of how to achieve change are solid and sensible. A well-written, thoughtful, objective analysis of why inequalities continue to exist between women and men. Upper-division undergraduates and above. C. Adamsky emeritus, University of New Hampshire

Social psychologist Valian thinks that the Western world has gotten gender all wrong. "As social beings we tend to perceive the genders as alternatives to each other, as occupying opposite and contrasting ends of a continuum," she writes, "even though the sexes are not opposite but are much more alike than they are different." Indeed, despite nearly three decades of feminism, "gender schema"‘the assumption that masculine and feminine characteristics determine personality and ability‘continue to influence the expectations and thinking of most Americans. Just about everyone, Valian writes, assumes that men are independent, task-oriented and assertive, while women are tagged as expressive and nurturing. As such, women lag behind in many professions and continue to do the lion's share of housework and child-rearing. Girls remain less attentive in math and science, while even women who attend medical school tend to steer themselves into "gender appropriate" slots such as family practice or pediatrics. Valian bases her findings on research conducted by social scientists in fields as disparate as psychology, education, sociology and economics, and the result is a work that is both scholarly and anecdotally rich. But it also posits concrete suggestions for changing the way we view the sexes, from stepped-up affirmative action programs, to timetables for rectifying gender-based valuations. Accessible and lively, Why So Slow? is a breakthrough in the discourse on gender and has great potential to move the women's movement to a new, more productive phase. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

A scholarly and convincing explanation of women's slow progress in the professions. Whether in business, law, medicine, or academia, women are not advancing at the same rate as men. They're not paid as well, they occupy less-powerful positions, and they are not as respected. In this copiously researched book, Valian (Psychology and Linguistics/Hunter Coll.) attempts to explain why. She argues that we all have unarticulated, often subconscious ideas about gender that affect both our behavior and, perhaps even more importantly, our evaluations of one another. For instance, we think men are logical, women are social; men are competent, women are flaky. As a result, men are consistently overrated and women underrated by coworkers, bosses--and themselves. The resulting advantages and disadvantages may be small, but they accrue over time to create large gaps in advancement. Valian reviews numerous studies, enlivens her material with personal anecdotes, and offers both personal and societal solutions. She looks not only at the workplace, but at its context--data on how girls and boys are raised and educated differently and the extremely inconclusive biological research on men and women's ""inherent"" differences (she has a refreshingly balanced take on the latter, noting that there may be a few differences, but they don't justify our discriminatory assumptions and practices). Throughout much of the book, Valian is in effect synthesizing the work of other researchers--but her take on the material, which draws richly on a linguist's sensitivity to nuances of verbal exhcanges, is fresh, and it's worth doing, since few readers will ever see the obscure studies she cites. Probably too academic in tone for most readers, but for anyone concerned about gender inequality--or perhaps even more importantly, readers who think they aren't--it's worth a look. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.