00:00The experience of being a man and a woman is not as different as people make it out to be.
00:04That's Professor Katherine Phillips from Columbia University.
00:07Across five different studies, she found that women, even in male-dominated environments,
00:12were more confident at work when they focused on how men and women are similar.
00:18Yes, women benefited when they downplayed their gender differences.
00:21Does this mean that feminists who've been promoting women's unique and distinctive
00:26qualities have been wrong all of these years?
00:28Basically me. That's me. Have I been wrong all of these years? I know, maybe, right?
00:33Or it could be time to acknowledge that there actually isn't that big of a difference
00:37between the skills and abilities of men and women.
00:41I'm Elisa Kreisinger, and as a white woman on the internet, I have a lot of opinions.
00:45Each week, I set out to prove myself wrong by talking to an expert who might not have all the
00:50answers,
00:51but they certainly know more than I do. That's why this is Strong Opinions, Loosely Held.
00:57Professor Katherine Phillips and Dr. Ashley Martin gave working women in their 30s
01:01reaffirming statements that downplayed their gender. The statements focused on how the genders
01:06were the same and not different, like we're constantly reminded of. The result? Well,
01:12women were more confident, they took more risks, and they had more agency.
01:16Downplaying gender differences, or essentially like diminishing how salient gender stereotypes are for
01:21women makes them more confident. And then we found that women were more willing to act,
01:26to engage in these things like negotiation, and taking a risky hit in the game, or whatever.
01:31Because we have these expectations and stereotypes about people, we tend to over apply them in such
01:38ways that it constrains individual behavior. Like men are more assertive and independent,
01:44they're more, we use the word agentic in the research that we do, which is not a, not, not,
01:49that's like a $15 word. Yeah, agency is basically you have, yeah, agency. It's like you have the
01:55ability to control your environment. And women, the stereotypes we tend to have are about, you know,
02:00kind of being nurturing and caregiving. You know, you think about the implication that that has for the
02:04workplace, where agency is very much appreciated and valued and rewarded, then it makes it seem like women
02:12can't do that. And what environments did you find that in? They're usually a, you know, kind of average
02:17age, 30 something, usually full-time employees. Gender blindness sounds a lot like color blindness.
02:23So are they the same thing? No. And here's why. We want to ignore race, racial differences. We want to
02:30be colorblind. There's kind of a natural inclination here in the United States anyway, for people who are
02:36white and people who are black, not to have daily interactions. See, we're not constantly reminded
02:42of our racial differences like we are with gender differences. Regularly on a daily basis, we're
02:47seeing people who are different from us in terms of gender, and we're reminded of it. We started
02:51thinking about what is the difference, essentially, between the way we experience race on a daily
02:55basis and the way we experience gender on a daily basis. And if you, first of all, just recognize that
03:01they're not the same. So we ignore our racial differences, but gender differences are reaffirmed every
03:06day. And we talk about them constantly. Professor Phillips explained that gender blindness is different
03:11from colorblindness in that it eliminates the myth that there are qualities, skills, and abilities
03:17that are specifically masculine or specifically feminine. But still, the idea of downplaying being
03:23a woman felt a little insincere. What are we asking them to downplay and embrace? Sometimes people kind
03:29of think like, oh, you know, she's saying that women should act like men or be like men. It's like,
03:35well, no, that's actually not what we're saying at all because there's nothing in the messages that we gave
03:40people to say you can't act like a woman, right? It was really just kind of saying there's a kind
03:46of
03:47opportunity for you to express really whatever you want to express. If you only present them with the
03:52things that are consistent with the stereotypes, then they will start to like those things more,
03:57and they will start to approach those things more. They will become more familiar with those things.
04:01So it ends up being, again, a self-fulfilling prophecy. So if you want women to thrive in tech,
04:06in science, then you have to expose them to that, and you have to actually make it normal.
04:10Right. So it's like constantly reminding women, like, you can do this. Exactly. Don't let gender
04:15stereotypes stop you from doing what you want to do. Now, you might be wondering, but wait a second,
04:19women do face different issues than men, like systemic inequality. Maybe we should just ignore all of
04:25that. So does this mean that we just ignore patriarchy and like societal oppression of women? Like,
04:33do we just throw that all away? No, that's, that's not what this is about at all, really. I mean,
04:39really, really what it's about is how we see ourselves in relation to these stereotypes that
04:45exist out there in the world. Our goal was to really try to understand the influence of essentially
04:50the stereotypes and the messages that we receive on a daily basis, whether, whether explicitly given to
04:57us or just implicitly in everything that we, you know, the way that our lives are structured,
05:01that we then know are having an impact on people's psychology. So how can we, you know,
05:07potentially change that? Talking to Professor Phillips made me realize that gender blindness doesn't mean
05:11that women should act more like men or that we should ignore systemic oppression altogether. Instead,
05:17gender blindness should free us up to be more authentic, regardless of our gender.
