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Smart Enough Women

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In part I of the psychology in media project I reviewed the article “Why Young Girls Don’t Think They are Smart Enough” written by Sarah-Jane Leslie and Andrei Cimpain. The authors of this article explored the psychological research they conducted - along with Lin Bian - which is aimed at discovering the underlying cause for the disparities between men and women across academic disciplines. In the media article published in the New York Times the authors concluded that stereotypes are mainly to blame for these disparities. They also noted that these social stereotypes start affecting girls as young as the age of six, and that the shift in thought is drastic. In a more formal report which they published in Science Magazine, through a set of …show more content…

The writers do also state alternatives for the results of studies one to four, among them that boys are held back which may inflate confidence and women’s modesty norms. They also give reason for why these alternatives are not possible. The writers omit writing about the alternatives all together in the media article. All in all, I believe that both works are very well written informative pieces. Both are concise, easy to read, and very get to the point. The main difference is that the media article pushes a call to action by stating suggesting methods in which we can change how this “brilliance=males” stereotype is affecting young girls. This is definitely an understandable difference due to the fact that the media article is directed towards the general public, while the science journal is mostly directed towards the scientific community. I believe that the writers did a fantastic job in the NY times article, however I believe that the article would have benefitted from using more real life anecdotes to show the extent to which this “brilliance=males” stereotype can affect women. Altogether, I strongly agree with both the media article and the scientific journal, something has to be done about this

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