Are changing role models affecting FS, other sports, life?

This topic cropped up on the ESPN thread, and I found Mathman's observations (quoted below) very interesting. I thought this might be worthy of a new thread.

I heard on the news this morning that the Miss America Pageant is struggling to find a network to broadcast it. I know this problem has been building for several years now. I recall a time as a young girl where Mom and I (and every other Mom and daughter I knew) were GLUED to the set to watch Miss America. Times have obviously changed. The question I posed on the other thread was....Any similarities to Figure Skating?

From Mathman:

"Doggygirl, that's such an interesting observation about the Miss America contest. (Did you know I was in the Miss America pageant in 1963? This is true.)

I think that Title Nine (the law that says schools have to give equal opportunities to women's and girl's sports programs), combined with the feminism of the 1970s, has done its work. If you look at women's sports, there is no "powder puff" football any more. Women's tennis, basketball, volleyball, etc., play almost by the same rules as men, and with just as much muscle and vigor.

The sport of cheerleading, for instance, has progressed from eye candy to serious team gymnastics over the last 40 years.

Maybe we are seeing the same thing happening in figure skating. The days are numbered when its major appeal to (male) fans is a micro skirt that flips up with every turn.

But the downside is that now figure skating has to compete with other serious sports for its fan base. Look how thrilling the Master's golf tournament was yesterday, with Tiger's ball hanging on the lip of the cup through two or three verses of the Hallelujah Chorus, before dropping in for a birdie. That's what figure skating has to be able to match. " End Mathman

That got me to thinking about sports and other life places where things have really changed between women and men, and places that haven't changed so much. Here are a few examples:

1) My brother races go carts. I know as of a couple years ago they had "Powder Puff" races - my sis in law has driven for fun in those. But I somehow don't think that women are excluded from the serious races but I'm not sure. Assuming women can drive in the "real" races, I wonder if supporting men can drive the "Powder Puff" fun race?

2) About 3 years ago, one of my neighbors told me she was not allowed to join the local country club because she is a single woman. I know that women eat there and golf there, but I wonder if they are still excluding single women? The men do still have their own card room where women are NOT allowed. And that's the only place indoors at the club where smoking is allowed. I wonder when that will change?

3) I belong to the local Chamber of Commerce, and also to a "sub" group which is the Council for Working Women. There is a Chamber wide monthly luncheon, and also a Working Women monthly luncheon. Both have a featured speaker during the meeting. (and I haven't belonged long enough to have any influence over the topics!)

Chamber wide lunch - estimated 75% men in attendance:
* Improving Leadership Skills
* Changing Your Corporate Culture
* City Council presentation on the activities relating to area business growth

Working Women Luncheon - 99% women in attendance:
* Stress Relief
* Holistic Healing
* Sources for Organic Produce

Ironically, I much prefer the "men's" topics as I'm there for business reasons.

I am only a VERY casual race fan, but it was pretty exciting hearing "Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines!" for the first time I heard it several (but not that many) years ago. I think it's sort of funny hearing the terms "Ladies" and/or "Gentlemen" associated with the aggressive sport of auto racing.

Interesting topic to think about...

DG

DG, in fact, when Janet Guthrie became the first woman to race in the Indianapolis 500 in 1977, there was a HUGE uproar about whether the Indy announcer would say, "Ladies and Gentlemen," or stick with the traditional "Gentlemen, start your engines."

In compromise, they came up with: "In company with the first lady ever to race in the Indianapolis 500...gentlemen, start your engines."

BTW, the first black driver was Willie Ribbs (great name!), in 1991.

Mathman

Role models have changed tremendously in my work - medicine. When I was younger (and please don't ask me to be more specific ), smart women who wanted to go into health care were shunted into nursing (and this is not a knock on nursing1). By the time I went to med school, almost half of my class were women, and many went into previously male dominated fields such as OB-GYN and surgery.

Many young girls of today have forgotten that it used to take a lot of courage and grit and determination to say i want to be a scientist, or a doctor or a mathematician. It is taken for granted both in the intellectual arena and the sports arena that women can compete all out, and many times beat their male compatriots.

Hi all...

Mathman, I'm glad to hear that the FIRST woman driver to race the Indy was in 1977. I didn't become a "casual" race fan until my fanatical race fan brothers drew me into an annual racing competition among family. The contest was called CARS, which stands for the Couch-potato Auto Racing Series. We had this elaborate process for picking teams and drivers and a bunch of complex rules. LOL, my brothers would really study their picks, study the race results every week, and all of that. They gave it up in the 4th year after the season that I won (and I randomly picked driver teams and didn't change a thing through the whole season) and then the year after that my sis in law won using basically the same strategy. The "prize" was the losers being obligated to make a "trophy" for the winner. I guess after two years of making trophies they gave up on it. Either that, or they are still doing the CARS series in private and not telling us.

Bronxgirl - your example is an excellent one demonstrating how far things have come in some areas while others haven't quite caught up yet. I feel fortunate that in my own career I ended up by accident more than planning in a field and industry where performance rules, and sex, race, religion, etc. don't really matter much any more. And of course now that I've made my exit from Corporate America to Entrepeneur, performance has never mattered more!!!!!!

DG

bronxgirl said:

Role models have changed tremendously in my work - medicine. When I was younger (and please don't ask me to be more specific ), smart women who wanted to go into health care were shunted into nursing (and this is not a knock on nursing1). By the time I went to med school, almost half of my class were women, and many went into previously male dominated fields such as OB-GYN and surgery.

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I thought in some med schools there is greater female:male students ratio? But how many women make chairwoman of departments and dean of med schools??

It is taken for granted both in the intellectual arena and the sports arena that women can compete all out, and many times beat their male compatriots.

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The science areana, what did the president of Harvard said? Sports arena, Augusta just gave a green jacket to Woods an African Asian American male, but they will die before letting women into that club,

It is taken for granted both in the intellectual arena and the sports arena that women can compete all out, and many times beat their male compatriots.

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I go to a school that is 75% men and 25% women. Although we're seeing increasing numbers of women in the sciences and engineering, girls are definitely not as encouraged to go into these fields as boys are. Girls are afraid of math and science in middle school, and that's something that needs to be changed.

gezando said:

The science areana, what did the president of Harvard said? Sports arena, Augusta just gave a green jacket to Woods an African Asian American male, but they will die before letting women into that club,

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LOL! I guess the more some things change the more (some others?) stay the same. Seriously, I guess we could look into how change is resisted and opposed, and since we're talking, I think, about women, we could include at least some women in the resiter/opposer category too. But, I guess that doesn't really get at your question about role models changing figure skating....and I'm not sure what I think about that other than the fact that while I LOVE IT, I am very aware that it is an elitist sport (and yes i get than so many people in it aren't rich...but it's nonetheless an incredibly expensive sport), and to the extent that the general public (the non uber fans) peceives it at all, I would suspect that it is seen as something other people do, and yes, that it is 'girly' (gendered feminine and thus of less interest, despite the ever increasing interest in women's tenis and basketball, etc.).

But....what I really want to know is more about the very tantalizing Mathman quote regarding the Miss America contest....!!!

nicole_l said:

I go to a school that is 75% men and 25% women. Although we're seeing increasing numbers of women in the sciences and engineering, girls are definitely not as encouraged to go into these fields as boys are. Girls are afraid of math and science in middle school, and that's something that needs to be changed.

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I agree. Being in the faculty of engineering myself, which has a 22% women to 78% men ratio, it would be nice to see these numbers go up. It is really important to encourage young women to take maths/science, as they really could grow to enjoy it and it is important for some diversity and/or a fresh outlook in the faculty. Right now, everything is about beer..

Hi, Rstar, thanks for posting and welcome to golden skate.

On the math faculty here, about 50 strong, for many years we had one female professor. This put us below the national average, so we were in constant trouble with the government to become more "diverse."

Finally we had an opportunity to hire a second female mathematician, which put us over the national average at 2 out of 50.

It is hard to attract and keep women with PhDs in mathematics and a substantial research record, because there is so much demand for them.

Mathman

It is really important to encourage young women to take maths/science, as they really could grow to enjoy it and it is important for some diversity and/or a fresh outlook in the faculty. Right now, everything is about beer..

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Hehe. Welcome Rstar! What field of engineering are you in (is that even that way to talk about it haha)?
:thumbsup:

Little girls and math/science

It's actually not so much that little girls are afraid of math and science, but that they are physically predisposed to excel in other areas. There is an almond-sized portion of the midbrain called the amygdala, that is the home of our emotions. The amygdala, small as it is, nonetheless has a powerful influence on all thoughts and behaviors, especially in the female. Females seem to have a very sensitive and active amaygdala. The thought process in both the female and male brain intertwine the activity of the cortex and this amygdala. Research indicates that the female brain usually has more amygdala involvement than the male brain under the same circumstances.

The result is that most females are slightly predisposed in the cognitive areas such as language, auditory skills, fine motore skills, sequential/detailed thinking. Also, females' thoughts are integrated with the emotional system more frequently and mre intensely than most males' thoughts.

But nothing is 100 percent pure. There is a range of female characteristics, not a set amount of each characteristic for every individual. It leads to what researchers refer to as male- and female-differentiated learning style, but not necessarily to gender or sexual orientation. Comes to about an 80-20 split (80% of females have female-differentiated learning style, 20% have male-differentiated learning style).

So, those individuals with the female-differentiated learning style have to spend time as children working in the particular skill areas that come more naturally to those with male-differentiated learning style. 80% of young girls are not hardwired to choose of their own accord things like
Gross motor tasks
Spatial taks
Strategy and problem solving
Risk taking

If you have a 20% girl, she needs to spend more time on
fine motor tasks
auditory tasks
sequential and detailed thinking
connecting with others

The end result is that the young girl, from whichever percent, will grow up to be confident and courageous - equipped to handle what life throws at her. She may even become a mathematician or a scientist. Cure cancer!

The source for this information (and in some places I quoted exactly but didn't put quote marks in for sake of typing ease) is the book Girls will be Girls by JoAnn Deak, PhD with Teresa Barker. I've found it to be helpful and insightful in my teaching (most of my students are young girls). I recommend it to anyone who is the parent of a girl or the mentor of a girl (and if you aren't mentoring a girl, well, maybe you should be!).

Linny

P.S. Some of this may also explain why more females are attracted to figure skating than males.

Linny said:

It's actually not so much that little girls are afraid of math and science, but that they are physically predisposed to excel in other areas. There is an almond-sized portion of the midbrain called the amygdala, that is the home of our emotions. The amygdala, small as it is, nonetheless has a powerful influence on all thoughts and behaviors, especially in the female. Females seem to have a very sensitive and active amaygdala. The thought process in both the female and male brain intertwine the activity of the cortex and this amygdala. Research indicates that the female brain usually has more amygdala involvement than the male brain under the same circumstances.

The result is that most females are slightly predisposed in the cognitive areas such as language, auditory skills, fine motore skills, sequential/detailed thinking. Also, females' thoughts are integrated with the emotional system more frequently and mre intensely than most males' thoughts.

But nothing is 100 percent pure. There is a range of female characteristics, not a set amount of each characteristic for every individual. It leads to what researchers refer to as male- and female-differentiated learning style, but not necessarily to gender or sexual orientation. Comes to about an 80-20 split (80% of females have female-differentiated learning style, 20% have male-differentiated learning style).

So, those individuals with the female-differentiated learning style have to spend time as children working in the particular skill areas that come more naturally to those with male-differentiated learning style. 80% of young girls are not hardwired to choose of their own accord things like
Gross motor tasks
Spatial taks
Strategy and problem solving
Risk taking

If you have a 20% girl, she needs to spend more time on
fine motor tasks
auditory tasks
sequential and detailed thinking
connecting with others

The end result is that the young girl, from whichever percent, will grow up to be confident and courageous - equipped to handle what life throws at her. She may even become a mathematician or a scientist. Cure cancer!

The source for this information (and in some places I quoted exactly but didn't put quote marks in for sake of typing ease) is the book Girls will be Girls by JoAnn Deak, PhD with Teresa Barker. I've found it to be helpful and insightful in my teaching (most of my students are young girls). I recommend it to anyone who is the parent of a girl or the mentor of a girl (and if you aren't mentoring a girl, well, maybe you should be!).

Linny

P.S. Some of this may also explain why more females are attracted to figure skating than males.

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Have you ever read any of the critiques of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology that are out there? There's a bunch....check out anything by Anne Fausto Sterling (a biologist) or Roger Lancaster's The Trouble with Nature (he's an anthropologist, a discipline that has contributed a number of critiques to sociobiology since the 1970's)....or even some of the responses to the Harvard Pres.

Linny said:

It's actually not so much that little girls are afraid of math and science, but that they are physically predisposed to excel in other areas.

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So that explains why Sarah dropped out of Yale to do SOI.

Maybe the reason why we think that girls are less disposed to math & science is because they aren't encouraged to be interested in it.

Encouraged

Not in my family. We were encouraged to try all kinds of things.

The researchers indicate that they'd put children of both genders in a room with all kinds of activities and watch to see which activities the kids would gravitate to. Of course, it's quite possible that before the kids took part in the study, Mom or Dad said or indicated by unspoken language "No, Johnny, you shouldn't be interested in drawing" or "No, Mary, you shouldn't be interested in building blocks". That might influence the kids' choices.

However, since both these activites are less blantently "female" or "male" than playing with dolls or playing with trucks, it would seem that the children were simply making choices based on their own hard wiring.

Most individuals that I interact are combinations of both male- and female- differentiate characteristics. A young lady I was very close to as a child enjoyed fine motor activities (like sewing clothes for her Barbie) as well as spatial activities (building with Tinker Toys). She grew up to be an engineer.

A young man that I spent much of my formative years with gravitated to any activity that involved communication. He'd make up the most complex rules for a simple game of hide and seek (strategy and problem solving). And he gab like you wouldn't believe during our marathon Monopoly games (communication). He's a successful sales representative today.

Of course, this is just anticdotal and not a controlled study like that which is referenced in the book.

No, I haven't read much about biology or psychology. I only became a teacher fairly recently (and my primary career is still in computers) so I've concentrated on reading things that will help me to be a better teacher. Hard to keep up with all this reading and still stay on top of things at Golden Skate!

BTW, did anyone see the fluff piece on John Weir? Before he started figure skating, he was a horseback rider!

Linny

gezando said:

The science areana, what did the president of Harvard said? Sports arena, Augusta just gave a green jacket to Woods an African Asian American male, but they will die before letting women into that club,

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These people represent the oldguard/old boys network who never wanted to give up their turf to begin with. It is changing, albeit slower than it should. And who know, I may someday watch Michelle Wie slip into that green jacket at the Masters

Changing Role Models

Check out this web site to see an example of a changing role model:
http://www4.army.mil/racing/bikes.html

Linny

Linny, a few more like those and there goes your reputation for short posts!

Here is an article just released from some researchers at the Unversity of Michigan who claim that one of the reasons that girls do not go into science and mathematics is that these fields are perceived as solitary rather than social endeavers. Presumably all this goes back to the hunting versus gathering roles that dominated sexual differentiation during the million years or so that our genetic makeup was settling down to what we have now.

The recommendation of the authors of this study is to tell girls that, no, scientific research does have a communal aspect and also you get to help people. I am not so sure of this. One of the things that made me want to do mathematics was that I could lock myself in my room and no one would bother me.

Bronxgirl, I see that Michelle Wie will be teeing it up with the men at the John Deere Classic on the PGA tour in July. Hey, now that Michelle Kwan has an ad for tires, why not Michelle Wie as the spokesperson for John Deere tractors?

Mathman

Ladies in Science:
I notice that there are a lot of foreign women pursuing scientific careers (hard sciences and life sciences) and engineering. It might be an American thing that girls don't go into math and science.

However there are more women than men attending/applying/getting accepted to medical school. I think it's 54% women in med school and that number is increasing. Maybe the ladies aren't going into engineering but are pursuing medicine which is more social in dealing with patients and a more lucrative field.

Quite frankly, with all the engineering jobs being reassigned to places like India, why would anyone want to study for this profession?

Nicole_l: You said it right, don't worry. I am actually in the electrical engineering field. As well, in response to Soogar's post, most of the engineering jobs are not being assigned to India. There are plenty of engineering jobs here in Canada as well as many opportunities to prosper in not only corporate areas but in field areas as well. The majority of engineers that graduate from Canada recieve jobs within Canada. It can be a very rewarding faculty. Also, thanks to everyone who welcomed me on the board! I've been lurking for awhile.. but it's nice to be able to join the discussions!