It seems to be even more insidious than that. All you need to do is ask the test-takers to think about their gender or race, without even stressing the negative aspects of it, and suddenly they perform worse. I think it's also interesting that there seems to be no effect on white males at all -- it shows just how privileged they really are.
Even worse, you don't even have to explicitly ask the women about their gender. Asking them whether they live in co-ed or gendered housing causes the same effect! It's really frightening how conditioned we are to think about femaleness as a handicap.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 12:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-01 01:58 am (UTC)