Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!att!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!ora!ambar From: muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) Newsgroups: soc.feminism Subject: Re: SAT scores - sexist? Message-ID: Date: 10 Apr 91 17:44:56 GMT References: <1991Apr9.203133.2551@aero.org> Sender: ambar@ora.com (Jean Marie Diaz) Organization: Natural Language Incorporated Lines: 91 Approved: ambar@ora.com In article <1991Apr9.203133.2551@aero.org> al885@cleveland.freenet.edu (Gerard Pinzone) writes: Does anyone know of any good examples of why the SAT exams are biased toward a male point of view? I have heard many feminists and cases about it, but I have yet to see any examples. Most arguments point out that since women do better in High School and collage, this proves that the higher scores of male students on the SAT's make them sexist. Humm...where to start. Okay, first, how do you know that the SATs are male-view-biased? Did you just hear it around somewhere? If so, the first question might be whether or not they are biased. If you saw some sort of study, what did it point out about the tests themselves that showed bias towards males? As for why they are biased that way, if they are, you would probably have to look at the designers of the tests. I have frequently heard that they are culturally-biased. These assertions seem to be related more to the English section of the test than the math one, and point out that some words will be more familiar to one culture than another. The argument you give definitely does not prove that the SAT is gender-biased. My experience with these tests is that there are people who are good at taking standardized tests and people who, although they can do well in school, will not do well on these tests. So, it is possible that, rather than a specific test being biased, women just don't do well, as a group, on standardized tests for some reason. It could be that all such tests are gender-biased or that women are somehow conditioned to react badly to the testing situation. Also, you probably need to distinguish between the English SAT and the Math SAT, since there may be differences there - for example, I did slightly better on the English than the Math; most of my male friends did slightly better on the Math than the English. My only rebuttle is that perhaps male students generally take classes and jobs that are "harder" than those generally taken by their female counterparts. If you agree that a lot of proffesions such as the medical, science, law, etc. are male dominated, you will have to agree the are historically, the ones that are the most difficult. I don't think this is too applicable to high school students, though, and they are the ones who will take the SAT. Most high school jobs are not particularly difficult, and the males in high school are certainly not doctors, scientists (well...), lawyers, etc, yet...they may not even have decided what careers to pursue yet. The sort of jobs they have are more commonly working in stores, fast food places, etc. Similarly, there are not a lot of options on classes in high school. Most of the students take the same basic classes and some number of electives. There are advanced placement courses, accelerated programs, etc, though, so you might try to find out if a lot more males than females are involved in these. As for "more difficult," I think that depends on the talents and inclinations of the person. I find programming to be extremely easy and doing office work (answering telephones, typing, filing, doing invoices and purchase orders) fairly difficult. For me, office and accounting procedures and such just don't make sense and don't interest me. If what you mean to say is that medicine, law, etc, require more study, that is true, but, again, high school students will not usually have begun this study when they take the SATs. I am an engineering student and the ratio between nmen and women is extremely lop-sided. It takes four years and a lot of brain power to graduate this type of course. On the other hand, most of the liberal-arts type of classes were quite simple in comparison. As an engineering student, you probably did not take many higher-level humanities courses. I studied CS, so I only had to take a few humanities, social science, arts, etc, courses, and they were all fairly low-level, introductory stuff. I have some friends who are studying art, literature, psychology, etc, and the upper-level courses are much more interesting and much more difficult. You have to consider that, say, a freshman/sophomore writing course is about equivalent to an introductory algebra course or a BASIC programming course, in terms of challenge to the students. I am not saying women CANNOT do this type of work, I'm saying women are choosing not to. I am also not about to give the reasons why. Whether they are intrinsic to the female character or are purely placed by society is a question I can't answer. How do you know that they are choosing not to? You haven't shown this in your article. Can you give something to support this? Are you interested in the answer to the question? Would you act differently if you knew the answer? Your posting seems to have gone from a question about why SATs are gender-biased (without any proof that they are) to an assertion that women choose "easier" jobs (without any proof that they do). What exactly are you getting at? Muffy