Never Heard of It

Re:Never Heard of It by timje1 on Thursday November 14, 2013 @11:09AM (#6733082)

Women suffer from imposter syndrome[0] more than men and seem somewhat less confident about their abilities in a variety of metrics (e.g. they contribute to wikipedia articles related to their area of expertise less than equally qualified men. They feel less confident speaking at conferences. The ADA initiative has a good piece on this [1] )

---note: this is not anything to do with actual capabilities!---

Regardless of what causes this difference (cultural, social, biological, monkey-based evo psych, whatever) I would bet it is a factor here. So I posit that men may cover up their lack of knowledge, but it may also be a confidence issue - perhaps the men actually feel like they know already, and the women are less sure of their own knowledge.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome

[1] http://adainitiative.org/2013/08/is-impostor-syndrome-keepin...

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Re:Never Heard of It by yetanotherphd on Thursday November 14, 2013 @11:55PM (#6737820)

Yes, it's great to speculate on these things, as long as we rigorously discourage people from speculating that men are better than women in any dimension. We can have an academic discussion on the differences between men and women while avoiding sexism.

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Re:Never Heard of It by vdaniuk on Saturday November 16, 2013 @05:05PM (#6746620)

Should we rigorously discourage people from speculating that women are better than men in any dimension?

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