Evolution's Rainbow By Joan Roughgarden: Literary Analysis
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Within this paper I will be discussing gender inequality between two books we engaged in conversation about within class. These books are titled Evolution’s Rainbow, written by Joan Roughgarden, as well as Delusions of Gender, written by Cordelia Fine. These two authors go into detail about differences between male and female whether it be neurological, biological, as well as cultural differences, however, neither of them show gender equality throughout their book. This is due to the fact that we are still living in a gender unequal society. I will be breaking this paper up into two parts, one being evidence from Roughgarden, the other being evidence from Fine in order to capture the idea of how gender inequality is still all around us. Gender…show more content… Fine uses examples in her first chapters about a study done to test this theory resulting in Mara Cadinu’s math test study. Before the test, a select amount of women were told “recent research has shown that there are clear differences in the scores obtained by men and women and logical-mathematical tasks” while other participants were told there were no differences(Fine, 2010, p.32). Before the test was handed out, the researchers gave each woman a blank piece of paper and told them to write down everything they were thinking. The group that had the stereotype threat wrote nearly twice as many negative thoughts about the math test than the control group. This negativity followed them into the test and while the control group continued to become better, the stereotype threat group decreased(Fine, 2010, p.33). This shows us that once a stereotype is put into the back of our minds, it leaves detrimental scars resulting in one not being able to achieve their full potential. I have noticed that this stereotype threat is amongst many others, that females endure about what they need to act like, look like, speak like, and in this case - test like. The problem of women lacking the necessary talent for male dominated occupations also arose within Fines book. Due to this, the woman population is turning away, and take less desire in, male dominated leadership roles in reaction to the stereotypes that are put upon them. She talked about a study where they conducted a study and wrote two duplicate resumes, the only difference was the name of the individual. One resume contained a female name while the other held a male name. Results showed that 76% of participants preferred the male with more education over experience, 75% preferred a male with more education over a female with more experience, and 43% preferred the educated female over the more experienced male(Fine, 2010, p60). This shows that men have