The surprising neuroscience of gender inequality | Janet Crawford | TEDxSanDiego

I worked for 27 years for a large, multinational corporation. Before they hired me, a clerk, someone who had no authority to hire or fire, gave me a written test that included math, science, logic, electronics, and miscellaneous stem information. I passed the test, and the clerk gave me an appointment to return to speak to a manager. He explained that managers were not allowed to see candidates before they had reviewed the results of the test. It was a way of protecting the manager from his own bias, sort of in the same way as in the video when the committee evaluated candidates for chief of police without knowing the names of the candidates. Seems like a good idea, even for CEOs.

It's as simple as this: respect ability. When anyone does something better than you, shut up and learn. I was taught by a female professor about computer tech. She was an amazing teacher. But I will not respect you because of your gender. What can you do that is of worth to myself or society? At the end of the day, that is what is important.

This is a really fantastic explanation of bias in general - maybe one of the simplest and clearest I've heard!

Don't get why this has that many downvotes. In my opinion that's quite a nice talk, although I didn't find the neuroscience aspect in it. However, I support the overall message; we all as a society have to work on solving inequalities for women and men.

I have an inherent bias against anyone who uses 'deliciously' in reference to anything other than food.

LMAO at all the comments... It seems that just about everyone missed the entire point of the talk. What is being said here is that there is inherent bias in all of our thought patterns and decision making in regards to gender. Even women unconsciously judge themselves and other women based on subtle patterns and messages picked up from language, behavior, and media within our culture. Men do the same to themselves, and that is not fair. Our realities are not made up of infallible facts--we are fed many untruths, even when the people who are serving them to us earnestly believe that they are true. Basically, not everything we think is true, and it is important for us to recognize that there are subconscious biases that affect the way we think and decision-make in order for us to consider things in an objective way.

There is no neuroscience in this presentation. "Neuroscience (or neurobiology) is the scientific study of the nervous system.[1] It is a multidisciplinary branch of biology,[2] that deals with the anatomy, biochemistry, molecular biology, and physiology of neurons and neural circuits."

The designers of the "implicit association test" themselves admitted that it cannot be used to draw any meaningful conclusions due to its flaws and ambiguity.

Wow, it just took her 12minutes to tell me that gender bias is a social construct and we should do something about it. Just glad she didn't go into detail, I don't have that long to live.

Does anyone know if there is a way to get a transcript of this video?

I studied Engineering and after working for several years went on to study for a masters degree. There were 16 of us on the course - all men. I'm sure the Univerity would have loved to have accepted some women but there was a lack of applicants. When we went to our degree ceremony, the group before us had studied for diplomas for library studies - virtually all women. The men/engineers were heading towards jobs earning twice the national average while the women/librarians were heading for jobs earning half the national average. Why did the women make such bad choices and the men such good choices? Well, perhaps they were deciding what was best for themselves as individuals and ignoring what was best for their intersectional groupings. Were they making good or bad choices? - No, the choices were best for themselves. Barron-Cohen showed that one week old baby girls look longer at faces than moving objects while one week old boys do the opposite. The effect correlates with testoterone levels in the womb producing overlapping distributions of interest in people/things such that most women are predominantly interested in people while most men are interested in things. Of course, because it is a distribution and not a binary, this means that some women are, never-the-less, predominantly interested in things and they often go on to study Engineering - good luck to them! The women engineers bring a different perspective which is valued by the Engineering community as it is very welcoming of diversity of thought, unlike feminism. Engineering and Science accept that diveristy of thought makes us as a group smarter because we can debate a subject and the truth then emerges as the bad ideas get knocked down. Feminism does not believe in debate but orthodoxy so that bad ideas are never challenged and the result is the nonesense in this video. According to the talk, all differences in outcome between men and women are down to bias or wrong-think because men and women are actually identical. Wrong! Smell the politics and notice the lack of rationality.

you are my hero! we need more strong, intelligent, outspoken, constructive people like you!

If people associate "tall" with men and "short" with women, does it mean bias, or does it mean men are mostly taller them women? The IAT doesn't prove prejudice, it may just show an accurate association with natural differences between groups. And of course one should always judge the individual - like noticing a tall woman is tall, rather than assuming she's short because women are shorter. Same with leadership, strength, fragility, etc.

She’s so right... men and women are different. How could I have not seen this before.

11:07 we are creators and consumers of the environments that drive by us.

Thank You Janet Crawford ... even if you did not exactly use "neuroscience" ... OR you did not make the neuroscience aspect clear??? Anyway, in the field of psychology I have read many studies that look at many forms of Bias ... and what you say here does indeed reflect the general findings of Bias (we all have effects of bias (not Just gender bias) due to how we take in ... store and use ... the information we are exposed to (be that from first or second hand experience or read etc ...) ... It was interesting for me to read the comments here and find tons of gender bias ... and they seem to have no clue. Those of us who do understand need to speak up at every opportunity available (and especially the males who understand because help is needed from males, for those males, who do not yet understand (they will see what males say as more valid) ... sad but true. Love & Peace to All

some of those CEOs by the way are international companies, Swedish British etc.

These talks have one flaw: they do not address alleged biological bases from which the gender bias may arise. Until these talks can explain why the biological differences between the genders do not matter, these talks would continue to fail to be compelling.

Very well put.

This video is very interesting.