Name: Why People Struggle to Associate Women with Science Words
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A scientist gives a test to her students: Affiliate male and female names equally—and as quickly—with science terms. Here are the results.

The idea is that we associate two things that have something in common.

Why People Struggle to Associate Women with Science Words

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A scientist gives a test to her students: Affiliate male and female names equally — and as quickly — with science terms. Here are the results.

The idea is that we associate two things that have something in common.

Body & Brain

Why People Struggle to Associate Women with Science WordsPublished: May 19, 2021Mahzarin Banaji: The idea is that if two things have something in common, we'll be more easily able to put them together. And sometimes this just happens in our experience. Salt and pepper go together. They're opposites in one sense, but they go together, because we combine them. The word king and queen may go together. This is not a hard idea to imagine. And so we use this idea to argue that if two things have come to be associated over and over again in our experience, whether we know it or not, we will be faster to put them together. Nobody has any trouble understanding why this might be. It's a no-brainer, as a neuroscientist might say.So imagine that in the test, you're asked to do something very simple. A word is going to pop up in the middle of the screen. You're going to see names of men and women. You're also going to see words that are in two categories, family and career. And the career part that I've chosen, think scientific career. Words for career are words like scientist, laboratory, biologist. Words for home are going to be words like marriage, kitchen, children. All you have to do is put the two together, right? So I have the name is a male name or the word is a career word, you will say "Left". And if it's a female name or a home word, you will say "Right". Okay, you got it, keep that in your mind. Oh, and, you have to go super fast to do this. By super fast, I mean like 700 milliseconds. Meaning faster than a second to make each response. Okay, so simple. Ready, go.Students participating in I.A.T test: Left, left, right, right, left, left, left, right, right, right, right, right, left. Left, right, left, right, left, left, left, left, left, right, right.Banaji: Excellent. The trouble arises, this is what makes it a test, that we now flip these. And now we'll do the other version. If it's a female name or a career word, like scientist, you will say "Left", if it's a male name or a house word, you will say, "Right". Everybody ready to go? Go.Students participating in I.A.T test: Left, left, right, left, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, right, left, left, left.Banaji: Okay. So as a colleague of ours said, you don't need a computer to measure this bias. A sundial will do. And that's because the effect is palpable. Now, if you want one of the first people the world to ever take this test and you made the test, your first reaction, when you take this test should be, "Something's screwed up with the test". At least that was my view. I thought I could do this. So I take the test, and it turns out I can't do it. When I say I can't do it, I mean that I can, but with a lot more time and more errors in what I'm doing. And the feeling you get as you take this test is one of utter despair. I ought to be able to associate female and male equally with science. I am, after all, a woman in science. This should not be so hard for me to do. To discover that I cannot to do that I think is profound.

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Why People Struggle to Associate Women with Science Words

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Support Provided By

Explore More

Boosting Science with Diversity

The Case for Representation

Picture a Scientist