A friend and I were having a conversation about sexism earlier today. I was telling him about this book I read called "School Girls: Young Women, Self Esteem, and the Confidence Gap". The book is a short summary of one woman's experience observing junior high school girls. It is somewhat anecdotal but it really makes you think about gender inequality. A lot of it is about how she thinks the school system is biased toward boys (by being biased toward agressive personalities) and there is also a lot about the girls' self esteem, their opinions on sex, and the pressures they feel academically and socially. Most of the information is gathered through conversations with the girls, and while the author in many cases seems to look to reaffirm something she already believes, she nonetheless presents situations and quotes from the girls that I found thought-provoking.
I thought the results of a survery she conducted were particularly interesting. She asked all of the students what their best quality was. The boys said that they were good at a sport, math, guitar, etc. The girls, almost without exception, said something about their appearance - hair, eyes, etc.
Another interesting thing she found was the girls' confidence in their abilities dropped before their actual abilities dropped. For example, the girls believed they were bad at math even when their grades were competitive with the rest of the class. They were more likely to opt out of advanced classes than boys with the same scores.
The main reason I created this post was that after the conversation I did a search on amazon.com for the book, so that I could get the full title. I wanted to share a screenshot of my results:
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