Cordelia Fine Quotes & Sayings

When the environment makes gender salient, there is a ripple effect on the mind. We start to think of ourselves in terms of our gender, and stereotypes and social expectations become more prominent in the mind. This can change self-perception, alter interests, debilitate or enhance ability, and trigger unintentional discrimination. In other words, the social context influences who you are, how you think and what you do. — Cordelia Fine

While parenthood served as no disadvantage at all to men, there was evidence of a substantial "motherhood penalty". Mothers received only half as many callbacks as their identically qualified childless counterparts. — Cordelia Fine

A member of my family, who shall remain nameless, refers to all newborns as 'blobs'. — Cordelia Fine

The tape measures and weighing scales of the Victorian brain scientists have been supplanted by powerful neuroimaging technologies, but there is still a lesson to be learned from historical examples such as these. State-of-the-art brain scanners offer us unprecedented information about the structure and working of the brain. But don't forget that, once, wrapping a tape measure around the head was considered modern and sophisticated, and it's important not to fall into the same old traps. As we'll see in later chapters, although certain popular commentators make it seem effortlessly easy, the sheer complexity of the brain makes interpreting and understanding the meaning of any sex differences we find in the brain a very difficult task. But the first, and perhaps surprising, issue in sex differences research is that of knowing which differences are real and which, like the intially promising cephalic index, are flukes or spurious. — Cordelia Fine

Male rats don't experience the hormonal changes that trigger maternal behavior in female rats. They never normally participate in infant care. Yet put a baby rat in a cage with a male adult and after a few days he will be caring for the baby almost as if he were its mother. He'll pick it up, nestle it close to him as a nursing female would, keep the baby rat clean and comforted, and even build a comfy nest for it.29 The parenting circuits are there in the male brain, even in a species in which paternal care doesn't normally exist.30 If a male rat, without even the aid of a William Sears baby-care manual, can be inspired to parent then I would suggest that the prospects for human fathers are pretty good. — Cordelia Fine

Although self-reported endorsement of sexist attitudes didn't predict hiring bias, self-reported objectivity in decision making did. — Cordelia Fine

As has been long observed, men are people, but women are women. — Cordelia Fine

Blatant, intentional discrimination against women is far from being something merely to be read about in history books. — Cordelia Fine

University of Otago social historian Hera Cook provides a beautiful illustration of exactly this point in her rich account of the sexual revolution.49 Cook notes that in eighteenth-century England, women were assumed to be sexually passionate. But drawing on economic and social changes, fertility-rate patterns, personal accounts, and sex surveys and manuals, Cook charts the path toward the sexual repression of the Victorian era. This was a time of reduced female economic power, thanks to a shift from production in the home to wage earning, and there was less community pressure on men to financially support children fathered out of wedlock. And so, in the absence of well-known, reliable birth control techniques, "women could not afford to enjoy sex. The risk made it too expensive a pleasure."50 — Cordelia Fine

Biology can be said to define possibilities but not determine them; it is never irrelevant but it is also not determinant. — Cordelia Fine

Neurosexism promotes damaging, limiting, potentially self-fulfilling stereotypes. Three years ago, I discovered my son's kindergarten teacher reading a book that claimed that his brain was incapable of forging the connection between emotion and language. And so I decided to write this book. — Cordelia Fine

Boys do not pursue mathematical activities at a higher rate than girls do because they are better at mathematics. They do so, at least partially, because they think they are better. — Cordelia Fine

Unlike men in the same position, women leaders have to continue to walk the fine line between appearing incompetent and nice and competent but cold. Experimental studies find that, unlike men, when they try to negotiate greater compensation they are disliked. When they try out intimidation tactics they are disliked. When they succeed in a male occupation they are disliked. When they fail to perform the altruistic acts that are optional for men, they are disliked. When they do go beyond the call of duty they are not, as men are, liked more for it. When they criticize, they are disparaged . Even when they merely offer an opinion, people look displeased. The perceptive reader will notice a certain pattern emerging. The same behavior that enhances his status simply makes her less popular. It's not hard to see that this makes the goal of getting ahead in the workplace distinctly more challenging for a woman. — Cordelia Fine

0Cross-gender behaviour is seen as less acceptable in boys than it is in girls: unlike the term 'tomboy' there is nothing positive implied by its male counterpart, the 'sissy'. — Cordelia Fine

An interest in Star Trek and an antisocial lifestyle may not, in fact, be unassailable correlates of talent in computer programming. — Cordelia Fine

Both women and computer science are the losers when a geeky stereotype serves as an unnecessary gatekeeper to the profession. — Cordelia Fine

My husband would probably like you to know that, for the sake of my research for this chapter, he has had to put up with an awful lot of contemptuous snorting. — Cordelia Fine

The simple, brief experience of imagining oneself as another transformed both self-perception and, through this transformation, behavior. The maxim "fake it till you make it" gains empirical support. — Cordelia Fine

the greater the gender equity of a country, the smaller the gender gap in the importance of the financial resources of a partner (as well as in the importance of other preferences, like chastity and good looks).36 — Cordelia Fine

Some day, I must ask him what it's like to be married to someone who, eyes narrowed in thought, peers at him over the tops of sociology articles with titles like "Who Gets the Best Deal from Marriage: Women or Men?" We've had our disagreements, of course. When, for example, are a few dirty cups a symbol of the exertion of male privilege, and when are they merely unwashed dishes? — Cordelia Fine

A sociocultural environment is not some cunningly contrived thing only exists in social psychology labs. Don't look now, but you're in one right this moment. — Cordelia Fine

There is in fact a category of people who get unusually close to the truth about themselves and the world. Their self-perceptions are more balanced,they assign responsibility for success and failure more even-handedly, and their predictions for the future are more realistic. These people are living testimony to the dangers of self-knowledge. They are the clinically depressed. — Cordelia Fine