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Unconscious assumptions based on gender

Wed, 2007-08-22 16:15 — Jeni

I was reading the Draft TAG Finding on Dereferencing HTTP URIs the other day. It has a load of “Stories” in it: examples that illustrate the technical points of the document. In general, examples fall into three categories:

  • examples that illustrate an expert doing the right thing
  • examples that illustrate a beginner doing the right thing
  • examples that illustrate a beginner doing the wrong thing (and being corrected)

What I realised as I read the stories in this document was that the gender of the protagonist of the story changed how I read them. In particular, when the protagonist was female (as in the stories in this Finding), I assumed that they were a beginner, and probably doing something wrong.

Here’s an example:

Angela decides to provide information related to the meter as part of her work on the ontology. She configures her web server to return an HTTP 303 response code when the URI for the meter (http://www.example.com/ontology/meter) is dereferenced. She arranges for the URI returned with the HTTP 303 response (http://www.example.com/ontology/related/meter) to refer to an information resource that can provide multiple, equivalent representations via content negotiation. In particular she arranges for representations in HTML and RDF to be available to requests that specify the appropriate content type.

Mentally changing “Angela” to “Bob” completely changed how I interpreted the story. Suddenly someone I’d assumed to be incompetent, tentatively making changes while unsure of their outcome, I now assumed to competent, assertively making changes to meet a requirement. I’ve probably primed you enough that you don’t have the same experience as you read the example above, but you might try changing the protagonist’s gender next time you read a similar example, just to see.

I should also point out, in mitigation, that assumptions about people in stories are affected by all sorts of things, particularly people-you-have-known-called-X. Mentally changing “Angela” to “Eve”, for example, has the same kind of effect as changing it to “Bob”.

Anyway, kudos to the TAG for including in their documents stories with competent female protagonists.

Comments

Mon, 2007-08-27 16:01 — Max Froumentin (not verified)

Re: Unconscious assumptions based on gender

I wonder if I’d have perceived this entry differently if I’d thought your were a man, Jeni. In fact, I wonder if a man could have got away with writing it and not encounter a barrage of accusing comments ;-)

[this blog’s captcha is the hardest I’ve ever seen. Trying again with the audio]

Wed, 2007-08-22 17:49 — david (not verified)

Re: Unconscious assumptions based on gender

You’re right that it’s complicated. I don’t think I’d have your reaction about gender, because so many of my most influential teachers and mentors during my undergrad and grad studies were women. I hope that I wouldn’t assume that someone named, say, “Sanjay” would be less competent than someone named “Bob”, but I can’t be so certain that I don’t have some national prejudices hiding away somewhere. I know that I’d probably make (unfair) assumptions based on age, assuming that the 45-year-old were more competent than the 25-year-old.

Fri, 2007-08-24 02:54 — David (not verified)

Re: Unconscious assumptions based on gender

I’d have to concur with David, I usually don’t have gender specific assumptions with examples… I guess I’m too used to reading about Alice and Bob in books.

Fri, 2007-10-05 17:04 — Sarah Brown (not verified)

Re: Unconscious assumptions based on gender

I was recently involved in a training course on ‘peer review’. I had to read and evaluate a selection of anonymised grant applications and found myself visualising an applicant who seemed naive as a woman and an applicant who sounded particularly sophisticated and confident as a man.