Science, Sex, and Stereotypical Images in Scientific Advertising

Question 1 

In the article "Expectations of Brilliance," the main argument is that if experts in a given field believe that "brilliance" is indispensable for success, then that career domain has fewer women. Notably, there is no evidence that "brilliance" is more prominent in males than in females, which thus makes it difficult to explain the above relationship. The researchers attempted to analyze different fields of academia with the primary focus being to find the number of women in those areas. From their analysis, it is evident that the more demanding a field is the less the number of women working in it ( Leslie, Cimpian, Meyer & Freeland, 2015 ). These findings do not necessarily imply that men are more endowed with brilliance but stereotyping and gender profiling are responsible for this gap. Experts’ beliefs on the importance of innate talent in being successful in a given field vary. 

From the article, the gender gap in specific disciplines is attributable to the effects of negative stereotyping women as lacking the required innate talent to thrive in those fields. Also, men are perceived to be more systematic than women who are considered to be more empathizing. Emphasis on "brilliance" lays the foundation for the argument for the biological determination of gender distribution in a given filed due to the notable differences in the representation of men and women ( Leslie et al. 2015 ). As mentioned above, men dominate specific fields since they are perceived to be more brilliant than women. Hence, in this particular study, the primary aim was to find the truth value of this assertion. 

Question 2 

Barbercheck notes that "science is often mythologized in terms of the masculine hero ethic." The advertisements examined in this research affirm the previous statement. In the commercials, the scientist was depicted as the hero or a person of authority a strategy which was perceived to market the content in question better. Barbercheck in the above statement, attempts to show how men were erroneously seen to be heroes, and as such, their appearances in commercials could create the much-needed authority. "Masculine hero ethic" in this context refers to the tendency of thinking that male scientists have an advantage over women and the latter attempts to bring equality in the representation of women and men as heroes ( Barbercheck, 2001 ). The dominance of men as heroes was directly connected to gender and related issues. 

The society for a long time has over glorified male masculinity, which in turn created the culture of stereotyping. For instance, from the example of the image of the scientist, the researcher writes that one of its objectives is to represent the perfect flow of knowledge from nature through the male scientist without distortion of its meaning. Hence for the advertisement with the image of a woman to have authority, that of a man had to be included. "Masculine hero ethic" works in favor of a male-dominated society which in essence pushes women to a weak second position. Such a hero values his dominance and the power that comes with it. The hero seeks to be the single source of knowledge and thus creating mystery to those seeking to understand his projects ( Barbercheck, 2001 ). Moreover, he aims to control the relationship with society since he acts as a knowledge reservoir. The hero also believes that he is synonymous with undistorted scientific knowledge. "Masculine hero ethic" is, therefore, the fallacy that men are better than women, especially in the fields of science. 

References 

Barbercheck, M. (2001). Science, sex, and stereotypical images in scientific advertising.  Women, science, and technology: A reader in feminist science studies , 118-132. 

Leslie, S. J., Cimpian, A., Meyer, M., & Freeland, E. (2015). Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines.  Science ,  347 (6219), 262-265.