Ethan Keyser
Mr. Hamilton
Writing and Rhetoric II
10 February, 2015
Mixed Engineering in an Engineering Argument
Stereotype Threat and Women’s Performance in Engineering is a scientific report written as a collaborative piece between three psychologists from Waterloo University and an engineering professor from Virginia Tech. The piece was published in the Journal of Engineering Education and tackles the stereotypes that exist in the field of engineering. The main stereotype discussed in the paper is that women are not as good at engineering as men. The primary argument of the essay is that when an exam is worded a certain way it can evoke a “stereotype threat” causing women to underperform on the test.
The essay opens up by listing many statistics that demonstrate that women are underrepresented in the engineering and math fields. It then continues by describing how the stereotypes about women and engineering foster an environment in which women do not score as highly as men on tests. The authors describe how even the most confident student can be negatively effected by the stereotype threat. The essay proceeds to describe situations in which the wording of a test can produce a stereotype threat and affect the performance of the participants. In the next section of the essay the authors describe a study that they set up to test their theory about stereotype threat. In this test two groups of participants were given the same test. One group received a test with instructions that posed a stereotype threat; the other group received a test with a more neutral set of instructions. The essay concludes by breaking down the findings of their study, and describing how the data supports their original thesis.
Throughout the paper, the authors provide extensive amounts of evidence to back up their claims. Additionally, the paper is very data heavy so the author’s tone is mostly professional. Although the paper for the most part succeeds in supporting its argument with data and an even tone, it is not without blemishes. There are several instances where the data provided is not relevant or where the author changes their tone—it is these flaws that weaken the paper and make it less effective overall. So while this paper does have some value, the reader needs to use discernment and recognize its shortcomings.
One thing that the authors do very well is write to their audience. The paper is filled with numerical data (like Table 2 on pg. 557) and technical jargon, such as the following passage: “Not only do women earn a disproportionately lower share of the awarded engineering degrees, they also have lower retention rates then men” (pg. 550). It can be assumed that the target audience of the authors is their fellow educators in the stem (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) fields. Toward this end the paper is effective, it is making its argument with data rather then a sophisticated debate. The author’s purpose in the paper is that they want the education field to change how it treats women; there is not much rhetoric to back up this argument, just their data. The author maintains their even and professional style through much of the paper, but at the end they switch to making an emotional appeal to the reader “Is this true—are women too weak?” (pg. 559). This change weakens the paper in several ways. First of all, the conclusion is different in tone then the rest of the paper, breaking the flow of the argument. Second, because the target audience is clearly fellow educators in the field of engineering, the audience is more likely to respond to a quantitative approach as opposed to the emotional ending that the paper has.
The author’s also manage to build credibility even though the author’s voice is so removed from the paper. The expert tone of the paper and the large amounts of data given, build confidence that the authors know what they are talking about. “Paradoxically, although the degree completion rate for women is significantly lower than the rate for men, the grade point averages (GPA) of women and men were nearly identical (GPA=2.98, […]GPA 2.88, standard deviation=0.561 for men)” It is passages like these that strengthen the readers faith in what the authors are claiming (pg. 557).
One area of the paper that could use some work is the logos. There are also several argumentative blunders with this paper that need to be pointed out. Starting with the conclusion, there is clearly a straw man argument employed in simplifying the “other sides” response to the message of the paper: “One can almost imagine their response to the results of this research: ‘If the women’s performance is going to depend on the phrasing of one or two sentences in the test directions, then they are not tough enough to be engineers’” (pg. 558). This oversimplification is distracting from the rest of the paper. To add, the author makes several assumptions in the paper. The first assumption being that it is a bad thing that there are fewer women in engineering then men. The author does not provide any evidence that would suggest that stereotype threat is the cause of the lack of women in engineering. Additionally, the author mentions that the graduation rate for women in engineering programs is less then any other program without considering that the lower graduation rate could be due to the overall difficulty of the engineering degree when compared to other majors. With all that said, the biggest problem with logos in the paper is the disconnect between the essay thesis and some of the arguments made in the paper. The paper is built on the idea that the wording of a test can affect the performance of women on the test. The paper offers some good evidence to support their claim early on, referencing a study where the test instructions specifically stated that women often underperform on the exam. After this relevant and beneficial evidence, the authors begin to cite information from the study conducted by the authors. However, the study the authors conducted does not use instructions that necessarily imply gender. In the author’s study, women performed mush worse then men on a test described as “diagnostic” as opposed to one described as “non-diagnostic” or “gender fair” (pg. 557). The problem with this evidence is that calling a test “diagnostic” does not have anything to do with gender. The fact that women were so negatively affected by these off topic test instructions brings in to question the author’s theory on stereotype threat. Although this is an interesting bit of data, it does not fit well with the rest of the argument and in fact weakens the argument.
In the end, the authors are making a decent argument about a controversial topic. The authors do a good job finding the right tone with which to approach this paper; however, the overall essay is hampered by some confusing data used to support the thesis. This paper would serve as a good introduction for someone interested in the topic, but it needs to be tweaked before it can be considered the basis for change in the educational system.
Work Cited
Bean, John. Johnson, June. Ramage John. Writing Arguments New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2012.