I've watched Dr. Claude Steele's lectures on stereotype threat. I have to say I'm a little torn on the subject. I'm not sure if I buy into it as a phenomenon on it's own, but he does have a lot of research that seems to back it up. Research and statistics are easy to manipulate, though. I haven't really had time to look the specific studies he mentioned and their methodology though, so I have no reason to doubt them... yet. The only thing I have to go on right now is personal experience.

With a name like Mary, you probably assumed I'm a woman. If you did, you'd be correct. I grew up in a home full of engineers and scientists with a lot of engineers and scientists in our lineage, both male and female, on my father's side. Maybe this is why I never perceived stereotype threat in my life, or maybe it's a generational thing. I decided to discuss it with my mother, a self-fulfilled woman who's started many successful businesses. I thought perhaps she'd share my confusion in stereotype threat.

My mother described to me how her mother clung very tightly to gender roles, and the difficulties that my mother faced as a child since she was a tomboy. She'd wanted to join the football team, and was good enough to join, according to the coach, but was forbidden by her parents. She had wanted to pursue a college degree, but was constantly reminded by her mother that the only reason women went to college was to earn a "MRS degree," meaning to find a husband.

I asked if any of this ever affected her performance in anything that she did. My mother told me it never held her back, instead it made her more determined to succeed to prove everyone wrong. I have to say, she's been extremely successful in her businesses, so maybe she did prove them all wrong.

As a result of her upbringing, my mother forbade fashion dolls in our household and encouraged all of her children to pursue anything they wanted to, with no mention of gender expectations. In contrast to my mother's childhood where girls and boys were expected to perform certain chores depending on their gender, we all had a turn at cleaning and we all had a turn at manual labor. I was extremely active and successful in my school's sports community as well as in the academic competitions such as Math Counts and In The Know, and a couple of my brothers excelled in arts and professional cooking. We never knew girls and boys weren't supposed to excel in certain things. I guess I have my mother to thank for that.

The first time in my life that I ever ran into a stereotype was in high school, at my first job at a fast food joint. One of my coworkers, Ling (not his real name,) asked what degree I was pursuing when he found out I was attending college. When I replied Computer Science, he laughed. I wasn't sure why he was laughing so I just gave him a confused look and he slowly quieted and reflected my confused look back at me. We stared at each other for about 20 seconds before he broke the silence with "but you're a girl." Apparently this caused an even more confused look to overtake my face, because after another awkward silence he explained, "girls don't do that kind of thing." Another awkward silence followed which was broken by me with, "what are you talking about?" He never answered, instead choosing to look embarassed and walk away. Needless to say, I was confused the rest of the day.

Maybe I've been lucky that I never ran into stereotyping until that particular time. Dr. Steele mentioned that the steroetype threat phenomenon did not occur in all girls' schools, meaning that people who were insulated from it tended to not be affected by it. Maybe my ignorance of stereotypes shielded me from ever experiencing it. Even after that point, I never let it affect me. I let Ling's comments be a reflection on him and his thinking capacities rather than my own and moved on. I can't recall any time I'd run into that kind of situation since then, so it exists only as an outlier in my experience.

All of that being said, I'm only speaking as a woman. I don't know if I'd necessarily consider myself a minority since approximately half of the population is female, like me. Perhaps someone who came from a different household and was of different ethnicity or orientation would feel differently from me. I've always appreciated other people for who they are, not their physical characteristics or where they came from. I can't claim to know their experiences or the extent of the effect of stereotype threat on them.

But maybe my lack of experience with it could be an answer. If as a culture, we focused on allowing everyone to be whoever they wanted to be, without focusing on stereotypes, maybe the phenomenon would disappear altogether. I know I'm starting with my children, just as my mother did. Thanks, mom!