Quantcast
Channel: samdiener
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 66

AT&T Ad Sells Sexist Math Stereotypes

0
0

In 1991, Mattel’s Teen Talk Barbie was programmed to say, “Math class is tough.”

After an outcry of protest by feminists, educators, and parents, Mattel quickly deleted the stereotype-promoting phrase. Nearly thirty years later, I would have thought corporations would be aware enough not to continue promoting sexist stereotypes of math being tough for girls and women. I was wrong.

On the back page of the Sunday New York Times’ At Home section (p. 14), AT&T ran a full-page ad, the top of which I photographed above. The ad portrays two people, presumably daughter and mother, with the daughter thinking, “When was the last time SHE did algebra?,” while the mother muses, “Math! I did not miss you.” Beneath the photo above, AT&T’s text claimed that they were connecting “students and teachers to learning.” If so, I don’t understand how AT&T thought that promoting the ideas that math is useless for women, and something that women hate, exemplified connecting students to learning

Sexist Stereotypes in Math Have a Cumulative Impact

Despite girls matching boys in mathematical performance on average, and even over-performing boys in grades in math through the high school years, sexist stereotypes of women in math have a negative cumulative impact as teens get older. It’s been 15 years since the then President of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, made his infamous comments speculating about whether women lacked the “intrinsic aptitude” to do higher-level math. Yet women continue to be under-represented in higher-education STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) fields, mathematics in particular. According to MIT’s Women in Mathematics:

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (U.S. Department of Education), women earned 57%, 60% and 52% of all Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees respectively in the U.S. in 2013-14. However, women earned only 43%, 41% and 29% of the Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctoral degrees respectively in mathematics and statistics in the U.S. in the same year.

Further, according to the National Science Foundation, women earned 42% of the Doctoral degrees in Life, Physical, Earth, Math, Computer and Social Sciences, Engineering, and Psychology, but women earned only 25% of the Doctoral Degrees in Mathematics and Computer Sciences in 2015 (National Science Foundation).

Additionally, while women constitute 46.8% of the work force, they comprise 25.5% of “Computer and Mathematical Occupations” (U.S. Department of Labor). 

Women still receive only ¼ of the doctoral degrees in math and computer science, and make up only ¼ of the computer/math workforce. As a tech company, AT&T should be, and indeed claims to be, especially aware of this problem. 

AT&T Claims They’re Promoting Gender Equity

According to their 2018 “Diversity and Inclusion Annual Report,” AT&T is making inclusive strides forward, but only 33% of their workforce is female. In the report, Chairman (sic) and CEO Randall Stephenson proclaims, “While there is always more we can do, we are committed more than ever to being one of the leaders in diversity and inclusion.” Corey Anthony, the Senior Vice President, Human Resources & Chief Diversity Officer, brags about partnerships designed “to encourage underserved students (to go) into STEM careers.” Page 26 of this report lists their partnerships with women’s groups, and claims that they celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month. They trumpet their support for the estimable Girls Who Code initiative, explaining, “A key priority for our partnerships and engagements with diverse communities is increasing the representation of women in technology fields.” (p. 48).

In fact, in the report, AT&T even announced they were working to remove gender bias from their advertising. They created a Gender Equality Measure (GEM), a tool, “for eliminating bias in content” while claiming they engage in, “copy testing of ads to improve GEM scores.” They said that in 2018, “we made our first public pledge to remove bias from content.” (p. 58) If they’re using their own tool, it apparently needs some fine-tuning.

Given these commitments to combating sexism in STEM and in advertising, how come their PR department is under-cutting their own proclaimed values and goals with sexist ads like this?

The Response to the Math-Phobic Barbie

Thirty years ago, the most memorable response to Mattel’s math-phobic Barbie was that of the Barbie Liberation Organization, the BLO. The BLO bought a few hundred talking Barbies and talking GI Joes, surgically switched their voice boxes, returned them to their boxes, and then placed them back into the stores. GI Joe then asked, in a high-pitched voice, “Do you want to go shopping?” while Barbie menacingly proclaimed, “Dead men tell no tales.”

Proclaiming their opposition to both sexist war toys and sexist body-shaming dolls, BLO claimed they were “an international group of children’s toys who are revolting against the companies who made us. They build us in a way that promotes gender-based stereotypes. Those stereotypes have a negative effect on children’s development.” 

For those wanting a case-study of culture-jamming protests against the promotion of gender stereotypes, see the video above, and the write-up in the valuable organizing-tool website (and book) Beautiful Trouble

Our Response Today?

Ten years ago, Wired Magazine documented the sexist marketing of girl-themed science kits. They too expressed surprise that these lessons still needed to be re-taught 20 years after the Barbie snafu.

I’m currently teaching social justice math and science in a middle school, especially to students with learning disabilities. Teaching STEM to students whose experiences with these subjects has often left them frustrated is difficult enough without sexist anti-math messages in the media reinforcing negative stereotypes.

Drawing on the same creative outrage that fueled the BLO, what methods might we use to protest AT&T’s promulgation of these same stereotypes today? In their Diversity and Inclusion report quoted above, AT&T said they are using the hashtag #SeeHer to promote the visibility of women in STEM. On Twitter, they also seem to use the hashtag #attdiversity. Perhaps one first step would be to use these same hashtags to protest the sexism of their latest ad. If you tweet using these (or other related hashtags), please copy it into the comments below to provide inspiration to others. Please also add your ideas for ways we could protest further.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 66

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images