Adriana Espinosa, Ph.D.
Dr. Adriana Espinosa, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at CCNY and scholar-in-residence at the MPA Program, discusses gender and racial disparities in STEM professions, microaggressions and other gendered language in the workplace, and how this relates to MPA students’ careers as social impact managers.
Gender gaps are pervasive in our society – in wages, in positions of political power, in access to venture capital, and more. One major theme of your work as scholar-in-residence is the gender gap in STEM. Tell us about that work.
Within STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics), women tend to stay away from the ‘E’ and especially the ‘M’, which is the heart of STEM. One aspect of my research focuses in understanding why that is the case. Many female students often say to me, “I’m just not a math person.” I want to investigate when, why, and how so many women develop that mentality of not being a math person and avoid careers they might otherwise be interested in. Why is it so hard to recruit women for STEM careers? How can we get them in, and then how do we keep them?
One important factor is low self-confidence in one’s ability to learn the material. Studies based on City College students show that self-confidence is correlated with grades. Higher self-confidence is associated with higher performance in the past, and what kills self-confidence is failing or having low performance. So if you come from a high school where you did not do well in math or you were told you shouldn’t really be a math major, then that has a detrimental effect on your self-confidence. Then you bring those attitudes into the classroom, and it doesn’t matter what mode of instruction you have in front of you; if you believe that you can’t do it, you are not going to do it.
I have also looked at attitudes about the usefulness of mathematics. When teaching mathematics, I always highlight the usefulness of the topic in real life. My research has found that a high perception of the usefulness of mathematics positively relates to performance only for those who have high self-confidence in their ability to learn the material. Among those who have low self-confidence in such ability, high perception of the usefulness of mathematics has a negative impact with respect to their grades. They think, “this is an important topic for me to get ahead in my career, but I can’t do it, I’m not good enough for it.” This creates an additional anxiety that impedes performance, or they just give up trying.
What causes these negative self-perceptions?
Early experiences play a major role. Little girls are often given ballerina sets and little boys STEM or STEM-related sets. These social norms are echoed in the schools, even though teachers may not be aware of what they’re saying. When I was in school in Puerto Rico, girls, myself included, were forced to go to Home Economics, where we would learn to iron, sew, and cook, while boys were in mechanics and learning how to program and do other cool stuff.
And that is in high school, during the adolescent years when your identity is being developed. It is also a time of low self-confidence. In childhood, self-confidence is super high. My 8-year-old tells me he’s an expert in everything! But when kids reach adolescence, self-esteem drops, because of body awareness, cognitive developments, and so on. So at this time, if you’re told that you are not good enough, then your self-confidence is going to be impaired. And for some reason, having to do with biological factors, girls have a larger dip in self-confidence than boys.
In your recent talk at the Charles Rangel Center, you highlighted microaggressions and other forms of biased language in the workplace, such as evaluations on RateMyProfessor. Could you expand on the interactive tool that you presented?
Ben Schmidt – I don’t know him or work with him – developed a tool to analyze gendered use of language in RateMyProfessor college student evaluations of their instructors. The tool takes every single rating that a student has put up about any given professor, and it counts the number of times any word is used for males vs. females, and whether the word was used positively or negatively.
You see huge disparities in certain words. Part of my intention was to show the MPA students that gendered language is not foreign to them. They have probably interacted with RateMyProfessor, so I wanted to make it real, for them to realize, “maybe I have used biased language without knowing,” to raise awareness about these issues and start changing behaviors.
The main point I wanted to highlight was that biased language and microaggressions are ubiquitous and have real consequences on those exposed to them. As future leaders, MPA students can and should break the cycle and make sure to empower all individuals.
Recently, #metoo has exposed widespread gender violence in the workplace, and for every one of those cases, many go unreported. In contrast, your work focuses on much less overt forms of gender and racial discrimination.
When you see something really overt – a racist or sexist comment like “this is women’s work” – it is explicit, and the evidence is right there, so it is easier for people to stand up and say that’s wrong.
Microaggressions are more subtle, though evidence from population-based studies shows that a large majority of women and minorities face them, and individuals with co-existing marginalized identities face them even more. However, because they are often so subtle, they are more susceptible to victim-blaming.
For example, someone sees that I am Latina and comments, “I don’t detect an accent,” and follows up with, “you’re so articulate!” Perhaps they were trying to give me an accolade, but I feel offended. What am I supposed to say to that? At the same time, I wonder, “am I over-reacting? Am I too sensitive?”
Here’s another example. I was at a conference, and I was chairing a session, so I had to stand up and introduce the speakers and give a wrap-up to make it all cohesive. It was my first time, so I wanted to do a good job. I read every paper, every presentation, and gave a very nice intro for every single speaker, and then I wrapped it up nicely. It made me feel like I belonged in the session. But when it was time for the next session to start, the next chair stood up and said, “I guess I’m not going to do as great of a job as the lady chair, but I’m going to try."
So here I am thinking, “well I am female, and I was the chair, but how come I feel bad about this comment?” Why couldn’t he have said, “I’m not going to do as good of a job as the previous chair?” I would be equal to him. We’re both chairs. But he said “lady chair.” Had I not been a woman, would I have been rated differently? What does me being a woman have anything to do with me being a chair of this session and more importantly whether I did a good job or not? It bothered me for weeks.
When I tell this story to my colleagues who are aware of microagressions and their consequences, they recognize that the comment was completely wrong. But in the general public, and often with friends and parents or whatever, you hear “oh you’re just too sensitive”. But they are wrong. Everybody should realize that when rating this type of performance, the gender of the person being evaluated plays no role.
Do you think the #metoo movement should also denounce and expose microaggressions?
I think they could highlight them in the same way they are highlighting sexual harassment. I think that we need to – and this is more than just #metoo – just socially, move into a more equal communication. We should be more aware that the gender or race of an individual, if it doesn’t play a role in the conversation, should not be stated. Certainly you have all these speakers on behalf of #metoo, and they could equally raise these other issues, not just the ones that are punishable by law, but just from a social perspective, treat each other decently.
Around other issues, such as drug addiction, we see that the experiences of people of color, people of low socioeconomic status, and people who are not famous receive much less attention. How might this racial and class-based disparity manifest in topics that you research?
This is an issue of intersectionality, or the understanding of how co-existing identities interact to protect or hurt the individual within social systems. People are not only defined by their biological sex; there are other identities that co-exist within the individual. Women constitute a marginal identity, but so does low socioeconomic status and being a racial or ethnic or sexual minority. Individuals with a combination of these co-existing marginalized identities often have a much different experience in society than individuals with one marginalized identity and another privileged one. A rich, white woman is at risk of facing microagressions based on her biological sex, but she is also rich and white, which means she is protected in that sense. This by no means implies that anybody is better or more important than others; it’s that we need to be aware of how these coexisting identities function together in our society.
An MPA student recently published a piece about her struggle with impostor syndrome as an intern on Capitol Hill. She emphasized that it is not only the internal feeling of insecurity; it is reinforced by stressors in the environment. How does impostor syndrome relate to your work on microaggressions and biased language in the workplace?
Impostor syndrome is a psychological phenomenon that afflicts many individuals, regardless of race or sex, who, despite plenty of evidence to the contrary, feel incompetent or incapable. So, the individual responds to an internal voice saying, “you’re a fraud” and consequently has low self-confidence. If others in the surrounding environment are echoing the same sentiment or worse, then the stress is greater.
Members of minority groups suffer more from this phenomenon because of different forms of discrimination, including microaggressions. In fact, impostor syndrome and fear of microaggressions in a future workplace can prevent students from applying for positions they would be highly qualified for. So the issue is right at the heart of my research, although I have not looked at it directly yet.
How can students who struggle with impostor syndrome increase their confidence and overcome it, and how can the MPA program help them do that?
You have to make the individual stronger while also speaking out against what is happening in society. We need to equip students with the emotional resilience to filter out all that nonsense telling them they’re unqualified and they’re going to fail – those useless and debilitating comments. This is related to my research on Emotional Intelligence. We should think of ways to do emotional intelligence training for our students. I am involved with community organizations that design socio-emotional training for children, but we need this for students who may not have gotten the social and emotional learning ever. That’s how we could help increase self-esteem and decrease the imposter syndrome.
Please tell us more about emotional intelligence.
Emotional intelligence (EI) is the individual’s knowledge, recognition, understanding, and regulation of emotions. High-EI people are better able to cope with daily stress and can engage in adaptive and effective emotion regulation strategies when confronted with stress. Consequently, high-EI individuals are mentally and physically healthier than their low-EI counterparts.
How can EI be a tool for overcoming impostor syndrome, in particular for MPA students, who are headed for careers as managers?
My interest in EI is to understand how it can protect those who by virtue of their identities are at risk of environmental stressors – emotionally charged situations like being discriminated against, facing microagressions, or being told that your “kind” is not good enough.
In the past, when EI started becoming popular, it was looked at as a tool for managers to better supervise teams and increase productivity. My approach is to use EI to help individuals confront the everyday stressors, especially if you’re at risk of facing identity-based marginalization on multiple fronts. EI can help MPA students get into positions of power by effectively confronting discrimination in the workplace, and it can also help them to be more effective leaders.
Professor Espinosa, we are very lucky to have you as scholar-in-residence. Thank you for speaking with us today.
This interview is Part 1 of two. See Part 2 here.
The MPA scholar-in-residence program is made possible by generous support from the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service.
Want to become part of the MPA Program? Apply now to join us in fall 2019!
Find out more about our internship program, scholarships, and career development.