Attributing failure to femaleness rather than education worsens outcomes

Evidence

As long as the exams are fairly easy, their inadequacy will not be noticed too much; but when serious competitive exams are in question, the female student will become aware of her weaknesses; she will attribute them to the unjust curse of femaleness and not to the mediocrity of her education; resigning herself to this inequality, she exacerbates it; she persuades herself that her chances of success are related to her patience and assiduity; she decides to use her strength sparingly: this is a bad calculation. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1938

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to attribution theory in modern psychology; also resonates with the ‘fixed mindset’ research of Carol Dweck. — connects to: Attributing failure to group discrimination both relieves and harms the self; Blaming structural inequality for outcomes protects self-esteem in disadvantaged groups — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1070; Seventeenth-century women attributed achievement gaps to education, not biology — Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology,…, 994
• DEFINE: Illustrates Beauvoir’s mechanism of bad faith — misattributing a socially-produced condition to an essential ‘curse of femaleness.‘

Broader Connections

• Attributing failure to group discrimination both relieves and harms the self #corroborates (0.88)
• Blaming structural inequality for outcomes protects self-esteem in disadvantaged groups #expands (0.75) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1070