How many female professors (or classes from female professors) have you had in law school? Forum

[jrass]

You sound kinda like a tool when you call women who have BAs, JDs, probably other advanced degrees, and work experience "girls," though.

(I also think you're stereotyping madly based on how you expect women v. men to act, but you do you I guess?)

There are neurological differences between the genders. One isn't better than the other, but natural selection favored a few things more in women than it did in men, and vice versa. That said, I doubt these differences would impact how somebody teaches a law school class, and law professors are already wired differently than non-law professors.

This is where I jump in, scream NEUROPLASTICITY!, then jump out again, right?

I would say the fallacy of natural selection as applied to neurology is it tends to overlook the fact that someone better at A is likely to also be better at B. For example, females perform slightly better on the SAT verbal, and men perform slightly better on the SAT math. However, as between any two people, the one who performs better on either one is also more than 50% likely to perform better on the other.

What I mean is that it is important not to confound neurological differences in adulthood with genetic differences at birth, especially not wrt sex differences. Socialization profoundly influences the brain itself, and a lot of sex differences we see in adulthood are simply not present very early in life. It is super fascinating.

That's true, but as collective groups men and women secrete very different levels of many neurotransmitters, and while experience can influence how the brain reacts to particular stimuli, we see differences in the secretion of oxytocin and serotonin present in every society from here in the US to matriarch dominated cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is not sexist to say men and women are distinct. It's fact. It's sexist to say that this means they should have distinct opportunities.

[A. Nony Mouse]

calm down balla

no one is attacking you. i was just saying i thought you were a troll because i didn't think anyone could be that stupid

that was a mistake and i apologize

Oh, I was attacking him.

[yomisterd]

#WeWontBeErased

[A. Nony Mouse]

and seriously, jrass, stop.

[DrRighteous]

You sound kinda like a tool when you call women who have BAs, JDs, probably other advanced degrees, and work experience "girls," though.

(I also think you're stereotyping madly based on how you expect women v. men to act, but you do you I guess?)

There are neurological differences between the genders. One isn't better than the other, but natural selection favored a few things more in women than it did in men, and vice versa. That said, I doubt these differences would impact how somebody teaches a law school class, and law professors are already wired differently than non-law professors.

This is where I jump in, scream NEUROPLASTICITY!, then jump out again, right?

I would say the fallacy of natural selection as applied to neurology is it tends to overlook the fact that someone better at A is likely to also be better at B. For example, females perform slightly better on the SAT verbal, and men perform slightly better on the SAT math. However, as between any two people, the one who performs better on either one is also more than 50% likely to perform better on the other.

What I mean is that it is important not to confound neurological differences in adulthood with genetic differences at birth, especially not wrt sex differences. Socialization profoundly influences the brain itself, and a lot of sex differences we see in adulthood are simply not present very early in life. It is super fascinating.

That's true, but as collective groups men and women secrete very different levels of many neurotransmitters, and while experience can influence how the brain reacts to particular stimuli, we see differences in the secretion of oxytocin and serotonin present in every society from here in the US to matriarch dominated cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is not sexist to say men and women are distinct. It's fact. It's sexist to say that this means they should have distinct opportunities.

Citation please. On my end, I recommend Pink Brain Blue Brain, which is a beautiful discussion of the genetic, hormonal, neurological, etc. differences between men and women that reveals and underscores the overwhelming part socialization plays in adult sex differences.

[xael]

Is it too much to ask that a thread asking about gender representation in law school not become a walking example of why there are gender issues in law school

[Slytherpuff]

Is it too much to ask that a thread asking about gender representation in law school not become a walking example of why there are gender issues in law school

Apparently that is way too much to ask.

[xael]

So instead of doing real work I counted from the faculty page (all who are professors except two "senior lecturers"). Not including emeritus professors it is 31% women (including emeritus it falls to 28%).

5 professors are black (4 men, one woman, though she won't start teaching till this fall). One (a man) is Asian, and two women are middle eastern.

I counted 104 lecturers. 54 are men.

[jrass]

You sound kinda like a tool when you call women who have BAs, JDs, probably other advanced degrees, and work experience "girls," though.

(I also think you're stereotyping madly based on how you expect women v. men to act, but you do you I guess?)

There are neurological differences between the genders. One isn't better than the other, but natural selection favored a few things more in women than it did in men, and vice versa. That said, I doubt these differences would impact how somebody teaches a law school class, and law professors are already wired differently than non-law professors.

This is where I jump in, scream NEUROPLASTICITY!, then jump out again, right?

I would say the fallacy of natural selection as applied to neurology is it tends to overlook the fact that someone better at A is likely to also be better at B. For example, females perform slightly better on the SAT verbal, and men perform slightly better on the SAT math. However, as between any two people, the one who performs better on either one is also more than 50% likely to perform better on the other.

What I mean is that it is important not to confound neurological differences in adulthood with genetic differences at birth, especially not wrt sex differences. Socialization profoundly influences the brain itself, and a lot of sex differences we see in adulthood are simply not present very early in life. It is super fascinating.

That's true, but as collective groups men and women secrete very different levels of many neurotransmitters, and while experience can influence how the brain reacts to particular stimuli, we see differences in the secretion of oxytocin and serotonin present in every society from here in the US to matriarch dominated cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa. It is not sexist to say men and women are distinct. It's fact. It's sexist to say that this means they should have distinct opportunities.

Citation please. On my end, I recommend Pink Brain Blue Brain, which is a beautiful discussion of the genetic, hormonal, neurological, etc. differences between men and women that reveals and underscores the overwhelming part socialization plays in adult sex differences.

There's thousands of articles from US universities alone, and almost no articles based on actual data have reached a different conclusion. If you're interested, the coolest studies examine the brains of babies, and show the differences are actually most pronounced at birth so if anything socialization actually makes us more similar, not more different. Humans aren't that much more complex than other mammals. We have more fat between the different lobes of our brain, which enables use more parts of our brain at once, but from an emotional standpoint we have the same range of emotions and similar triggers as gorillas. Gorillas also have moral laws that they abide by, and experiments have shown they have a sense of justice and fairness, and will intervene if they observe another gorilla being discriminated against for no apparent reason. For the most part, any neurological differences between male and female gorillas will be present in humans as well, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent.

Palanza, Paola. "Animal models of anxiety and depression: how are females different?." Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 25.3 (2001): 219-233; Nishizawa, S., et al. "Differences between males and females in rates of serotonin synthesis in human brain." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 94.10 (1997): 5308-5313; Guinsburg, Ruth, et al. "Differences in pain expression between male and female newborn infants." Pain 85.1 (2000): 127-133; Mozley, Lyn Harper, et al. "Striatal dopamine transporters and cognitive functioning in healthy men and women." American Journal of Psychiatry (2001).

[A. Nony Mouse]

Dude, you're derailing this thread, so stop. (You're also talking at cross-purposes and citing 15-y.o. articles to someone with a PhD in this stuff, but mostly, stop arguing about this here.)

[ballouttacontrol]

calm down balla

no one is attacking you. i was just saying i thought you were a troll because i didn't think anyone could be that stupid

that was a mistake and i apologize

Oh, I was attacking him.

Ouch. Thank u for making my point

[A. Nony Mouse]

You made mine pretty well, too.

[dudders]

None of my 1L classes except LRW were taught by women. (Although there were a handful of female profs who taught these classes for other sections.)

I think it's harder to draw conclusions about 2L/3L classes. Probably half of mine were taught by women ... however, i think there was self-selection on both sides. I don't think it would've been terribly hard (if i was interested in different types of law/classes) to have few, if any, female profs.

[grand inquisitor]

there's a lot of femalesplaining going on in this thread and it doesn't feel like a safe space anymore tbh