FORCING CHANGE

Past week, speaking about inclusive environments and how we can modify the stereotype threat in a social group to avoid the underperformance of that group, I share a controversial wondering with my classmates in order to get some feedback and provoke some intellectual debate about the issue. My proposal was whether government intervention favouring minorities would be beneficial or not. My arguments were based on the idea that creating a balance in the number of females and males in the gender-biased degrees will eliminate the stereotype on the long term. I suppose that facilitating the inclusion of minorities in the stereotyped area these minorities will not be stereotyped anymore after some generations, and consequently, there will not be any stereotype relating with gender-bias degrees. So to speak, economical helps from the government for women that want to study maths or other engineer degrees (male’s-biased degrees), or economical help to men studying childhood teaching. Once the stereotype has been erased and there is no stereotype anymore, the economical help will not be necessary.

Reading the text about the fraternities in the U.S. Campus (Sidanius, Van Laar, Levin, & Sinclair, 2004), I detected some similarities between the gender-biased degrees and these associations of students. I was questioning myself whether the intervention of the governmental institution, in this case the university, would be beneficial or not to promote the equality in the campus and whether this intervention would finish with the stereotype. Forcing fraternities to have a minimal percentage of students from minorities within their fraternities will promote the contact between majority and minority. This contact would suppose the end of segregation and stop the perpetuation of stereotypes (cite required). I guess that these ideas might sound drastic in heavy liberal–capitalist minds. Is quite probable that these governmental intervention proposals will not success because their, pretty obvious, link with communism. But, when knowledge has been proved and a scientific and rigorous support exists, from my point of view, some measures should be applied in order to promote the equality and avoid segregation.

Carlos Alcalá

PS. If, as a reader, you have any special interest in a broader argumentation of my ideas, please, contact with me through alcalamarcos.carlos@student.kuleuven.be

References

      Sidanius, J., Van Laar, C., Levin, S., & Sinclair, S. (2004). Ethnic Enclaves and the Dynamics of Social Identity on the College Campus: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 87(1), 96–110. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.87.1.96