Rating: 
Summary: Clear and Informed Analysis
Review: Virginia Valian is an outstanding researcher in the area of women's status in prestigious professions. Her analyses are concise and accurate. She has the gift of asking important questions and not biasing her answers with any specific opinions of her own. Her documentation is thorough and includes current thought when it is relevant. If you are interested in issues of women in academia and the work place, you need to read this book!
Rating:
Summary: the data you need
Review: Virginia Valian offers scholars and general readers a book of extraordinary excellence. Why So Slow? brings together decades of social science research on the role of gender in society. In the schools, in the home, in the work place, men and women have taken on different roles and therefore have lived different experiences. Gender is socially constructed. But it affects who gets listened to, who gets promoted, and even whose goals get cheered in those coed soccer games! Understanding the construction isn't easy. Valian's book lights the path. Valian's claim is that small differences can become, over time, significant differences. If disadvantage accumulates, the little molehills become mountains. If women (or any group) suffers a slight disadvantage in evaluation, hiring, promotion, consideration, or attention, over time the disadvantage can be great--and Valian gathers the numbers and data to support her view. Her title question, Why So Slow?, asks why women still represent only 8% of all the managing directors on Wall Street, still lag behid in publication, pay, and promotion. It is surprising to discover that the causes are broadly societal and not just "men as the enemy." The book is beautifully structured, carefully written, complete (even a first rate index she must have created herself!), richly annotated, and a pleasure to read. Valian's tone is that of the scientist and scholar who has looked long and carefully at the world and has a few interesting thoughts to share. The final chapter should be required reading for anyone with a job, a child, or a future
Rating:
Summary: Valian's social science research-review rocks!
Review: Virginia Valian offers scholars and general readers a book of extraordinary excellence. Why So Slow? brings together decades of social science research on the role of gender in society. In the schools, in the home, in the work place, men and women have taken on different roles and therefore have lived different experiences. Gender is socially constructed. But it affects who gets listened to, who gets promoted, and even whose goals get cheered in those coed soccer games! Understanding the construction isn't easy. Valian's book lights the path. Valian's claim is that small differences can become, over time, significant differences. If disadvantage accumulates, the little molehills become mountains. If women (or any group) suffers a slight disadvantage in evaluation, hiring, promotion, consideration, or attention, over time the disadvantage can be great--and Valian gathers the numbers and data to support her view. Her title question, Why So Slow?, asks why women still represent only 8% of all the managing directors on Wall Street, still lag behid in publication, pay, and promotion. It is surprising to discover that the causes are broadly societal and not just "men as the enemy." The book is beautifully structured, carefully written, complete (even a first rate index she must have created herself!), richly annotated, and a pleasure to read. Valian's tone is that of the scientist and scholar who has looked long and carefully at the world and has a few interesting thoughts to share. The final chapter should be required reading for anyone with a job, a child, or a future
Rating: 
Summary: A critically acclaimed study of gender and advancement.
Review: Why do so few women occupy positions of power and prestige? Virginia Valian uses concepts and data from psychology, sociology, economics, and biology to explain the disparity in the professional advancement of men and women. According to Valian, men and women alike have implicit hypotheses about gender differences - gender schemas- that create small sex differences in characteristics, behaviors, perceptions, and evaluations of men and women. Those small imbalances accumulate to advantage men and disadvantage women. The most important consequence of gender schemas for professional life is that men tend to be overrated and women underrated. Although most men and women in the professions sincerely hold efalitarian beliefs, those beliefs alone cannot guarantee impartial evaluation and treatment of others. Only by understanding how our perceptions are skewed by gender schemas can we begin to perceive ourselves and others accurately. Valian's goal in WHY SO SLOW? is to make the invisible factors that retard women's progress visible so that fair treatment of men and women will be possible. The book makes its case with experiemental and observational data from laboratory and field studies of children and adults, and with statistical documentation on men and women in the professions. The many anecdotal examples throughout provide a lively counterpoint. Virginia Valian is Professor of Psychology and Linguistics at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center "Dr. Valian has analyzed many hundreds of studies on the status of women in the professions, science and academia. She has now pulled the vast and ragged literature together into a compelling book called, WHY SO SLOW? THE ADVANCEMENT OF WOMEN...." -Natalie Angier, THE NEW YORK TIMES "WHY SO SLOW? is a breakthrough in the discourse on gender and has great potential to move the women's movement to a new, more productive phase." PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY (starred review)
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