Squandered talent
The ‘Outlier’ elephant in the room is gender imbalance
By Ellen Snortland 07/09/2009
Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers: The Story of Success” puts to rest many of the diehard notions we all have about who succeeds, who doesn’t and why, with Gladwell giving those icons of success the name “outliers.” His first book’s title, “The Tipping Point,” has become a commonly used phrase to describe the point at which an idea or product becomes part of the culture because enough people know of it. Maybe this phrase will enjoy similar popularity.
Gladwell writes about the “squandered talent” among about one-third of a group of genius IQ boys — nicknamed the “Termites” — studied by Stanford psychology professor Lewis Terman decades ago. Terman tracked their lifelong achievements in work, family and finances and was convinced that their superior IQs would make them all succeed. He was wrong. More than anything, it was the young genius’ class expectations and family home life that determined their destinies. The “Termites” were divided into groups A, B and C. The C group geniuses, the underachievers who lacked educated parents encouraging them to excel, came out on the bottom. In “Outliers,” Gladwell concludes that the C group “lacked something that could have been given to them if we’d only known they needed it: a community around them that prepared them properly for the world. The Cs were squandered talent. But they didn’t need to be.”
But in his book, Gladwell either ignores, dismisses or is utterly blind to the massive gender elephant in the room — a shocking disregard for the success and failure rates of half the human race. If he doesn’t see that “It’s a boy” or “It’s a girl” has a major impact on success rates —domestically and internationally — Gladwell does not have enough “uppity” women in his life to “raise his consciousness.”
Successful women in “Outliers” are utterly conspicuous by their absence, and there’s never even a word about them being missing.
Don’t get me wrong. I admire Gladwell. He has made a profound difference in how our culture can view context as distinct from content.
But to completely miss gender as a formative element of success is thoroughly weird.
Here’s a small example from my own life: I cloak identity. This is not about an individual character flaw, but more about cultural mores relevant to success for females. An ordinarily loving and intelligent relative of mine — I’ll call her Eve — confronted me for being an embarrassment to the family because I’m so “ambitious,” i.e., improper. She is of a generation where domesticity and compliance in females is highly valued. For the first time in history, many women of my generation — a critical mass! — questioned authority, including compliant females and dominating males. We intentionally set out to be “improper” women. My generation’s behavior could have landed Eve’s contemporaries in hot water. What I was doing was downright dangerous in their eyes. Gladwell emphasizes the very long shadows that class, ethnicity and even one’s birth year throw on one’s ability to succeed — but on gender? Silence.
Eve’s class and generation of women did not lack ambition. They were ambitious within the proper feminine context: finding good marriages, running a beautiful home, being well-groomed, etc. Also, I was the last of three daughters and the last chance for my father to raise a son. He resigned himself to a son substitute: me. I was praised for being a “tomboy” (a sexist phrase, but that’s another column) and nurtured for bucking authority and being AMBITIOUS, just like a boy. Indeed, I went to law school. But they did not prepare me for the world and the overt and covert problems I’d encounter — personally and professionally — with gender bias. Gender bias/bigotry is practically invisible to most people and the one who spotlights it is not rewarded but often ostracized.
In “Outliers” even Gladwell’s own story is missing the gender lens. His grandmother had twin daughters: If she had also had a son, it’s probable that Gladwell’s grandmother would have put her survival eggs in the son’s basket, and not the twin daughters. Gladwell’s own highly educated mother made sure that he and his brothers did very, very well.
I hereby issue a public challenge to Malcolm Gladwell: Examine the “glass ceiling,” the long shadow cast over women from families rich and poor. Unless we stop squandering the talents of girls and women, we’re apt to destroy our world from the dangers of gender imbalance.
Ellen Snortland coaches nonfiction writers. Reach her at snortland.com.
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