Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Article: Princeton's Woman Problem

In the Realization of Potential Study by Card, Steeles, and Abeles in 1980, the researchers concluded that there were two main factors which account for differences in achievement by gender among their bright group of subjects. First of all, they found that the boys were taught that their accomplishments were due to their abilities but their failures were due to external factors. Conversely, the girls were taught that their accomplishments were possible due to hard work and lucky external factors rather than their abilities, but that their failures were due to their lack of abilities.

Brown and Gilligan found that women in college are �at the crossroads�. While they may have previously been confident and outspoken, they became unsure of their accomplishments. The Horner Effect or the Fear of Success Syndrome occurs when women characteristically underachieve when competing against men. While this was observed throughout the 1960�s and 1970�s and then found to be lessening significantly in the 1980�s, Barbara Kerr asserts that since they are bright, gifted girls become sensitive to the conflicts for women in competitive situations much earlier than girls usually do.

In her book Smart Girls, Barbara Kerr, Ph.D. presents findings from a survey of her gifted classmates from the late 1960�s and early 1970�s. Her research objective was to find out why the superb schooling opportunity combined with the heightened women�s movement in the late 1960�s did not produce women of greater accomplishment among this group of women who were identified as gifted. She found four major factors contributing to their underachievement. First, there was a denial of giftedness among the women, even though they had been identified as children and did indeed participate in an enriched education opportunity. She calls this the �imposter phenomenon� as discovered by psychotherapists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Immes (1978). Numerous bright females denied that they were intelligent, despite significant successes and measurable accomplishments. Second, the subjects in the Kerr study reported that there had been a conspiracy of silence among their parents, a socialization effect that higher intelligence among girls was not necessarily something to be proud about. Third, the women had lowered their aspirations significantly during high school and college compared to the goals they had stated prior to high school. Finally, the respondents indicated that there had been a necessary adjustment to reality in order to meet the dilemma of having a family and pursuing their own career objectives.