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sohva's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
A good conversation starter on how we talk about gender and characteristics. The book is well-written and easy to read. The meaning of the words ingressive and congressive was a bit unclear and could've been explained better.
archytas's review
3.0
"When I reconsider the behaviours I learnt during my time in mainstream academia, I wonder if some of them were valuable. Perhaps being able to be uncowed by aggressively dominant people is a genuinely useful skill to have learnt, but it’s only useful because aggressively dominant people exist. If they didn’t exist it wouldn’t be a useful skill at all"
It hard to know how to describe or respond to this book. Judged by the merits for which Cheng claims for it, it is really that successful. Cheng doesn't replace feminism here - for starters, she does not discuss how social and economic power works, nor the thorny issue of domestic labour and to whose benefit it is, nor reproductive rights, nor secual violence. Her focus is firmly on bias and prejudice, how this impacts on women in the workplace and education, and yes, how this intersects with other forms of bias and prejudice. She tackles the whole problem of gender inequality as if no-one benefits from it, and therefore, largely as if it is more accident than anything else. In reality, she views it a byproduct of a society designed to reward ïngressive"(selfish) behaviour over congressive (supportive and empowering) behaviour*.
However, within the limitations of this being a book about how behaving more generously might also create a world with more equality and just more actual comfort and happiness, which also takes some deadly side swipes at stupid sexist arguments, it is fantastic. Cheng uses the language of maths to demonstrate, devastatingly, how arguments morph from "stats show men are slightly better at x skill" to "almost all mathematicians should be men" by shifting the meanings in the formulations one by one until something entirely different is concluded. I would hope it is a very effective teaching method to help people understand how things can seem proven when, in practice, they are anything but." The stories she chooses of women leaders who chose different pathways are a mixed bunch, but Emmy Noether's, for example, was fantastic. (I am a huge fan of promoting the work of Rosalind Franklin, not only because of her brilliance, but because of the appalling way she was treated by Watson in particular, but nothing I've read makes her seem anything like the paragon of collaboration).
Cheng also writes movingly of her own experiences in the fields of academia and mathematics, and what led her to teach maths in an art school, to seek her joy in helping the terrified find their feet, rather than in the hypercompetitive world of specialist disciplines. Some of her anecdotes - a beloved professor noting that "women are so vain" when she checked her hood at her graduation, really are pretty awful. But her leap from her to that all sexism could be managed or minimised with more empathic and inclusive behaviours isn't really something I could endorse more generally. Her clarion call, which could be summarised as "focus less on changing the glass ceiling and more on building an open forum where everyone gets a say" is admirable, and should be heard. The maths parts, at the beginning of the book, work well to understand category theory as well as to better pick apart many sexist myths. And frankly, she is very funny and very warm and a pleasure to spend a book with.
*While as shorthand, Cheng summarises ingressive as "going more into things" and congressive as "bringing things together". However the full description she provides is noticeably less neutral "ingressive: Focusing on oneself over society and community, imposing on people more than taking others into account, emphasising independence and individualism, more competitive and adversarial than collaborative, tendency towards selective or single-track thought processes. congressive: Focusing on society and community over self, taking others into account more than imposing on them, emphasising interdependence and interconnectedness, more collaborative and cooperative than competitive, circumspect thought processes.""
It hard to know how to describe or respond to this book. Judged by the merits for which Cheng claims for it, it is really that successful. Cheng doesn't replace feminism here - for starters, she does not discuss how social and economic power works, nor the thorny issue of domestic labour and to whose benefit it is, nor reproductive rights, nor secual violence. Her focus is firmly on bias and prejudice, how this impacts on women in the workplace and education, and yes, how this intersects with other forms of bias and prejudice. She tackles the whole problem of gender inequality as if no-one benefits from it, and therefore, largely as if it is more accident than anything else. In reality, she views it a byproduct of a society designed to reward ïngressive"(selfish) behaviour over congressive (supportive and empowering) behaviour*.
However, within the limitations of this being a book about how behaving more generously might also create a world with more equality and just more actual comfort and happiness, which also takes some deadly side swipes at stupid sexist arguments, it is fantastic. Cheng uses the language of maths to demonstrate, devastatingly, how arguments morph from "stats show men are slightly better at x skill" to "almost all mathematicians should be men" by shifting the meanings in the formulations one by one until something entirely different is concluded. I would hope it is a very effective teaching method to help people understand how things can seem proven when, in practice, they are anything but." The stories she chooses of women leaders who chose different pathways are a mixed bunch, but Emmy Noether's, for example, was fantastic. (I am a huge fan of promoting the work of Rosalind Franklin, not only because of her brilliance, but because of the appalling way she was treated by Watson in particular, but nothing I've read makes her seem anything like the paragon of collaboration).
Cheng also writes movingly of her own experiences in the fields of academia and mathematics, and what led her to teach maths in an art school, to seek her joy in helping the terrified find their feet, rather than in the hypercompetitive world of specialist disciplines. Some of her anecdotes - a beloved professor noting that "women are so vain" when she checked her hood at her graduation, really are pretty awful. But her leap from her to that all sexism could be managed or minimised with more empathic and inclusive behaviours isn't really something I could endorse more generally. Her clarion call, which could be summarised as "focus less on changing the glass ceiling and more on building an open forum where everyone gets a say" is admirable, and should be heard. The maths parts, at the beginning of the book, work well to understand category theory as well as to better pick apart many sexist myths. And frankly, she is very funny and very warm and a pleasure to spend a book with.
*While as shorthand, Cheng summarises ingressive as "going more into things" and congressive as "bringing things together". However the full description she provides is noticeably less neutral "ingressive: Focusing on oneself over society and community, imposing on people more than taking others into account, emphasising independence and individualism, more competitive and adversarial than collaborative, tendency towards selective or single-track thought processes. congressive: Focusing on society and community over self, taking others into account more than imposing on them, emphasising interdependence and interconnectedness, more collaborative and cooperative than competitive, circumspect thought processes.""
loveday's review against another edition
4.0
Ok so I did like this esp looking at 'congressive' vs 'ingressive' ways of thinking and being (gotsa read to find out what these are) BUT it was very mathematicians 'I supposeth' and I think parts of that felt a bit erasurey for me and also a bit too on the fence in some ways. Like in the examples about congressive vs ingressive ways to respond to a racist comment, the ingressive response was: that's racist and the congressive one was: what do you mean by that? And tbqh I think the ingressive one is just completely fine in this instance. Anywayyyssss read it to find out wtaf I'm talking about
adep02's review against another edition
2.5
enjoyed this and made me think but i think some of the arguments are flawed. if you’re arguing for a society that favours and uplifts community why bring gender into it and (seemingly) negate sexism and bias because of it?
skeeter4366's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting idea. But also calling this math is a stretch.