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x + y : a mathematician's manifesto for rethinking gender / Eugenia Cheng.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York : Basic Books, 2020Copyright date: ©2020Edition: First US editionDescription: x, 272 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9781541646506
  • 1541646509
Other title:
  • x plus y
Subject(s):
Contents:
Gendered thinking. Introduction ; The difficulties of difference ; The problem with leaning in -- Ungendered thinking. A new dimension ; Structures and society ; Leaning out ; Dreams for the future -- Postscript.
Summary: "Eugenia Cheng can't help thinking like a mathematician. She also can't help thinking like a woman. After all, she's both. But there seems like there must be a clear tension. She had to learn to be a mathematician, for one thing, and-in the popular imagination, anyway-mathematics seems very "male," the domain of individualistic geniuses with terrible social skills, pursuing university tenure and fame. Those traits, however, aren't really what it means to do math: as Cheng has shown through her three previous books, what it really means to think like a mathematician is to see past the distracting, superficial details of things to find their essences. When she turned that thinking upon gender, she found, there wasn't much essence to speak of at all. But what she did find there has become this book. At the heart of x + y are two concepts: not masculine or feminine, but what Cheng calls ingressive and congressive personalities. Ingressive people are competitive, independent, bold, risk-taking, self-assured, and often have one-track minds: these are the people Cheng worked with in high finance, the sort of people who might do well as surgeons or daredevils. Congressive people, on the other hand, focus on society and community, take the needs of others into account, emphasize interconnectedness, and tend to collaborate. As a society, we associate ingressive personalities with men and congressive personalities with women. And herein lies the problem-the source not just of gender inequality, but a great deal of individual unhappiness. When a mathematician like Cheng pursues the issue abstractly, she finds nothing uniquely male about ingression or female about congression. But she does find that, from standardized exams to Nobel prizes, society fundamentally rewards the ingressive, thereby forcing many people-including Cheng herself, one upon a time-to learn and practice a suite of behaviors that they might not have otherwise. To Cheng, it would be a failure to think that a bunch of bad-ass female CEOs would represent true progress, or that the world will be better when men get in touch with their feminine side, because both those scenarios are predicated on faulty premises and bad abstractions. x + y is a call to action, offering a vision of how we can use the power of abstraction to make the world less competitive, that is, more congressive, and to solve gender inequality, not by encouraging men to be less aggressive, or women to be more, but by realizing that-once you start thinking about the problem like a mathematician-it becomes clear that most of what we ascribe to gender has nothing to do with gender at all"-- Provided by publisher.Summary: Cheng think like a mathematician: she sees past the distracting, superficial details of things to find their essences. When she turned that thinking upon gender, she found there wasn't much essence to speak of at all. Cheng explains what she calls ingressive and congressive personalities. Ingressive people are competitive, independent, bold, risk-taking, self-assured, and often have one-track minds. Congressive people focus on society and community, take the needs of others into account, emphasize interconnectedness, and tend to collaborate. As a society, we associate ingressive personalities with men and congressive personalities with women-- and it is the source not just of gender inequality, but a great deal of individual unhappiness. Thinking about the problem like a mathematician makes it clear that most of what we ascribe to gender has nothing to do with gender at all. -- adapted from publisher info
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 155.33 C518 Available 33111010408504
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Shortlisted for the 2021 Phi Beta Kappa Book Award for Science

One of NPR's Best Books of 2020

One of the Most Fascinating Books WIRED Read in 2020



A brilliant mathematician examines the complexity of gender and society and forges a path out of inequality. Why are men in charge? After years in the male-dominated field of mathematics and in the female-dominated field of art, Eugenia Cheng has heard the question many times. In x + y , Cheng argues that her mathematical specialty -- category theory -- reveals why. Category theory deals more with context, relationships, and nuanced versions of equality than with intrinsic characteristics. Category theory also emphasizes dimensionality: much as a cube can cast a square or diamond shadow, depending on your perspective, so too do gender politics appear to change with how we examine them. Because society often rewards traits that it associates with males, such as competitiveness, we treat the problems those traits can create as male. But putting competitive women in charge will leave many unjust relationships in place. If we want real change, we need to transform the contexts in which we all exist, and not simply who we think we are. Praise for Eugenia Cheng "[Eugenia Cheng's] tone is clear, clever and friendly . . . she is rigorous and insightful. . . . [She is] a lucid and nimble expositor." --- Alex Bellos , New York Times Book Review



"Dr. Cheng . . . has a knack for brushing aside conventions and edicts, like so many pie crumbs from a cutting board." --- Natalie Angier , New York Times

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Gendered thinking. Introduction ; The difficulties of difference ; The problem with leaning in -- Ungendered thinking. A new dimension ; Structures and society ; Leaning out ; Dreams for the future -- Postscript.

"Eugenia Cheng can't help thinking like a mathematician. She also can't help thinking like a woman. After all, she's both. But there seems like there must be a clear tension. She had to learn to be a mathematician, for one thing, and-in the popular imagination, anyway-mathematics seems very "male," the domain of individualistic geniuses with terrible social skills, pursuing university tenure and fame. Those traits, however, aren't really what it means to do math: as Cheng has shown through her three previous books, what it really means to think like a mathematician is to see past the distracting, superficial details of things to find their essences. When she turned that thinking upon gender, she found, there wasn't much essence to speak of at all. But what she did find there has become this book. At the heart of x + y are two concepts: not masculine or feminine, but what Cheng calls ingressive and congressive personalities. Ingressive people are competitive, independent, bold, risk-taking, self-assured, and often have one-track minds: these are the people Cheng worked with in high finance, the sort of people who might do well as surgeons or daredevils. Congressive people, on the other hand, focus on society and community, take the needs of others into account, emphasize interconnectedness, and tend to collaborate. As a society, we associate ingressive personalities with men and congressive personalities with women. And herein lies the problem-the source not just of gender inequality, but a great deal of individual unhappiness. When a mathematician like Cheng pursues the issue abstractly, she finds nothing uniquely male about ingression or female about congression. But she does find that, from standardized exams to Nobel prizes, society fundamentally rewards the ingressive, thereby forcing many people-including Cheng herself, one upon a time-to learn and practice a suite of behaviors that they might not have otherwise. To Cheng, it would be a failure to think that a bunch of bad-ass female CEOs would represent true progress, or that the world will be better when men get in touch with their feminine side, because both those scenarios are predicated on faulty premises and bad abstractions. x + y is a call to action, offering a vision of how we can use the power of abstraction to make the world less competitive, that is, more congressive, and to solve gender inequality, not by encouraging men to be less aggressive, or women to be more, but by realizing that-once you start thinking about the problem like a mathematician-it becomes clear that most of what we ascribe to gender has nothing to do with gender at all"-- Provided by publisher.

Cheng think like a mathematician: she sees past the distracting, superficial details of things to find their essences. When she turned that thinking upon gender, she found there wasn't much essence to speak of at all. Cheng explains what she calls ingressive and congressive personalities. Ingressive people are competitive, independent, bold, risk-taking, self-assured, and often have one-track minds. Congressive people focus on society and community, take the needs of others into account, emphasize interconnectedness, and tend to collaborate. As a society, we associate ingressive personalities with men and congressive personalities with women-- and it is the source not just of gender inequality, but a great deal of individual unhappiness. Thinking about the problem like a mathematician makes it clear that most of what we ascribe to gender has nothing to do with gender at all. -- adapted from publisher info

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