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Playing The Gender Card: Overlooking And Overthrowing Sexist Stereotypes

By Shankar Vedantam,
Parth Shah, Tara Boyle, Maggie Penman, Brent Baughman
Published January 17, 2019 at 5:00 PM EST
Mitch Blunt
/
Getty Images/Ikon Images

Annie Duke was about to win $2 million.

It was 2004, and she was at the final hand of the World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions. Annie had beaten some of the best poker players in the world — all men — to get to this point.

But she wasn't sure she deserved to be there.

"I'm sort of thinking, if I fold and I'm wrong, everybody's going to be like, 'See, she plays like a girl, look how he pushed her around,' " said Annie.

This week on the Hidden Brain radio show, we tell the stories of two people who grapple with gender stereotypes on the job. In the first part of the show, Annie Duke takes us through her experiencing competing at the 2004 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions.

Later in the program, we hear the story of Robert Vaughan, a former Navy sailor who decides to pursue a new career as a nurse.

"The first thing that went through my head was, well, that's a woman's job," Robert said. "That's not something that, really, men go into."

Hidden Brain is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Jennifer Schmidt, Rhaina Cohen, Parth Shah, Thomas Lu, Laura Kwerel, and Camila Vargas-Restrepo. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can also follow us on Twitter@hiddenbrain, and listen for Hidden Brain stories each week on your local public radio station.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Science
Shankar Vedantam
Shankar Vedantam is the host and creator of Hidden Brain. The Hidden Brain podcast receives more than three million downloads per week. The Hidden Brain radio show is distributed by NPR and featured on nearly 400 public radio stations around the United States.
See stories by Shankar Vedantam
Parth Shah
Parth Shah is an associate producer at Hidden Brain. He came to NPR in 2016 as a Kroc Fellow.
See stories by Parth Shah
Tara Boyle
Tara Boyle is the supervising producer of NPR's Hidden Brain. In this role, Boyle oversees the production of both the Hidden Brain radio show and podcast, providing editorial guidance and support to host Shankar Vedantam and the shows' producers. Boyle also coordinates Shankar's Hidden Brain segments on Morning Edition and other NPR shows, and oversees collaborations with partners both internal and external to NPR. Previously, Boyle spent a decade at WAMU, the NPR station in Washington, D.C. She has reported for The Boston Globe, and began her career in public radio at WBUR in Boston.
See stories by Tara Boyle
Maggie Penman
See stories by Maggie Penman
Brent Baughman
Brent Baughman is a senior producer in the Programming division at NPR, where he works on new and existing podcasts.