Slate defends Harvard's Summers on female inferiority in mathematics

[imenja]

And they said we didn't need the Equal Rights Amendment. Can you imagine an article defending a racist comment on African-American inferiority? Between this and the constant comments about women's appearance and body parts on DU, you'd think we were still in the eighteenth-century.


"Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Head" The pseudo-feminist show trial of Larry Summers.
By William Saletan
Posted Friday, Jan. 21, 2005, at 3:46 PM PT

http://www.slate.com/id/2112570/#ContinueArticle

"Larry Summers, the president of Harvard, suggested the other day that innate differences between the sexes might help explain why relatively few women become professional scientists or engineers. For this, he has been denounced—metaphorically, of course—as a Neanderthal. Alumni are withholding donations. Professors are demanding apologies. Some want him fired.

Everyone agrees Summers' remarks were impolitic. But were they wrong? Is it wrong to suggest that biological differences might cause more men than women to reach the academic elite in math and science? . . .

What's the evidence on Summers' side? Start with the symptom: the gender gap in test scores. Next, consider biology. Sex is easily the biggest physical difference within a species. Men and women, unlike blacks and whites, have different organs and body designs. The inferable difference in genomes between two people of visibly different races is one-hundredth of 1 percent. The gap between the sexes vastly exceeds that. A year and a half ago, after completing a study of the Y chromosome, MIT biologist David Page calculated that male and female human genomes differed by 1 percent to 2 percent—"the same as the difference between a man and a male chimpanzee or between a woman and a female chimpanzee," according to a paraphrase in the New York Times. "We all recite the mantra that we are 99 percent identical and take political comfort in it," Page said. "But the reality is that the genetic difference between males and females absolutely dwarfs all other differences in the human genome." Another geneticist pointed out that in some species 15 percent of genes were more active in one sex than in the other.

You'd expect some of these differences to show up in the brain, and they do. A study of mice published a year ago in Molecular Brain Research found that just 10 days after conception, at least 50 genes were more active in the developing brain of one sex than in the other. Comparing the findings to research on humans, the Los Angeles Times observed that "the corpus callosum, which carries communications between the two brain hemispheres, is generally larger in women's brains . Female brains also tend to be more symmetrical. … Men and women, on average, also possess documented differences in certain thinking tasks and in behaviors such as aggression."

[roguevalley]

1. This makes me feel better. I thought the reason women make

less money in the same fields doing the same work was because the powers that be were assholes. Now I know its biology and beyond their control. I feel better. But I'm still going to pee sitting down.

[durutti]

2. Of course. It's a very fashionable notion.

And as we all know, Slate strives to be fashionable. Too bad what's fashionable isn't often what's true. Of all the claims of innate sex differences, the math one is probably the least well-supported -- on that topic, see the books Why Men Won't Ask for Directions, Same Difference, which are fairly recent; and the classics Myths of Gender and The Mismeasure of Woman.

The possibility of such differences shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, of course. But neither should they be uncritically accepted as fact. Neurogenetic determinism has seen a resurgence since the 1970s, coinciding with post-war economic and social decline. Similar periods in American history witnessed the rise of eugenics and social Darwinism.

[gottaB]

20. keen observation

But how exactly would you account for the recrudescence of genetic determinisms in scientific circles? Do scientists not learn from past mistakes? Or are the Steven Pinkers of the world representative of what it's really about?

[durutti]

23. I think there are a few factors.

I've been very interested in this topic for a long time. I'd write a book on it if I thought I was qualified. :-)

For starters, reductionism advances careers. For decades, American scientists were trained to always think of wholes as no more than the sums of their parts. This approach was really exemplified by the Rockefeller Institute. And so scientists were expected to be reductionists -- it was how they got grants. And so today, we have scientists heading departments who are dead-set on reductionism. And it's worth noting that there's a well-documented funding bias toward such things, so the paradigm is hard to topple.

Niles Eldredge provides a great example in Why We Do It. Shortly after the discovery of DNA, James Watson was trying to convince people that literally all biology was molecular biology, and so other departments could be eliminated. E.O. Wilson has admitted that this is what drove him to conceive of sociobiology. By reducing psychology, anthropology and sociology to biology, other branches of biology could be saved.

The ideology of unrestrained capitalism unconsciously leads many to accept reductionism as well. Just as society is no more than "individuals and their families", organisms -- and in fact, societies, too -- are no more than genes.

We also have to consider the kind of social pressures that have been relevant to science since the 1960s (when we saw the precursors of sociobiology in the pop ethology of titles like The Imperial Animal and the reemergenceo of scientific racism with Arthur Jensen's article on race and IQ in the Harvard Educational Review). The vast majority of all American scientists at that time were white, male, and well-off. With the emergence of the New Left and the black power and women's movements, their relative privilege was threatened. And so the new biologism can be seen as part of the backlash, consciously or no.

From the 1970s on, the new biologism was widely praised and accepted in the popular press but hotly debated among academics. The emergence of evolutionary psychology in the 1990s marked the ideology's ascendancy. This was after about 20 years of economic decline, destroying the social safety net, and backlash against women and minorities.

Today, leading scientists (as in heads of departments and institutions) are still overwhelmingly white, male, and well-off. And scientists are still working within a framework set up by overwhelmingly white, male, and well-off scientists decades ago.

Other factors include the press's obsession with biologism and the increased attention on things like the Human Genome Project.

Lastly, it is also worth considering the actual political agendas of scientists. E.O. Wilson, Steven Pinker and Richard Dawkins are all frequently written of as "liberals". If they've ever said they are, it was for PR purposes and not an accurate statement.

In his earlier works, Wilson suggested the existence of a biological predisposition for "entrepreneurship" and implied that perhaps we should let poor people die to cleanse the gene pool, and also seemed to advocate some things that sounded an awful lot like eugenics. When black students infamously spilled ice water on him in the 1970s, he said that he felt like he'd been "speared by a band of aborigines." He has praised the work of scientific racist J.P. Rushton. And he thanked Newt Gingrich in the acknowledgements of Consilience refers to himself as "a social conservative". Wilson does seem to have a genuine interest in environmental concerns. But it's worth pointing out that until very recently in American history, conservationism was considered a cause of conservatives. Wilson is basically a Malthusian conservative.

Dawkins is often claimed to be a social-democrat, but in The Selfish Gene devoted space to attacking welfare. More recently, he said that he agreed with Matt Ridley's vision of society (Matt Ridley being an Economist editor turned popular science writer whose work revolved around providing evolutionary justifications for his right-wing views).

Pinker attacks the Left throughout his books. He claims to be a "New Republic liberal" -- a cute way of saying neoconservative, as anyone familiar with the current political landscape is aware. He gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute.

[durutti]

24. Another thing...

The new biologism is very much an Anglo-American phenomenon. The further one gets from the U.S. and Britain, the less seriously it's taken. It's ridiculed in France.

[gottaB]

68. That would lead me to attribute it to institutional funding

I would also look at relationships between research institutions, the USPTO, and the equity markets, as such parternships figured prominently in the promotion of the Human Genome Project, althought that appears to have been Clinton's emphasis more than Blair's. The fit bewteen reductionist models and certain ideological tenets of capitalism shows signs of being engineered as much as it is organic.

I also have the impression, having followed discussion of such issues on this board and in other popular venues, that elements of the postmodern condition allow for a rapid recycling of discarded memes, and accelerated interchanges between scientific communities and fragmented polities, all of which implies a qualititive transformation in the system of mediations between academic discourses and the general public. Well, perhaps that gives Saletan or Slate too much credit, if that's what it is. If there were any truth to it, one would expect to see similar phemonena outside the U.S. and Britain--Do you have a sense about how such debates are recieved down under?

[sendero]

57. The idea...

... that men and women are exactly alike except for plumbing was uncritically accepted as fact by certain social movements. Their evidence? Nothing whatsoever as far as I can tell.

There is plenty of scientific evidence that men and women ARE different - but it is more pleasant and fulfulling for many to believe it is all a question of nurture versus nature.

There have been two generations since the general acceptance of equal rights for women and attempts to use affirmative action to remedy the unfairness that was clearly visited on them in academia and professional arenas. Where are the female scientific/math stars?

The outrage against the man is nothing more than Political Correctness, the same kind that hobbled the feminist movement (that made the leap from the moral and correct 'women should have equal rights as men' to 'women are the same as men') and many other liberal causes. Wishing something were true because it fits your utopian vision is fine, but expecting everyone to believe you is not.

Men and women are the products of evolution, and each evolved to fulfull a particular role. This is not to say that, in modern society, a woman cannot do anything a man can do, there are plenty who can and do. IMHO, women make better company CEOs than men, as a simple example. Women should have equal rights to men in every way, but men and women are not "the same", and they never will be - well not within a million years or so anyway, and I don't know why they would even want to.

[durutti]

63. Re: The idea...

The idea that men and women are exactly alike except for plumbing has never been accepted as an article of faith by any social movement except for certain versions of radical feminism. Suggestions to the contrary are inspired by caricatures found in the popular media and given wide currency by Steven Pinker and his ilk in hopes that portraying themselves as persecuted Gallileos will earn them brownie points in much the same way that the "liberal media" canard has for the Right.

It isn't possible to prove that there are absolutely no innate psychological differences between the sexes. You can't prove a negative. It is not unreasonable to suppose that such differences exist. But neither is it unreasonable to assume that in the case of humans, such differences are minimal, for humans have a capacity for learning and culture that differ qualitatively from that found in all other animals.

No one is saying that sex differences research is intrinsically bad. All that's being asked is that claims deriving from them be held to the same standard of scrutiny as others.

And there is evidence indicating that such differences are minimal. I listed a number of books in my original post and can provide other books as well as academic papers if you're interested. Their authors include biologists, psychologist and anthropologist with considerable credentials. Of course, most of them are themselves women, which perhaps renders them unworthy in your eyes.

The aforementioned findings don't get nearly as much coverage as those claimed to support innate sex differences. I wonder why?

[sendero]

64. I would consider..

... the "fact" that women are either disinterested in or not well suited to a tiny subset of human activity (for example, higher math) to be a minute difference.

But it is a difference. As far as your cheap shot about "rendering them unworthy", no it wouldn't - unless they have a body of work that indicates they have their own preconceived notions they are starting with.

Also, there must be a boatload of "radical feminists" around here, because damn near every single post in the 3-5 threads about this incident have excorciated the guy for what he said.

The sex hormones act upon the brain, this is indisputable. Once you get there, it's pretty hard to get back to "men and women are the same".

I am not making the slightest attempt to justify abridging any woman's right to pursue any educational or occupational goal, nor would I think it correct to discourage anyone from pursuing any such goal. I do not think that men's apparent intrinsically better adaptation to do certain things (like higher math) means they are superior any more than I think that women's special abilities make them superior.

But men and women are different, mentally as well as physically.

[brindis_desala]

3. empirical evidence only reinforces prejudice

how many male mathematicians would it take to equal one Mary Somerville. Plus ca change plus la meme chose

[jdj]

4. difference is different than parity.

I am so sick of the difference argument. I thought we have evolved beyond that.

The rich "really are different than you and me" but that doesn't mean they are better. Thats what the Declaration of Independence was based on, but when it comes to gender "differences" neanderthals want to deny life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness based on the same concept they denied at the inception of our country. (Except when it came to Natives and Africans.)

[fortyfeetunder]

5. Why don't they explainiate this one?

So why is it when girls enter kindergarten, they are usually light years --OK, I am exaggerating-- a few years ahead academically than boys in math, reading, and science, but by the time they get to high school, most of them will avoid anything mathematical?

Maybe they don't have an answer, but here is my explanation: there is massive societal inculcation that girls aren't supposed to be bright, intelligent, and interested in math and science. They are only supposed to please others, and dress attractively.

.

[ChairOne]

6. I've taught em both math - girls tend to be a bit better overall...

To me they seem generally equal in terms of "innate ability" - there are geniuses and dumbfucks on both sides, and a big lump in the middle range... But in my experience, girls tend follow the teacher's instructions and suggestions more often and more consistently than the boys do.

Mid-level (calc, prob/stats, diffeq, lin alg) university is all I've taught, so I don't know exactly why the number of girls in math drops off so drastically after that point (especially at the gradschool level). It's patently obvious to me that it is NOT because of a lack of brain-power tho...

[tigereye]

9. I think it is cultural

and a function of how we are taught math. I took advanced math and advanced science all through high school, but ran screaming from them when I reached college, since I was always more comfortable with my literature "side" than my hard science side. The one math course I took in college... a social science calculus... was fun mainly because of the teacher ( a very funny Southern woman). I sometimes wonder if my life would have been very different if I had had different types of math teachers in high school.

[phylny]

15. Professors seem to make such a difference!

Our oldest is a first year student and she's taking her second Calculus course from the same professor she had last semester (a woman) because she was such an excellent teacher. Our daughter said, "I know how she teaches, I know what she expects, and she's wonderful - so I signed up for her again."

[tigereye]

29. Most of my teachers were male -

I am not saying that their teaching style was the deterrent... but I myself couldn't muster the enthusiasm needed to pursue more math or hard science.

[imenja]

35. especially in a subject one has trouble with

I'm one of these women who have a great deal of trouble with math. I remember taking a college math course from a professor who stood facing the blackboard and droned on in a monotone voice. It was awful. I had tried to get into another section with a very lively professor but he would not let me switch, I suppose because he didn't want everyone bailing from his colleague's class. If I had not been a freshman, I would have known to drop the class and wait to take the other professor the next semester. I did quite badly in the class and abandoned mathematics and a biology major in favor of history. History was a subject I was far better suited for, not because of my gender but because of who I am as a person and how my particular brain works.

[Lexingtonian]

7. Saletan joins the morons

Saletan makes the same error as Summers does- he pretends that a correlation is not meaningfully different from causation. Well, he muddles the crucial distinction and does it in a way that favors Summers.

As a male and a scientist, this is just old man idiocy. Having worked at Harvard for a while, I can even say that this behavior by Summers is par for the course in the upper tiers of the university- a good number of the deans of the subdivisions (the Schools) have had episodes of amazing Old White Man paternalisms and chauvinisms. They don't meant to, but they do.

There seems to be a small epidemic of public idiocy at the moment. 'Hey, if Bush can get away with it...' seems to be the root of the attitude. It's the ugly side of the present sociopolitical thang of reliving the past.

[imenja]

8. doesn't Harvard have very few tenured women faculty?

Among the lowest in the country?

[Lexingtonian]

10. quite true

But that's something of an artifact of their tenure process and internal values rather than intentional.

Basically, Harvard tenures very few of the people it takes on as junior faculty. And even if you win, salaries and working conditions are subpar- you get told that being part of Harvard, the implicit establishmentarianism really, is part of the compensation for the effort and accomplishments (as such). The result of this is that Harvard faculty do a lot of outside consulting/'consulting' or take additional appointments as Presidential Advisor or the like kind of thing.

The tenure system depends very heavily on what people outside the department think- the tenure committee asks faculty at other universities to write recommendations according to whether the candidate is 'a leader or future leader' in the field (in the departments I was in). This is a hard and high measure- too hard, really, for anyone who has reasonably good prospects but isn't a boy/girl genius of international renown. The way the system gets corrupted/manipulated is by the ways tenure committees choose the people who get asked to write the recommendations. The net effect is that the people who have very safe but accidentally sexy research areas and have at the same time sucked up most effectively to the Old Boy Network in their department and their subfield tend to fill up the departments. Harvard is a university that is about the plutocratic national Establishment's kids going through it and its academia is very much about the American academia establishment, aka Old Boy Network, and keeping footholds in the government/academia intersection points.

So I think very few of the best people in any field accept junior faculty position jobs at Harvard in the first place. The odds of making it far there are generally bad- unless you're particularly useful to them, or have a "sponsor" who makes everything work for you, which tends to involve some price being paid. (Harvard has no designs of tenuring even half the number of junior faculty they give jobs. They do natural selection- or unnatural selection- at the tenure decision.) The working conditions (financial, political, logistical) can be roughly those of a poor state university system school. The way to get a job at Harvard on your terms is to start at a respectable place elsewhere, where there is a genuine chance of success, then have someone bring you into Harvard via a lucrative offer and appointment. Even then, get everything on paper beforehand. (A good rule of thumb in dealing with academic administrative types. All I ever needed to know about Condoleeza Rice is that she was Provost at Stanford-- high level academic adminstrators are IME invariably liars, cheaters, order-takers, power abusers, and mildly delusive. A lot of their job involves discouraging and sabotaging lawsuits against their employer.)

I suspect the number of women who get tenure offers at Harvard reflects a somewhat complicated story of there simply being few tenured jobs available in the departments whose fields have large numbers of women trying to get academic jobs, e.g. biology. Women are also given more problematic and conflicting advice, I think, and tend to be in their early years of marriage, even childraising- which muddles or ruins their dealings with the Old Boy Network in ways most don't pick up on quickly enough.

[sir_captain]

28. Not entirely correct

Salaries and working conditions for tenured faculty at Harvard subpar? That's just blatantly false. You even contradict yourself later in your own post: "then have someone bring you into Harvard via a lucrative offer and appointment."

"Harvard is a university that is about the plutocratic national Establishment's kids going through it"

Again, blatantly false.

[imenja]

33. his point was on tenured vs. non-tenured faculty

The two tier system he discusses is certainly present at Harvard. I myself interviewed there for a junior level position. The terms were hardly lucrative. The senior level jobs are another story.


As for your second point arguing that is it not an establishment principally for Americans of privilege: Can you support that? Certainly the university provide scholarships to very well qualified students, but Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are, from everything I can see, the breeding ground for the American elite. That doesn't mean they don't have good programs (especially Yale and Princeton) or very good students, but the majority of students are hardly from the same economic and social backgrounds as the students attending schools like Eastern Michigan University or the University of Texas Pan American.

Edit: re-reading the post you responded to, I can see he does say that tenured salaries at Harvard are sub-par. I would not expect that to be the case, but it can be checked. Discipline specific newsletters tend to publish national averages of salaries in private and public insitutions, so it would not be difficult to compare, provided Harvard makes it's averages available (which I imagine it does not to the public at large but may do for faculty). _The Chronicle of Higher Education_ also publishes national averages across disciplines.

[sir_captain]

39. He/she was talking about tenured faculty

As you note in your edit: "And even if you win, salaries and working conditions are subpar." I'm not going to go digging for the numbers right now, but from personal experience, I can definitely state that tenured faculty at Harvard are both paid well and have an excellent work environment (financially, anyway.)

As to the other point, of course the demographics of harvard students are different from those as Eastern Michigan University--firstly, there are indeed a certain number of American elites at Harvard. Second, the students at Harvard are held to a much higher academic standard, obviously, which provides a very different student body. Third, unlike the vast majority of American universities, Harvard's financial aid is "need-blind" so students are admitted almost entirely on academic merit.

When I was an undergrad at Harvard, 90% of my friends (including myself) were on significant financial aid and came from every race, class, and geographical location you could possibly imagine.

If I have time later, I'll look up Harvard's demographic info, but the idea that everyone in the student body is a silver-spoon fed WASP is simply ignorant.

[Runcible Spoon]

58. "pretends that a correlation is not meaningful from causation"

BINGO! lack of distinction between these concepts is the most prevalent misuse of genetics by non-scientists IMHO, especially Harvard economist fuckwads.

[sweetbutterfly]

11. Harvard

is not a bastion of equality and free thinkers.

[AP]

17. Just ask Cornell West.

If you're doing something a little new and a little different, don't work at Harvard.

If you're trying to break new ground, do it somewhere else.

When was the last time someone on the cutting edge came out of Harvard?

A lot of this is institutional. Harvard rarely gives tenure to assistant professors, and usually poaches the best from other faculties long after they made their name. So the people setting the tone are about 10-20 years behind the times.

That's my impression anyway. Discuss.

[imenja]

32. exactly. Summers single handedly destroyed the only good dept they had

African-American studies was the one department in which Harvard had outstanding scholars in their field. Summers undermined that through his dealings with West, who brought others with him when he left for Princeton.

[sir_captain]

43. The only good department?

That's complete nonsense

The English department? The Math department? The Computer Science department? Almost all of the science departments? Please...

[imenja]

44. okay, an exaggeration

But academics in few fields will point to Harvard as a center of intellectual innovation.

[sir_captain]

48. Not true in the sciences

a lot more true in the humanities. Though for undergrads, it doesn't make nearly as much of a difference. It's not as if the professors are not extremely competent across the board.

[imenja]

51. ok, I'll accept that

I have no familiarity with the sciences, so I couldn't begin to evaluate those departments. And I certainly didn't mean to imply the faculty was incompetent. As I said, my first statement was clearly an exaggeration.

[sir_captain]

52. It's cool :-)

[femme.democratique]

36. Higher education in America is really just a conformity factory

Whether it be Harvard, Penn State, or your local community college, its all the same. With the exception of places like Sarah Lawrence college where you actually learn to think in a freer context, higher education is nothing more than shoving data into a receptacle based on pre-defined specifications to produce "workers". Personally I think for the most part college is a sham, a mechanism to rubber-stamp those pay for it, it is merely a mechanism where we the sheep can be labeled as "educated" via application of arbitrary standards and measures so that you will fit into the corporate working model. They teach you facts, and rarely is that enough. I know and work with many ivy-league types who are really just full of shit and use their "degree" like a weapon justifying their incompetence. Ever read Alvin Toffler? He has some great insights on education today.

Regarding the math thing specifically, it is true that womens brains behave in a more synergistic fashion between left and right sides, and conversely the male brain behaves in a more compartmentalized fashion. Therefore, one could take this to mean that women perhaps are not as perceived as "left brain" math/science geeks because they automatically operate in a more holistic context, effectively using both left and right sides of their brains as one unit. Using the same principle, and in my experience, this prejudice is based more on the fact that women may not be as easily fulfilled as men when dealing with problems that reside in a purely technical or mathematical domain. This is why women may not naturally gravitate towards those fields. I think men mis-judge this as a lack of competency or lack of natural ability. In reality, its just that women are more versatile in their capabilities than their male counterparts. And of course, men are too threatened to allow themselves to see this :-)

[KnowerOfLogic]

40. As is lower education. nt

[American Tragedy]

54. I have never really understood the appeal of high-end education

It's up to each individual, but it seems that some people just want a brand name that looks good on their resume. I question whether that privilege is worth the exorbitant cost of these institutions.

I go to a public university, but I don't particularly feel that I'm missing very much. My friends go to far more expensive and "prestigious" colleges, but much of our coursework is very similar and we read many of the same books. My standardized test scores, admittedly a dubious measure, thus far do not reflect inferior education either.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

66. I totally agree. I think you've nailed it. n/t

[China_cat]

12. I wonder if my niece,

the nuclear engineer, has seen this.

[phylny]

13. Boys are more likely to have communication disorders

than girls are. Brain difference? Should we then start saying that boys are inferior? That boys or men can't do certain jobs?

I suck at math. However, our three daughters are math and science wizards. Oldest one took her science experiment all the way to the state science fair - which was won by another young woman who did research on NSAIDS and breast cancer cells. Second place was - yes, another young woman.

Oh, and the oldest one is an engineering student at a prestigious university.

Oh, and the other two plan careers in the medical sciences.

They're successful because they had terrific teachers from PreK-12 and no one told them they couldn't do something because they were girls.

I'll have to tell our daughters that they must stop NOW because their brains can't handle it.

:eyes:

[trof]

14. Appeal to all: Read "Brain Sex".

Changed my whole way of thinking about the so-called gender gap.
"Different" is not "better" or "worse".
Apples are not "better" than oranges, just different.

If I am to believe the premise in "Brain Sex" (and it seems to be credible to me), men's and women's brains are wired differently.
One example: Women have more neural connections between left and right brain than men do. This means that women are much more likely to fully recover from strokes than men are. They just have more neural routes to use to accomplish a task another way.

Generally (yes, this is a generalization) women are better at some things, and men are better at others. In many things they are equally talented (or untalented).

This is not to say that there aren't some INDIVIDUALS whose capabilities run counter to the generalization, but I would submit that this is merely a deviation from the norm.

After 36 years of marriage I can tell you that although Miz t. and I may reach the same conclusion, many times we arrive there by different routes and for different reasons. She wholeheartedly agrees with this statement, and she sure ain't no Stepford Wife.

Best lines from "Brain Sex":
"Men read maps. Women read people."

[phylny]

18. Question

Were the neural connections there from birth, or did they develop because women - for whatever reason - used the left side of their brain more?

Thanks.

[trof]

19. I think from birth, but not sure.

[phylny]

21. It's an important distinction

since many neural connections are made throughout our lives.

Thanks :)

[Runcible Spoon]

60. the answer is yes and no

you are born with neural connections, but synaptic development throughout life and especially between the ages of 4 months-11 years, can either be destroyed by disuse, strengthened, weakened.

[cags]

26. I agree, Its also not only about ability but about desire

I used to believe in that whole blank slate idea, until I studied the subject. We really are wired differently, but men and women desire different lifestyles as well. What makes men and women happy is different. I feel after all my studies that the reason there is a gap is choice. Of course there are exceptions, and its not really about ability but what we are attracted to.

The problem lies in the value we place on different careers.

Its not just an American thing, It is worldwide which lends to the argument that we are not blank slates.

Some other books you might find interesting are:

The Blank Slate The Modern Denial of human Nature by Steven Pinker
Nature via Nurture by Matt Ridley
Twins and What They Tell Us About Who We Are by Lawrence Wright

[KnowerOfLogic]

42. It is far to soon to be making assumptions about 'brain differences'

Don't get me wrong; i'm not saying there *aren't* differences; it's just that when people (generally the master class) get involved in defining these alleged differences, only bad things tend to happen. I think that we would be much safer to make the presumtion of equality.

[heidler1]

45. I read that book back in the 60s and it convinced me that we are different

My mother noticed and told me and others that women recover better from strokes than men do. I was pleasantly surprised to find that she was right. Oh yes, she told me about it before WW2. I'm a 79 year old man. The book was not accepted very well by the women in my family. In fact one of them lost my copy.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

67. What's funny is that in my family

I've the one that's good with maps and directions, and my husband is the one that is good with people.

[AP]

16. I believe Summers was commenting on the lack of female tenured profs...

...in math and sciences.

But is anyone suprised that there aren't enough women tenured faculty at universities where theh president thinks that the reason is because of genetics???

[shrike]

22. Tell my sister, the engineer, that she's not suitable for mathematics

Valedictorian, summa cum laude in undergrad, all expenses-paid trip to Stanford for her master's.

Now she's married to a guy willing to stay home with their child while she continues with her career. He's Ivy league, but not a harvard man.

[heidler1]

69. If you'd read "Brain Sex" it explains what causes the exceptions.

The driver for difference is hormones and if the mother has some peculiarity in the production of too much testosterone it will cause the normally female brain to develop male characteristics. I wish this was better understood because it could effect the treatment of homosexuality as to being born with or learned.

[UncleSepp]

25. If there are "male" and "female" brain types

Can someone please look at mine and tell me which I have got?

[sir_captain]

27. Sure, just climb into this fMRI machine

But seriously folks, to deny that there are physiological differences between male and female brains is about as inane and ignorant as the freepers denying the existence of evolution. This is not to defend Summers particularly, who is undoubtedly a boor, but is to say that what he said is a bit more complex than it is being made out here.

[UncleSepp]

70. I agree

If we can look at which features of the brain are more common in males and which in females, from infancy to old age, without hanging value judgments on those features then we won't have a problem. Also, when a particular male or female has differences in the brain which are more common in the brain of the opposite gender, it might give insight into how gender itself works and why gender as felt does not always correspond to sex.

Such open-minded study might also lead to improvements in education. It could be that people with brain structures like x learn subject y in one way more efficiently than in another. It is possible that, for example, many neurologically typical females might be better taught about basic mathematics in a way which differs from the way in which mathematics are generally taught now.

Where we will get into trouble with this is if we play a numbers game in the education of girls and women (or boys and men). If "most girls do not have an aptitude for higher math" becomes "it is not economically advantageous to attempt to teach higher math to girls", we have a problem.

[yella_dawg]

30. I'm a math geek

and in college, something of a grade geek too, thanks to the need for scholarship funds.

There was a decided minority of females in the math program. Those females, on average, kicked my ass grade wise. I'm having a bit of trouble with this "women aren't as good at math" thing.

[noiretextatique]

31. my nience who has a over a 4.0

and is gifted in both math and science suddenly decided she wants to be a nurse. she was limiting her college choices to only those with nursing programs until i went ballistic on my sister and wrote my niece a long letter about not limiting herself at age 17. it wasn't my niece brain that changed in the past year...it was my family's "play it safe" messages that got to her..."don't be too smart...it's not good for a woman to have too much brains or amibitiion"...play it safe. the same shit that beat the life out of my sister and made her give up on herself, the same shit that kept me from developing my artistic skills until much later in life. i have nothing against nursing or nurses, but my niece has the talent to be a doctor or a scientist, and until recently, that's where i thought she was headed.
i am sure she will be a success regardless of what she chooses to study...i just want to make sure she knows it's her choice, and that she doesn't limit herself because of someone else's fears.

[ChairOne]

41. How exactly does one get *over* a 4.0? eom

[noiretextatique]

46. i'm not sure how it's calculated

but it's not exactly a new thing.

[ChairOne]

47. Ok - new to me tho... - so just what *is* the theoretical max?

[sir_captain]

49. 4.0

= an A

A: 4.0
A-: 3.66
B+: 3.33
B: 3.0

etc

Technically, an A+ = 4.33, though most respected universities don't give A+ and almost no graduate program would count them as more than a 4.0 in their own formulas.

[noiretextatique]

50. college prep/advanced placement classes = 4.0+

according to what i found on google.

[sonicx]

53. i know some high schools give 4.33 for an A+

[Piltdown13]

61. Or something like that

At least at my high school, you could earn a GPA over 4.0 by doing well in honors and AP classes, because those classes were weighted when semester GPAs were computed. We didn't actually use a 4-point scale; our grades were out of 100 (there was a scale for converting points into a letter grade -- 90-100 was an A, and so on -- but the letter grades themselves weren't used for anything much), and at the end of the semester, 8 points were added to your semester average in each honors/AP class before your GPA was computed. Thus, I graduated second in my class with an average just over 102; our valedictorian was close to 105 because she took many, many fewer non-honors classes than the rest of those at the top of the class (for instance, I continued studying subjects like journalism, foreign language, and certain social studies classes that didn't have honors sections, thus taking a GPA hit even with a perfect 100 average for the semester).

[K-W]

34. That article is worse than the comments.

These people are adopting attitudes derived from tradition and supported only by plausibility. They might as well be pushing intelligent design.

Alot of people protect thier ego by pretending genetics are far simpler and more important to human behavior than they are.

[Fleshdancer]

37. If we are too complacent on this....

The radical right wingers are pushing their boundaries the same way a two year old tests her/his boundaries and if we don't stand up firmly and make it clear this sort of behavior is unacceptable, they'll keep doing it.

We're witnessing the backlash against homosexuals, abortion is under fire, now articles like this are attempting to convince the public that perhaps there could be a scientific excuse to actually discriminate against women in certain fields. The "it's not you doll face, it's your brain" defense for keeping the glass ceiling intact. How cute. It's a creative strategy, I must admit. Given the fact that the majority of Americans, men and women, are so clueless when it comes to science, it would be extremely easy for them to eat this crap up without giving it a second thought.

While the Democratic Party deludes itself into thinking that the best way to handle the situation is to go along with it or to have a long, drawn-out "what if it's true?" conversation, we could easily start seeing this bullshit directed at African-Americans and/or other minorities. All those years of fighting for civil rights, and for what? To watch it go down the drain? I don't think so. This needs to stop right now. Question the motives. Question the science. Get loud.

[KnowerOfLogic]

38. *Women* have to stop putting up with this crap. At every step

od the way in the women's rights movement, the primary impediment to progress has been that at least 40% of women are more concerned with pleasing their masters and staying in their place than their are with their own rights and dignity. Witness the number of right wing women who have already come out defending this garbage.

[Runcible Spoon]

55. calling bullshit on this genetic disparity argument

I don't see anyone fucking making a convicing argument about which genes are linked to math/science performance, and then showing how women are genetically lacking/phenotypically less expressive of these genes. In our entire genome, there exists a lot of "junk", redundant/unused material. This question of 1-2% of genetic material resulting in different species, aka the ape example, and thus extending it to the male/female genetic differences fails to take into account how much of that 1-2% is purely linked to physiological differences in anatomy (including encoding for hormone responses, menses, hair growth, etc etc etc) and how much of it actually takes into account differences in mental capacity. Can you look at a brain and tell me if it is male or female? So in short my argument is that nobody has: 1). made a convincing claim that they even KNOW which genes are linked to certain types of learning 2). that such discrete genes that differentiate math/science from literature/art abilities even EXIST 3.) show that this 1-2% genetic difference explains significant biologically innate reasons for why there are less women in math/science fields. To make irresponsible comments such as this asshole has made, a friggin' economist with no in-depth knowledge of what the fuck he is talking about, is putting the cart 5,000 miles in from of the horse. The horse in this case has been dead for 150 years, yet has been flogged by those wishing to resurrect 18th C Evolutionist arguments, twisting and perverting genetic research to do so.

[imenja]

56. this article certainly doesn't make a convincing case

It's based on the idea that the author assumes there must be differences. There are differences between all of us, but one cannot assume sex is an overriding determinant in causing those differences any more than one can assume race is. If Summers had made this same argument about African-Americans, he wouldn't have survived the afternoon as president of Harvard.

[sir_captain]

62. self deleted

i don't feel like arguing anymore today

[EVDebs]

59. Consider world and US public funding for education and private funding

for education. It is a sociological 'problem', nothing to do with genetics as to 'why' "relatively fewer women become professional scientists or engineers".

With male advantages in patriarchal societies, I as a male in the US, can only appologize to females for this disadvantage, and suggest that a program (as in sport's Title IX) be created and funded to fix this.

Criky, this is what the status of women's groups since JFK's day were set up to deal with. Since it's a liberal issue ('feely-touchy' wasteful spending per conservatives) nothing will be done about it without conservative women joining in the fray.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

65. I was so annoyed when I heard about this report on the news.

It really gets to me. I take it personally. I am a woman, and I love math. I have a B.S. in Computer Engineering. I am not working in the field (and neither is my husband who has the same degree) mostly because I couldn't find any jobs (remember most of the programming jobs went to India). I also have a young child. I still intend to have a career involving math. I have been a high school math teacher. I would love to teach math at a college level some day (whenever I have the time and can afford to get a masters/PhD).

I know I am not inferior in math ability because I am a woman. I have always been one of the best math students in my classes (both high school and college). My husband even says that I'm better at math than he is.

I thought the boys and girls were about equal when I taught high school math. I think a lot of women end up doing different careers than men mostly because they are interested in different things, not because they are lacking in ability. I find that a lot of women like to do jobs that have a lot of social significance (working with people type jobs). Often they don't get the same kind of satisfaction working a math/engineering type job that they would get with a more people oriented career. Also, women are still primarily responsible for raising children in most families, which may interfere with the pursuit of a career (whether this career is related to math/science or some other subject).

[geniph]

71. This is such an American belief,

this idea that women are naturally inferior in science and math reasoning. In many other cultures, it's believed that women are naturally better at math.

It's cultural conditioning, for crying out loud. And these kinds of generalizations are COMPLETELY useless, perhaps even harmful, when you try to apply them to individuals. So, since it's individuals who succeed or fail in these fields, why in the hell would you even MAKE these kinds of idiotic generalizations? What's the purpose?