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MIT Names First Female President
wintermute1000 writes "According to CNN, MIT has just named its first female president. Along with other recent programs' efforts to get more women involved in the MIT community, is this a step in the right direction for the historically gender-biased institution?"
I wonder if you also think of separate divisions for men and women in almost all sports as gender bias. It seems silly to pretend that the only differences between men and women (broadly speaking) exist below the neck. It may very well be that men are more likely to want to be or even make better mathematicians, scientists, or engineers because of something as fundamental as brain structure.
In fact, we know that there is a difference in brain structure in men and women. It manifests itself first in the womb.
Let's assume we know for a fact that in general men make better workers in engineering and allied fields. That we know this isn't unethical discrimination, any more than it's unethical for us to realize that world-class female athletes can't compete well with world-class male athletes in weight lifting. It only becomes unethical, in my opinion, when we prevent or discourage individual women from becoming engineers because of it.
Of course, I don't think anyone can argue that we haven't to a greater or lesser extent done exactly that in the past. Maybe we do need policies to encourage women to be involved in some fields to rectify the situation.
But at what point do we give up and say, "Women have made up at most [less than 50]% of our computer science classes, and we're not going to bend over backwards any further to get them in there." ?
Some people (you, it appears) would say that we should never give up that fight because the disparity always implies or confirms the existence of wrongful discrimination. I think that's unreasonable.
Are they giving her an extra-wide parking space?