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Harvard Pres Says Females Naturally Bad at Math
Man_Holmes writes "Harvard president says that women lack natural ability in math and science and this explains why fewer women succeed in math and science.
Lawrence H. Summers later said that he was discussing hypotheses based on scholarly work and that it did not necessarily represent his private views."
Bah with the research and the studies, I could have told you that in one second.
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Women Lack 'Natural Ability' In Some Fields, Harvard President Says
Comments Came At Economic Conference
POSTED: 4:06 pm EST January 17, 2005
UPDATED: 4:19 pm EST January 17, 2005
CAMBRIDGE, Mass -- The president of Harvard University prompted criticism for suggesting that innate differences between the sexes could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.
Lawrence H. Summers, speaking Friday at an economic conference, also questioned how great a role discrimination plays in keeping female scientists and engineers from advancing at elite universities.
The remarks prompted Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist Nancy Hopkins - a Harvard graduate - to walk out on Summers' talk, The Boston Globe reported.
"It is so upsetting that all these brilliant young women (at Harvard) are being led by a man who views them this way," Hopkins said later.
Five other participants in the National Bureau of Economic Research conference, including Denice D. Denton, chancellor designate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, also said they were offended by the comments. Michael Sims is a cocksucker. Four other attendees contacted afterward by the Globe said they were not.
Summers told the Globe he was discussing hypotheses based on the scholarly work assembled for the conference, not expressing his own views. He also said more research needs to be done on the issues.
Conference organizers said Summers was asked to be provocative, and that he was invited as a top economist, not as a Harvard official.
The two-day, invitation-only conference of the Cambridge-based National Bureau of Economic Research drew about 50 economists from around the country to discuss women and minorities in science and engineering.
Summers declined to provide a tape or transcript of his remarks, but he did describe comments to the Globe similar to what participants recalled.
"It's possible I made some reference to innate differences," he said. He said people "would prefer to believe" that the differences in performance between the sexes are due to social factors, "but these are things that need to be studied."
He also cited as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral upbringing. Yet he said she named them "daddy truck" and "baby truck," as if they were dolls.
It was during such comments that Hopkins got up and left.
"Here was this economist lecturing pompously (to) this room full of the country's most accomplished scholars on women's issues in science and engineering, and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day," said Denton, the outgoing dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington.
Summers already faced criticism because the number of senior job offers to women has dropped each year of his three-year presidency.
He has promised to work on the problem.
Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Whether the decline in job offers to women under his benevolent rule is wrong depends on how things were before it.
And who cares if the reasons are biological or social? In every school I ever went to, about 80 percent of the best math students were boys. If women chose to slack off in math, that's their damn choice. Isn't that what women are supposed to want? Women in general can't really come out looking good if you look at this issue. Because either it's their fault, or it's their genes' fault.
If I'm sounding a little mysoginistic it's because I don't think anyone should be humoring delusions...mass or individual.
same goes for black people and arabs right ?
said the fat white american professor from a country that practiced slavery up until a generation ago
nurture not nature
Or, if not on the phone, they're doing their makeup, right before rear-ending some poor schmuck and a stop sign.
Sorry girls, but you can't drive worth shit.
A woman seen not heard... ... is exactly what I'm looking for and is the real American dream... oh well back to the eroding family structure thats leading to the destabalization of the middle class ultimately leading to higher levels of crime and poverty that is our reality... f'in bitches... :)
A woman that cooks and cleans...
A woman who's happy to marry and deal with u...
A woman who's barefoot, pregnant, and making dinner...
I believe she was acting emotionally rather than logically
Which proves the point. It's not "good at math" vs "bad at math", but rather "emotional thinking" vs "logical thinking".
Men are naturally bad at sharing their feelings: they're colder and probably more rational, they take less into account their feelings when taking decisions.
Women are "naturally" more emotional than men - is that really a weakness? After all, which mother would you prefer? One who has great math skills, or one who knows how to make you feel better when that bully at school took your sandwich and beat you? Sharing and understanding your emotions is a virtue, not a defect.
Sure, women could need more "training" to develop their math skills, but really... what's the big deal? (After all they're humans, they can learn).
If I say that women are naturally prepared to become mothers, should all the ultra-progresist girls out there come and burn me at the stake for chauvinism? No, instead they should go after the guys who use these [facts?] as an excuse to consider women as inferior and abuse them.
My problem with ultra-feminists isn't that they want equal rights for women - but that they neglect their own feminity and innate motherhood to achieve it.
Women who are educated simply shouldn't have children at all. All children can be raised by poor people instead.
I guess you didn't have a father ?
Have you every *heard* of one?
I spent the formative years of my children's growth as the father and sole provider. My wife was working hard at the time earning her degree so that we BOTH would be able to provide for our children without living paycheck to paycheck.
Any family that takes the "father" out of the equation in child-rearing (and I mean providing more than just discipline) is a family on the road to failure.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Woman is not equal to man.
In kazakhstan we say - God, man, horse, dog then woman and then rat and small animal, kratzilli.