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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."
More of a "You can't say that." than "That isn't correct.
---
We spoke for about a half an hour. I don't recall a thing we said. - Colorblind James Experience
It doesn't matter if you have facts to back up an assertion like that, you're still going to pay a price in suffering that makes it far better to just shut the hell up.
You'd think the president of freaking Harvard would know better.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
economists bad at genetics.
Take your pick. I know which I think is more likely.
Phil
It's because women don't stay in the technical fields due to the sexist and condecending culture found there.
Only in a Slashdot fantasy can a Slackware install turn into several hours of sex . . . . .
I just wanted to chime in by saying that "have less aptitude for" does not automatically mean "all suck at".
Machine9dotNet
It doesn't matter if you have facts to back up an assertion like that, you're still going to pay a price in suffering that makes it far better to just shut the hell up.
So it is "Safer" and "easier" to "shut the hell up" about something that is politically incorect if the price is a large amount of suffering? I wonder what would have happened to the Civil Rights movement and Womens Sufferage (among other movements) if people thought that way in the 20's and 50's/60's.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
Are empathy and `understanding systems' different? Surely empathy is simply a subset of `understanding systems' tiered towards the system known as the human brain.
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Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
women lack natural ability in math and science
This might be a fact. But what does it mean? Should women now be encouraged or discouraged in math and science? IMHO both encouraging and discouraging have very bad side effects. Encouraging leads to disillusions and discouraging is generally bad and may deprive society from brilliant women.
IMHO women are better suited for management positions. Most women I met are more socially engaged and far better at multi tasking. The politics that come at higher management levels require deviousness that is not uncommonly found in women. Again, this doesn't mean anything specific.
In case you wonder, I'm a man.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Now, who's substantiating his comments and who isn't?
The current doctrine that is present in most schools and society will not allow a view to exist even if it could be backed with fact.
We are too concerned with feelings compared to facts. We are willing to ingore an obvious issue simply because it might offend someone.
Fortunately this issue is relatively harmless but other issues which offend people based on the conclusions of studies are being hushed all in the name of sensitivity and political correctness.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
agreed, there are so many things that women are better at than men, but in our society they're all considered 'lesser' abilities. The ability to nurse a baby. To give birth to a baby. The ability to empathize better than men.
all are very important traits that women defeat men at every day of every year. its a shame that these abilities are considered less important than physical strength and the ability to add two numbers together...
That "Example" is a shining example of why *anecdotal data is misleading*. Who knows what sort of other details or context might apply to such a story?
Based on TFA (I know, I know), I'd have to say the guy really is a pompous jerk who wants to believe his sexism has some actual merit, and will find ways to prop up his beliefs. It's something we all do to some extent (just recall the conversation you have with yourself when you're sleeping for 10 more minutes instead of getting up when the alarm goes off), but it has no place in public/professional comments in any academic setting.
Yes, it's true that it is AWFULLY hard to separate nature vs. nurture when it comes to behavior, preference, and aptitude across large groups. But to suggest there 'might be innate differences' (which is the best possible way you could put it) without referring to any existing studies to that effect is just wrongheaded. And again, it comes down to first having to show there IS a difference, and then having to show that it's tied to gender as opposed to childhood development. GFL.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
Courts will take a child away from a father who's being a good citizen and return it to a mother with a history of drug use, and a DUI conviction where the child was in the car.
It's not funny, and it has killed some children. But that's what a subscription to dogma gets you.
What will stop the PC nuts from picketing would be to ensure that they get at least one class each covering logic, statistics and basic scientific method.
But then again, some may find it more comfortable going through the world without thinking. Modern society has largely made the brain irrelevant to basic survival and reproduction, why take on an unneccessary burden?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I disagree with you in that you seem to be saying it isn't because women lack sufficient talent, but that they lack the backbone to pioneer where there isn't already a copacetic culture.
The short of it is that you refute the aptitude argument and explain the phenomenon with a preference argument, and then you proceed to speak to those preferences. The preferences you suggest are that an affirmative (or at least neutral) environment is more important to these female scientists than advancing science. I'm going to need to see some data to back that up.
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
I once saw a documentary about turn of the century basketball.
Apparently, around the turn of the century, Jews dominated Basketball. Seriously. Not making this up. And in the press, and in the common opinion of the time, it was held that Jews had certain attributes, which were (not lying) quickness and sneakyness. which made them unbeatable on the court.
Today that seems totally ridiculous to us. We don't hold those stereotypes anymore.
Now we believe that black people have this huge innate physical sports advantage. It's not that they're statistically poorer than white people, and have few ways of going to college besides sports scholarships. It's not that, culturally, they see the easiest routes to success coming from entertainment and athletics.
It's just that black people tend to be athletic, funny, and rappers. It's genetic. No really. It is. Really.
Don't you see how stupid that is?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Actually, since economics is really a form of psychology/sociology, an economist might not be a bad authority on saying "some differences in gender are not social like people think they are (i.e., if someone did a study to test correlation, causation, or whatever); if they are not social then there must be some other determining characteristic. Since there is a difference based on gender lines, one might reasonably argue that difference is genetic and therefore 'innate'."
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
This is implying "logical systems" such as a truss network on a bridge (lego) or a simple chemical reaction (baking soda + acid). Both of these things have the advantage that they both are visual (you can see the bridge, or the result of the reaction) and are easily repeated (for friends say, the good old cool factor). Young males (or all males in general) tend to be much less proficient at the less logical and more random nature of human interaction. People often don't say or do what they mean (little boy picking on a girl, doesn't quite understand the feelings he is having yet, but this is his best system of expression), results are rarely repeatable and even harder to predict.
I would say that our study of math is, in many ways, just a expression of this male-ness. We wish to explain everything in terms of equations and systems because they are usually predictable with great numerical accuracy (say with electric charges, we can easily predict the force between different charges, even if we don't quite understand totally how and why electric fields function) and are typically repeatable with similar results (definition of experiment anyone?).
The human brain may be a system, but understanding some parts of this system is simply not innate (it can be taught though). At the same time, weakness in math by girls may simply be that the entire system was derived and devised by men, with that type of thinking involved. I must say that, while I am fairly good at math (male), there are plenty girls in my engineering classes that are much better at math then I am. however, if you looked at any of my high school classes, only 1 (out of 20 or so) girls were better at math then I. It all depends on your sample really.
Medevo
So, it is okay for her to say that males are - on average - better at engineering due to evolution, as long as she qualifies that by saying that women are better at what counts?
The real problem is that people are so sensistive now you can't even hint that men and women are different, unless you qualify it by saying that women are equal or better. Different is different, good or bad, and until there is real, peer-reviewed studies showing how they are different people will continue this discussion about pre-historical gender roles, nature vs. nuture, and extreme example (my brother sucks at math but my mom was an engineering god!).
People, on average, have become too sensitive.
Not his personal views, my ass.
It's all in the phrasing of the slur.
If I were to say, "Some black men are criminals," it'd be one thing; were I to say, "black men are criminals" it's another thing entirely.
Same goes for this situation. If I say, "Women are bad at math," it implies that I think they're all inferior logically to all men. It's entirely different than saying, "A statistical sampling of women shows that they are, on average, bad at math compared to a similar sampling of men." Now, while I'm not bad at mathematics myself, my wife is likely better - or at least enjoys it more - and I'm not too shabby on the topic myself, "on the average".
Aside from the fact that the absolute word "bad" is used, it's just a poor choice of language for a supposedly-educated man. Either that, or he said what he'd initially intended, it was taken in context, and he's a sexist. It wouldn't surprise me.
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If it needs to be studied before it can be proven, he shouldn't be asserting it as fact. One unconfirmed, uncontrolled example does not proof make. Period.
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Women's advocacy groups pick and choose sex differences to be outraged over:
Women:
1. live longer
2. are less likely to be victimized by violent crime
3. are less likely to be killed in war
4. are less likely to suffer birth defects
5. are less likely to go to jail
6. are less likely to be substance abusers (alcohol, smoking, illegal drugs)
7. are more likely to go to, and complete, college
8. are less likely to be high-school drop-outs
Raise the possibility that some things that women are not as good at, such as abstract reasoning, however, and you'll be slaughtered in public.
GF
Lots of petrified grits
Some years ago Murray and Herrnstein published the book "The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life" in which they inferred from their data that blacks naturally had a lower IQ than whites. Their data certainly seemed to support this claim. However, they were suspect to Simpson's Paradox, in that if they had further stratified their data by social class, then their data may very well have suggested their claim was false. So since many minorities live in poverty or near-poverty, the IQ scores for their races were subsequently lowered. I am naturally very skeptical of studies such as these for the very same reason. As for the study in this post, they would have to have raised children from birth in uniform conditions in order to avoid any biases that culture might induce. Since this is not likely to be the case for this study, I have a hard time believing their conclusions. I would be much more prone to believe that children who are raised in a similar manner as girls in the US are worse at math --- whatever that means --- than those who are raised like boys. Barbie dolls or Legos, which one helps a child develop spacial reasoning? Which one is traditional given to boys, to girls? Now if you'll excuse me, I am late. I am meeting my friends and we are going to play that wonderful game "Jump to Conclusions".
Troll. But dammit, I'll bite anyway. Why is it that according to P.C. all people are equally best at everything? People are different, and if you study them and it comes out that men are better at something than women, why must it be that you are immediately misogynist?
I read a study a while back that suggested that women are better suited for field command roles because of their innate demeanor and communications skills. No one cryed "feminisim attacks!!". Why should you? Why can't you accept that different sets of people have different innate strengths?
It doesn't mean that you can't do something in math if you're a women. Far from it, and I know several brilliant women in the fields of science and math. It's just that it explains the likelyhood of a math or science major being male. It's there, why do you ignore it?
He threw in the, "it's not necessarily my personal view", because he didn't want to be labeled by people such as yourself.
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
What was actually said involved a lot of disclaimers and careful language. Summerizing the remarks as "females naturally bad at math" is just plain wrong.
One of the specific things he pointed out was the way that the work of high level math and science contributors in academia is organized requires a steep committment in time and effort that many women are unwilling to spend. In the corporate world positions have been modified to allow for multiple people to hold onto an important responsibility. There are other kinds of changes that can also be made. Part of the implication here is that the flaws are not with the women who are not reaching the top in these contexts, but with the way the offices and responsibilities themselves are structured and executed.
There is a popular article in the New York Times about this with the title "Harvard Chief Defends His Talk On Women" that goes into significant detail.The funny thing is, you would think an economist of all people would recognize how important the kind of factors you describe can be. I think you hit the nail on the head when you say "some of the older guys are just biased against women". All of the evidence points to this being the case here.
Summers should be dismissed as president of Harvard, if only because of the sheer intellectual incompetence he demonstrated in describing an anecdote about his own daughter as though it had any relevance to the issue.
If he attempted a "gender-neutral upbringing", does that mean he isolated his daughter from outside sources of gender roles? Obviously not, since such sources include him and his poor wife (assuming she's still with him). So what conclusion can be drawn from this anecdote?
The obvious conclusion, considering the context, is that the current president of Harvard is intellectually unsuited for the position. This is what happens when a society prefers a particular group, such as white males - even the weakest ones can rise to the top, at the expense of the whole society, as has clearly happened here.
(For the record, I'm a white male, but I don't require the kind of unspoken societal affirmative action the Harvard president obviously received on his way up.)
The more I read some of the comments here I am reminded of why I don't spend more time on slashdot. All the sudo intellectuals that govern their morals through emotion rather than rational thought. Why is it so disheartening for people to hear that there are differences between men and women? Does it really boil down to something as simple as jealously of men that can pee standing up and the sympathizers of those who can't? Get real there are differences between men and women ignoring them won't make them go away, chastising people for recognizing those are differences won't do it, and turning the world gay won't make it any easier.
So what if this professor theorizes that the innate differences between men and women might be an explanation for the fact there are more men in science & math than women. Has this theory been proven one way or the other? It comes down to a question of intent and I am surprised so many think ill of his intent. Was he saying this to illustrate male superiority? I doubt it. It makes more sense that he was merely using it as an example to explain a phenomenon that has not been vigorously studied from that angle.
It seems to me that the ideas of open mindedness and tolerance are lost on those who preach it most. For them your mind is not open until your brain has fallen out. You are not tolerant unless you believe what they do.
This story to me is just another illustration of the fact that the media in the US in controlled by lunatics and socialist.
I appreciate your comment, and it may be true for some women, however, before you make such a statement you should:
- Close your eyes
- Breath deeply
- Appreciate the people you are talking about are people
- You'll be all dead in 500 years (that gives you perspective)
Isn't such a comment only going to make the situation worse? Surely there's a better way to get your point across.Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
There you go jumping to yet another unsupportable conclusion. Why is it you have concluded that the mere observation of a difference between men and women automatically results in the limiting of women's opportunities? Noone is limiting anyone's opportunities. But observing the real differences between men and women might just help us separate whether peculiarities that exist in the real world occur due to sexism versus actual differences in the sexes. Are there fewer female engineers because of rampant sexism or merely a lack of interest from the majority of females? If the first is true, then it would need to be addressed. If the second is true, women are free to choose whatever occupation they like so why would we waste time trying to push them into something they don't want to do?
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Taking your post at face value, I'd say that dreaming that impossible dream is what is doing all the damage. Taking your post as satire, it's not that funny, or insightful, especially when it's exactly what many Americans, of either gender, are walking around saying these days.
--
make install -not war
Nowhere did he say that men were more likely to be good at math and science. He said that perhaps innate differences (not lack of intellectual ability) may be a factor that women do not advance or succeed in certain fields. Okay. Let's see. What are some innate differences? People keep mentioning the vagina, but let's remember a couple of other things that women have that men do not: ovaries and a uterus. While a baby is in the oven, the father can continue working, a mother often cannot. While a child is small, it is more often women than men who sacrifice work time to care for them, especially if the parents decide that breastfeeding is important to them. The first is an innate difference. The second is largely cultural (how many offices want a small child in them? How many allow breastfeeding?) Mr. Summers said his remarks were misconstrued as suggesting that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of math and science, and that he "did not say that, nor do I believe it" (RTFA)
As a woman who is on the cusp of receiving her PhD and looking for a teaching position, I am faced with the reality that my potential employers are very concerned about my marital status, whether I have children now, and whether I plan to have them in the next few years, or ever. (Legal or not, that's how it is; I have been at staff meetings where someone brings it up in relation to a prospective faculty member, and the department chair had to say "it is illegal for us to consider that factor." Do you think it's not on people's minds, even after that?) I am also faced with the reality of an ad I saw recently: "Egg donors needed. Waited too long for tenure." From my perspective, poignant. Will I have to choose between a family and a career? My intellectual capacity and the body of research reflected in my CV rival that of any man I will be competing with for junior faculty positions. But I know that I want to have children. I will be getting my PhD at the age of 30, and starting a career when most of my friends have small children. Should I put off kids? Should I have them and then look for a job? Should I land a job with maternity leave and hope that I still get tenure if I use maternity leave within the first few years I am working there?
"Innate differences." Are the concerns I have due to innate, physical differences? Or our society's inability to cope with a workforce that is actively involved in reproduction? A combination, perhaps, as Mr. Summers suggests: due to innate differences, women are not advancing, and he is concerned about the role discrimination plays in keeping women from advancing at elite universities. Universities which are among the most demanding of their junior faculty. Recent PhDs, who are at an age when most women in our society have children.
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It seems that nowadays, there are some things that you cannot say, no matter if they're true or not. That's just the political climate that we're living in.
It also seems that "normal" people- those who simple believe or don't believe something yet don't get worked up about it- don't have much of a voice even though they comprise the vast majority. It's usually the lunatic fringe on both sides which seem hell-bent on making themselves heard. It seems that the lunatics are more likely to declare those issues their life's goal.
I don't get worked up about issues like these, but I'll voice my opinion anyway even at the risk of both sides attacking me.
People have to be fooling themselves if they think that everybody performs the same at all functions, across all genders and races. I believe in evolution (here come the attacks from the far right), and I believe that over time different races and the sexes have evolved to excel at slightly different tasks (here come the atacks from the far left).
If you think that the hormones running through your veins don't have any effect on the way you think, you're mistaken. I'm a man, and I will admit that women are right when they say that testosterone makes men more aggressive and violent. Is there really any disputing that? Yet some ultra-sensitive male advocacy groups would take great offense to that.
We're different, face it.
I will end my post by saying that just because something isn't PC doesn't mean it's necessarily false. It just means that there are some people that don't want to hear what may be the truth and they'll get very emotional about the issue.
I agree with you that we should be able to study innate differences between groups of people without people crying foul if they don't like the results. However, if these studies are commissioned or are used as an excuse for someone's biases, then I have a problem.
In this situation, Harvard has low female enrollment in math disciplines. Rather than investigate whether Harvard is actively or inadvertently discouraging females from enrolling, or whether there is some social root cause for females being discouraged from math disciplines, the Harvard Pres pulls some "scholarly work" out of his ass that says women are bad at math. This is what I have a problem with. Even if, on avarage, women are worse at math, I doubt that the difference in man-woman statistics is enough to account for the lack of women in Harvard's math-centric programs.
It's just that it explains the likelyhood of a math or science major being male.
And it can also be used to explain to young women entering high school why they shouldn't be taking advanced math courses.
He threw in the, "it's not necessarily my personal view", because he didn't want to be labeled by people such as yourself.
And what sort of people are they? The kind that label middle-aged men that say "Women lack natural ability in math" as potentially having a bias against women? Sounds like common sense to me.
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
Sorry, but your ignorance is showing. How many guys do you see give each other hugs IN AMERICA is one question. How many guys do you see give each other hugs IN ITALY gives quite a different answer. That's societal.
To me, the lack of womeon in math and science is more likely to be an issue of communication than anything.
Yes there are physiological differences between men and woman. And there are I think differeces in how the two sexes think and approach problems...
So I really think that women would be better served by a style of math teaching that played into how the naturally communicate and learn. The fact is that education has been geared primarily to teach men for a long time, and so it is naturally optimized for that process - thus the more abstract a topic to teach, the worse off women are learning it.
I don't see why it makes any sense to believe that any given sex is wired to know any given topic less deeply than any other - our brains are very general-purpose learning devices so it makes no sense to extend the physical diferences into this realm.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
if you study them and it comes out that men are better at something than women, why must it be that you are immediately misogynist?
Wha? What exactly do you mean by "accepting as law"?
The hypothesis that a particular population has a statistical predisposition to have high X or low Y is either true or not true. If it is true, then it is true. The fact itself is not inherently bad. Stating a fact (or a theory which has a lot of supporting evidence and has thus far stood up well to scrutiny) is not inherently racist, sexist or anything-ist.
People may selectively take note of certain facts and not others (which would perhaps change their significance) because of their personal biases, and people may stupidly misunderstand and misapply facts, but that is an entirely different issue.
If it was discovered, beyond any reasonable doubt, that women do have a genetic predisposition to be worse at maths than men, and people responded to this by excluding women from maths and science jobs, that would be bad. And also stupid.
Who hires people on the basis of a statistical estimate of their skills? A statistical trend within a population tells you absolutely nothing about the characteristics of an individual member of that population. In a handful of applicants, you will have stupid women, smart women, stupid men and smart men. You won't know what you have until you check. It would make no more sense to automatically refuse a woman's application (because she is statistically less likely to be qualified than a man) than to automatically accept the application of the first man, without looking at his CV.
Not that I'm saying that some people wouldn't try to do this, and think that it made perfect sense. The world is full of people who lack the most fundamental understanding of statistics. But making something which is true taboo because it would make stupid people do stupid things is not a valid solution.
The kind of people who would use this result to prop up their prejudices are already prejudiced without it.
His comments are basically a retraction of whatever he wouldn't allow to be transcribed in his actual speech. And why would you bring up a hypothesis to discuss but then say it wasn't necessarily your private view? Can we say spin control?
At the end of the day, I'm not sure what this kinda stuff buys us anyway. There are obviously women who ARE highly capable at math/science/engineering/etc. There are obviously men who are good at multitasking (I'm one of them, IMHO). I'm not sure why we're even interested in establishing whether one gender is better - for any reason - than the other, as a group. You still can't judge any individual man or woman by such data - no matter how thoroughly researched it is. It's like SAT scores - they speak about the GROUP, not the individual.
Xentax
You shouldn't verb words.
Well, there's your answer.
Your lab is full of empty-headed hairy-legged earth mothers who want to "save the world", torturing the data for artifacts of statistical noise that can be used for further scaremongering and grant chasing.
I don't know the details of your operation, but I can guess. Politicized pseudoscience, a few drops of fact in an ocean of speculation, with an anthropocentric view of Nature more in keeping with a medieval churchman than a modern scientist.
Interesting this is I have a friend still in college who says these two things have happened/do happen to women teachers in Rhode Island.
First, If a woman is seen on a date by one of her students, she is fired. Also, that this happened to one of his teachers.
Second, if a woman teacher becomes pregnant she is sent on a "leave of absence" for the duration of the time that her pregnancy shows. Basically, once she starts to show, she has to leave until she has the kid. Contrast this with teachers in VA where they don't leave until sometime in the third trimester.
Don't speak against the south until you've heard some of the crazy shit the New Englanders do.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
>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.
I am good with math. I am good with children. There is no conflict between these two statements. Excelling in my research does not make me less feminine; my ovaries are right where they've always been.
>Sure, women could need more "training" to develop their math skills, but really... what's the big deal?
There is a school of thinking that says that failure of the student is also a failure of the teacher. What is wrong with learning what methods of teaching work and don't work on people of different mindsets. Personally, I'm very non-visual in how I think about mathematical topics, so the "look at the pretty picture" signal processing textbook I had was opaque to me. It certainly didn't mean I had an inability to learn the material (as I had already learned much of it in honors physics), it just spoke to my difficulty with the teaching technique. Failing to improve our teaching techniques to reach out to every student who is willing and capable of learning is simply a waste and a failure.
Lea
Every single week. Its usually because their children are sick or they can't find a baby sitter, or day care isn't open, or whatever.
Sounds like more of a "dad" problem than a "mom" problem.
Re-read your post and imagine that there were fathers who could step up and do *their* jobs.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
People, both male and female, should cut the crap and just act like engineers, chemists, biologists... like PROFESSIONALS.
There is no doubt that the statements made regarding this study are controversial simply because they're not PC. However, its the differences between various identity politics groups out there that allows us as a species to advance. If everyone were given precisely the same skills, we'd never get anywhere. Perhaps its not the differences between the inherent math skills of men and women that are the problem, but the value our society places on those abilities that is out of whack. My wife is a homemaker, and yet the feminist movement tells her that she is a traitor to her gender because of that choice. Why is the female CEO or tenured professor more important than the homemaker?
Perhaps this study is controversial because we've become so obsessed with envy of other people's blessings (material posessions, skills/abilities, opportunities, etc.) that we have lost the ability to count our own blessings. I'm not the best in math (I struggled with Calculus), and there are certainly women out there who are much better than math than I am. My only desire would be for those women to make good use of that ability in whatever endeavor they choose to pursue. When we can no longer be happy for those who have different skills and abilities than we do, this PC nonesense is the result.
Let's say for a moment that a man's brain is more capable of handeling advanced mathematical concepts than women are. So what? Is the biology of how our brains are wired right or wrong? Of course not, its beyond our control. When we start having problems is when the President of Harvard decides to not allow women into the science, engineering, and mathematics programs based on a generalization of an entire group. It is the actions of individuals that are right or wrong, not the biology of the mind. I did not read the article, but if this guy is advocating placing caps on the number of women who can enroll in math, science, or engineering programs because of the perceived differences, then we have a major problem and this person is no longer fit to run a major University. However, it sounds like he is merely making an observation that may or may not explain why there are more men in science and engineering programs than women. But perhaps we should also look at other fields where women may have a disproportionate representation than men. Fields like psychology, social work, elementary education may be examples of where there are a disproportionate number of women in those fields than men. Would the President of Harvard making a statement that "men are naturally bad at empathy and that is why they aren't as many men in psychology or elementary education" be as controversial as the remarks he did make? If not, then perhaps he isn't the only sexist person discussing this.
Part of what truly disturbs me about the PC movement is its obsessive focus on making everyone absolutely identical. We're different and that is a good thing. We have different skills and abilities. We have different passions, and different dreams. Are women barred from pursuing degrees or certain careers? I'm not talking about being discouraged about pursuing those degrees and careers (I was discouraged about learning much about computers when I was a kid, "there is no future in computers" was what I was told). There is a place for discouraging someone from a path that, after objective evaluation, appears to be too difficult for that person. If they truly desire that career, the discouragement will roll off them like water off a duck's back and they'll redouble their efforts towards the goal. I'm talking about Universities that have "no women allowed" or similar language in their course catalogs and admissions manuals. I'm talking about HR departments dictating blatently discriminatory hiring practices. The altruistic goal is to look at individuals, not an identity politics group.
"I trust individuals, not organizations" - John Sherridan, Babylon 5
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
What nonsense. Of course women expressed opinions to their husbands. Talk to anyone over that age.
Nancy Hopkins, a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who walked out midway through Dr Summers's remarks, said: "This kind of bias makes me physically ill. Let's not forget that people used to say that women couldn't drive an automobile."
For good reason - cars used to be physically demanding to drive. This included not only hand-cranking the engine, but heavy manual steering and brakes that required a lot of force to get good results from. That's all changed now with electric starters, power steering and power brakes, but let's not forget what cars used to be like.
... I think you see where I'm going with the title of this post.
Seriously, for making such a big ado about "facts," you sure have a bad habit of plainly asserting things to support your argument without ever referencing or sourcing where those "facts" came from.
I think it has been long established that unless other factors play into it, women are driven by different drives than men.
This really isn't saying much at all. When do you have a situation without "other factors?" What are these "factors"? What drives are women driven by and what are men driven by? Can you cite any studies that demonstrate any of these things?
I don't pretend to understand whether it's a cultural matter or a genetic one, but there are a variety of biological reasons for women to be less capable of maintaining abilities in math and logic (which are devoid of emotion).
It seems by saying they're "biological reasons" then you are pretending to understand it as a genetic matter. Last time I checked, your culture didn't influence your biology. And again, no studies, nothing but assertions. And what does math and logic being "devoid of emotion" have to do with it? You seem to have a very shallow understanding of the issues at hand, along side your absolute lack of backing up your "facts."
Now I have seen other studies among toddlers showing that on the large, boys are more successful at getting around obstacles (read as stubborn if it helps you to think so) than the girls who were prone to simply giving up in frustration
Ah! Mentioning some studies without actually citing them isn't much better than asserting things planly. There's a lot of details that need to be evaluated to determine whether a "study" really is demonstrating what it's trying to demonstrate. Just assuming that "a study said it, therefore it's a fact" is quite bad.
The notion is that as a toddler, there is less chance of a child being tainted by learned roles and behavior although there will still be some of that.
Do you have ANYTHING to base this assertion on? Toddlers have learned a hell of a lot by the time they're toddlers.
But frankly, I am a little annoyed when studies are criticised for reasons that have little to nothing to do with evidence to the contrary and more about a conflict of opinion or ideals.
Well that is a good reason to be annoyed, but it's quite off-topic. The harvard guy in question didn't have any "studies" to back up what he was saying. He was just spouting off, quite like you're doing. In fact, your whole post is either off-topic or horribly disingenuous, unless you really mean to characterize Summers's comments as the "facts," or being supported by the "facts." Alas, you don't mention this at all.
We don't want to hear that men and women are not equals -- that would mean all sorts of problems in our future because after all, look how far we've come by legislating that women are equal to men:
This is probably the most ignorant part of your entire little diatribe. The law is supposed to treat all individuals as equal, under the law! . Are you suggesting that we legislate that women and men are unequal?
We have an unprecedented number of single-parent families and all of the dysfunctional children that accompany those numbers. We have an unprecedented divorce rate that never stops climbing. (Studies have shown that 80% of all marriages start where men ask the women, but it is in the 90% range where women initiate divorce.) Women in the workplace are supposed to be equal but statistically, they spend less time at work than men do for the same job.
Several more assertions without citations. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "lies, damned lies and statistics." Statistics (or even worse, superlatives based on figments of statistics that may exist somewhere) without a source are not only useless, but dangerous.
Before women start
> It's just that when a man chooses to not have kids, society doesn't label him as selfish
It does you just don't see that side.
What about a husband who wants to stay at home, and take care of the kids. Society labels him as a deadbeat. It works both ways. Society labels negatively anyone that steps out of what their percieved role should be.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
If you want a man to respect you as a colleague, ladies, then do a man's work and do it LIKE a man.
Actually I take my work and do it like a person. I don't know that 'coding like a man' would imply, really.
After reading several replies regarding this article, both here and on other sites, is that so many people are getting bent out of shape over this. The man isnt espousing some sexist remark. He states something observed through statistical analysis.
Yes, Women can and do excel in math and sciences, just not as many as men. Yes Men can and do excel at art and less exact persuits, but not as many as women.
Ultimately, it boils down to something I heard in a M.A.S.H. episode once way back when. Winchester tries to cheer up a soldier who lost his arm in combat, and who happened to have been a concert grade classical pianist before the war. In a very summarized nutshell, he says this:
Any monkey, with enough encouragement and practice can learn to play the tunes and melodies of the great composers. But very very few have the true talent to make those notes truely come alive.
And that holds true in any activity. With enough hard work and practice, I could be an astronaut, or physicist. However, I would be only a mediocre or average one at best, because my talents lie elsewhere.
That is a simple fact of life. Not being as successful at one thing or another does not make a person any less a person. Everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses.
You can beat a dead horse, but it still wont get up and keep going, or you can go back and find a form of transportation that is more suitable to you, and keep on moving.
"Our funds have never taken part in toxic or death spiral convertible financings of any sort" -BayStar's managing partne
I scored slightly below average in all of my motor-skills tests. No one ever told me to stay out of varsity sports, I just had to work a little harder.
Whether this study is BS or not doesn't change the fact that the first step to dealing with a deficiency is to identify it.
Well, you were the one claiming to be pissed that she couldn't do pullups. Well, now she has the means to do so! That is quite different from saying "women never/shouldn't/aren't-able-to do pullups/math" vs. "they can" or at least "can try".
Discouragement is the real issue here. And that is where the sexism comes in. Whether it is at work (promotions) or at home (Who does the housework?).
She is sitting next to me now and thinks that she is very good at math. She goes to a special math class because she is so smart. It keeps her very challenged ... and she even needs more challenges after that.
... she did (third person).
... from 8th grade through grad school.
Note, I didn't type that
I only say this because I was told I wasn't good at math and that's exactly when I fell from A's in math (albeit 90.01% kind of stuff) to C's
So, at times I wonder if we just make these statements and that is a bit self fufilling?
Just because some shmucks are using weak techniques to try to "improve self-esteem" - which probably don't involve changing the school environment at all, doesn't mean that it's impossible to improve educational performance by encouraging students.
Female Prison Rape in NY
"This has been obvious through history"
This part of your comment is the one that makes me cautious. I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but whenever I see "this has been obvious through history" I get mental images of Galileo and Einstein. Question everything.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.