Slashdot Mirror
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."
Why shouldn't you buy a woman a watch?
There's a clock on the stove! ba-dum-kssh
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
Now we just need them to study why they are so bad at driving too! ;)
I'd be interested to see what peer-reviewed, repeatable research there exists on actual gender differences.
I remember hearing in a developmental psych class that only 5-10% of the 'standard' gender differences have any biological basis; and the NY Times article on this topic quotes a woman who was angry because, if I remember right, the entire morning of the symposium had been spent dispelling those same myths.
The trouble with this kind of research seems to be that there's too much political intrigue - every scientist is going to be accused of (or possess) some kind of bias in American gender-polarized society, and that is difficult to filter out even if you're aware of it.
Maybe we should just move to Sweden.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
... Math is hard ;-)
If someone got up on stage and claimed that men were innately bad at having babies.
It would be an ugly, ugly scene.
economists bad at genetics.
Take your pick. I know which I think is more likely.
Phil
Simon Baron-Cohen, a psych prof. at Cambridge has a book:
:)
The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain.
From the beginning of the book: "The female brain is predominantly hard-wired for empathy. The male brain is predominantly hard-wired for understanding and building systems."
Has anyone read it?
P.S. This guy is a cousin of Ali G. Don't know what that ought to signify
Being an economist, he wouldn't even know what real science is. What he practices is a pseudo-science, at best.
STFU about slashdot bias.
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
Oh well. Supposedly we learn by our mistakes.
Unless their fatal. Then it's just natural selection.
I talk about stuff.
The NYTimes has been running this story on their main page for the past day. Story is here.
Apparently, he made these remarks in an effort to provoke discussion more than to express his beliefs. Or at least that's the spin on it.
Wife: "Honey, you know women are bad at math..."
The NSA: The only part of the US government that actually listens.
I'm sure the female slashdot member will be upset by such a statement.
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
He just said the right thing the wrong way... he was apparently trying to "be provocative" according to the same AP article on CNN.
He also gave an example of what he intended (emphasis mine):That example says "innate difference" to me, but I'd like to see more detail.
Statistically, he is correct, women on avergae do worse in math. It's the variability that shoots him down though. Individual women can and do excell in math. Just as there are both male and female math illiterates, there are female and male math geniuses.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
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)
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.
Married life teaches this very lesson.
-kgj
-kgj
Now, who's substantiating his comments and who isn't?
Her basic premise (backed up by various studies) is that pre-historically, the tasks of men and women drove the evolution of their brains and chemistry (hormones). For example, because men did the hunting, they had to understand spacial relationships better. Because a group of women in a tribe took care of the children together, women had to work better with others and multi-task.
I can't recall specifically, but I think she makes the point that the male mind is (on average, of course) better suited for engineering because of the spacial relationship thing. But, her basic premise is that the directions the world, and even corporate culture, are heading benefit women and we should expect them to lead much more in the future.
From Family Guy:
Lois: I guarantee you a man made that commercial.
Peter: Of course a man made it. It's a commercial Lois, not a delicious thanksgiving dinner.
Friend of the Wise, Brother of the Brave.
Tell that to the female Japanese foreign exchange student that we had in my 9th grade class that used to mop the class with us because she was doing the equivalent of Calc III in Japan while we were rockin Algebra I in the US. :)
Perhaps there comes a point where a person of integrity can no longer tow the politically correct line and must call it as he sees it. Perhaps being able to retain some dignity and look oneself in the mirror as a professional academic is worth the heat he'll have to take. So I disagree entirely that it far better to just shut the hell up.
It's like... no one commentating on athletics will admit the obvious fact that black sprinters are faster than white. Because if you admit that, then you have conceded that some races may be naturally better at some things than other things, perhaps whites think better than blacks... shock, horror!
To me it is obvious that women are generally better at somethings and worse at others than men. I hope I live to see the day when we laugh at the quaint squeemishness of our age to admit what every other age and people have plainly known.
Of course, this does not mean that an individual woman may not be the best mathematician, or perhaps a white man will again win the 100 metres. (We now have a white heavy-weight boxing world champion.) Individuals are in no way subject to a statistic which generalises a population.
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird -- Proverbs 1:17
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.
Here's an interesting thing. I am a female physics PhD student. What I noticed in my university and from discussions with other PhD students and scientists, this is fairly common in other universities, is that the ratio of female to male students, in physics and maths at least is about 50/50 through undergraduate. And they do well in it. They get As and first-class honours. The most obvious exception to this is engineering. That's still very male dominated. But as you start going up to PhD level and then further you start losing girls. However the situation today is still much better than in the past. As you look at the older scientists in your department you will generally see that as the age goes up, the more likely that they are male.
This is Australia, so maybe things are different in the US. But what I understand talking with other scientists (including male ones) is that first of all the PhD itself is a slog. Secondly after you finish you go through a long period where you get 1-2 year postdocs here and there and you are likely to be constantly moving. It is much easier for a guy to tell his wife that they are moving and that she should quit her job and pack and for the guy to spend years working late at night and expecting his wife to hold the fort at home with the kids and housework than for a woman to do the same thing. Also then you want to have a baby and you have to take at least a year off, sometimes even more, and well you can see how things go. Oh, and also as my (male) supervisor once warned me, some of the older guys are just biased against women. They won't say it outright but it affects how they select people for jobs.
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 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.
Girls are so pampered today by our public education system that most of them are terribly thin-skinned. One of the girls in my CS program used to go into a crying temper tantrum everytime someone more than very, very gently criticized something she said or did. Most of the guys I see are supportive of the girls.
Here's a novel idea though. If you want a man to respect you as a colleague, ladies, then do a man's work and do it LIKE a man. That means you meet or exceed the level of work that a man would in your position. No excuses ladies, just fucking take it like a man.
The girls that I know who make it do that. They don't make excuses, they just compete. They don't whine about sexism, in fact the most successful of them as a "bring it on, fuckers" attitude toward sexism.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
As I scanned through the posts, I didn't see any comments relating to the above subject so forgive me if this is redundant but:
I can't recall the names of the studies and/or books right now but I have heard that it is very likely that there is a fairly good correlation between ability at music and talent with math. Given this link Prof. Summers would be wrong as there are of course many, many top notch female musicians.
Can anyone point me to research into this idea?
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
I just don't think it matters. We all know that individual women are good at science. They win a Nobel every now and then, which is usually a good sign. A lot of women are bad at science though.
We also know that a lot of men are bad at science, but that some men are good at science.
So, what it boils down to is that, some men and some women are good at science, and most men and most women are bad at science.
Why do we need a study for that? If you're doing science, hire people who are good at science. Speaking as a science guy, I'd love to have more women around. Unlike science guys, many of them bathe.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Not even remotely the same thing, it is a fact that male and female brains do differ from one another in various ways. I believe there is a lot of evidence to suggest that boys brought up as girls are generally not very happy and vice a versa.
I don't see anything wrong with acknowledging differences between the sexes, where things start to go wrong is when people are abusing the fact there are differences, e.g. men are generally bigger and stronger and can easily abuse that by beating up women fairly easily ( women are better at nagging and can abuse that power ) or misrepresenting the general differences in specific instances to damage people.
I am an instructor at a technical college; my specialties are programming, networking, and UNIX. We teach a 2-year degree.
I have found that the ratio of females/males in the UNIX class is about 40/60. In programming, about 45/55. But in networking (we teach the CCNA cirriculum) the first semester starts at about 40/60 but ends up about 10/90 by the fourth term. The women just drop out.
I believe anyone can discipline their minds to do just about anything. But I also believe females are wired differently than males. This is not to say that females are worse (or better) than males; just different. Males seem to want to tackle problems, while females watch and observe and learn. Perhaps it is the curriculum that is oriented for the male student, Idunno.
It is obvious that men and women in general have different brain development and a different way of looking at the world.
But in our politically correct culture it seems that it is only ok to highlight the differences that paint men in a negative light and women in a positive light.
So there is no uproar to say that men are more prone to violence or women or more nurturing.
But saying men are better suited to understanding spacial relationships. That would be a no-no....
Xcott
They rarely coincide.
I think it has been long established that unless other factors play into it, women are driven by different drives than men. 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). Women have a lot of games that their bodies, for better or worse, play on them that men do not suffer or experience.
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. 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.
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. 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:
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.
Before women start bashing me on this because it doesn't fit "you" or some smaller group of people -- this is about the country of the U.S. at large. And if you think there aren't cases to the opposite, it would be wrong for me not to acknowledge it.... so here's your bone. I read in a black woman's magazine about some refreshing statistics that the decline of black single mothers collecting welfare is increasing at an almost unexplainable rate. They are becoming far more educated than their white counterparts, and are earning more money than their black male counterparts. I can only attribute that to cultural adjustments within those circles but it does illustrate an important point I'd like to close with.
Natural ability or talent alone do not determine potential for success or limitations. There are thousands of other factors that can come into play when determining these things which can even include the direction of the wind at the moment of determination. So then what would be the purpose of such studies?
It's about understanding ourselves; who we are -- our strengths and our weaknesses. And the sooner we embrace whatever the "facts du jour" are, the sooner we can begin from a proper perspective rather than the basis of some political agenda.
Yeah, as a woman I get discouraged all the time, "women aren't good at that", and I reply, "well, I am". It's not fun fighting stereotyping. That's why that Harvard President should shut the hell up. It's hard enough already for women in the Math and Sciences without people saying the stereotype belongs to ALL women.
-------------------------------------
Technically, we are beyond survival.
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.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
As for the Jewish issue, funniness, and ability to rap, well those obviously fit the rest of your post quite well.
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".
No. In fact, they are often told by female teachers that math and science is not anything for girls. Often, these teachers are crap at math and science themselves (if I had a dollar for every mistake I corrected) and pass their inadequecies onto their female pupils.
This female teacher I had in grade school told my mom during a parent-teacher meeting that math and science wasn't important for girls; this was after my mom asked about how I was doing in these subjects and what we were atually learning. Not the smartest thing to say to a mom who has a MsC in chemistry...
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
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.According to the BBC, The difference in male vs. female brain size (about 10%) in humans and higher order primates is directly attributable to in increase is the size of the areas of the brain responsible for geo-spatial mapping and visualization. Natural selection is the culprit in this instance. It seems that if you couldn't find your way home after the day's hunt, you got less of an opportunity to pass on your genes!
When you think about it, (and be honest now) in your experience, exactly what is the ratio of male to female Unix admins?
Got 'cha!
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Have a baby, see gender differences
I have six kids: Three boys; Three girls. I should know. What I've learned is that girls are not -- in any way -- less *capable* of learning math and science. However, *how* they learn is different. Take into account the "how" differences and you can have a science genius, girl or boy.
For example, don't *ever* say, "Good boy!" or, "Good girl!". (Got to be the most common mistake I hear parents make.) Instead, say, "Good job!". Boys won't pay much attention to the difference, but girls will -- even if you say "good job" to her, then turn around and say "good boy" to her brother. They notice all the subtleties of language and attitude.
If you ever so much as hint that your girl can't do something, YOU LOSE! Boys are much more forgetful.
The way that "brain structure" is used to make claims like this just makes me shake my head. The brain is a dynamic machine that self organizes as we develop based in no small part on the stimulus we give it.
Saying that more men go further in the fields of math and science and then pointing to the brain structure of these particular people versus the not-so-mathy and scientific people really shows nothing other than what a math-and-science wired brain tends to look like. I bet if you look at the brain structure of a highly mathematically/scientifically inclined woman, the same people would say "she's good at this stuff because her brain is structured like a man's".
It's not worth my time at the moment to go off on a "nature v nuture" tangent -- but the whole "brain structure" logic just always annoys the hell out of me because they seem to always look at a brains current structure without considering (or just making assumptions about) how a particular brain came to have that particular structure. In many cases the overlooked how-the-brain-got-this-way question is much more relevant to the case at hand, but doesn't seem to get studied (or referenced) as much.
look how far we've come by legislating that women are equal to men: 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.)
Yes, and there you haven't even touched the subject of what happens after that divorce; the woman gets away with the kids and your money. Hell, I know men where the woman, right after they decided to divorce, robbed the entire house clean of all their mutual belongings (with the help of friends), in addition to taking a way too large lump of his future income, and taking all his rights away to see his kids. Judges won't punish this sort of outright criminal behaviour and the woman's part, undoubtedly for a variety of reasons, but justice is not one of them. Feminism is, I suspect. There's a reason for the fact that organisations like Fathers for Justice exist. This happens in Europe, mind you!Feminism destroyed America, the whole western world for that matter. And still there are people (the variery that needs to sit down to pee, that is) claiming that feminism hasn't come far enough yet. Excuse me?! What do they want men to be? Men are more than a monthly income, and a means for women to be able to shit out these godawful screaming shitting smelling monsters they call babies!
On the other hand, there is a difference between what women say (or think) they want, and what they actually want; they claim that they want men and women to be equal, and that they want a man with feminine qualities. Bullshit! What they want, is a man; someone who has the traditional male qualities like confidence, and not being afraid to set limits, etc. Until women see the flaw in their own logic here, the divorce rate will not get better. On the other hand, once you understand this as a man, it's time to get a woman that doesn't think in such a feministic way. Really, they exist :)
Support a Europe-related section on Slashdot!
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.)
I've read the story on the BBC News web site and now I've read it here. That means at least three sites are questioning my ability at math.
I took Psychology as a prt of my CS degree in the UK. Thankfully, not all parts of the world are so blinded by PC morality to deny actual experimental results.
We were taught, and validated by experimentation, that there are indeed differences between women and men. It turns out that women are better communicators than men, and and men have better spatial awareness (i.e. ability to model spatial problems in their mind).
I'd guess mental modeling of spatial problems has a lot of similarity with mental modeling of math problems.
I also find it interesting that these skills coincide with the traditional gender roles of man= hunter, woman=cavewife, that have persisted for hundreds of thousands of years compared to the relatively recent social equalisation of women.
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 think you hit the nail on the head here.
I'm personally quite disgusted how someone throws out the P.C. card when he/she (or she/he if you must) isn't completely satisfied with any statement. If I coulda pulled that card on my parents when I was young, or maybe my principal in school when "fair and equal punishment" (yeah, right) was being dealt, or when I was denied financial aid, because I belong to an increasing minority (male white guy), I sure would have.
I've never had a prejudice to anyone or any group, as I was not brought up that way. I'd love to think that yes, people are created equally and everyone is nice and flowers grow at the north pole, but if I believe that, I'm sure to live a short life. I take away my experiences, learn from them, and apply them to future experiences. It's a dumbed down version of the scientific process, and we all use it to some extent. If we don't learn from our experiences, how will we improve?
I rambled a bit there, but what I was trying to point out is that before anyone jumps on this man and tries to tear him up, recognize that yes, there *are* GENERAL differences, and we ought to understand WHY. Be it social, economical, evolutional, or basic neural programming, we need to know.
If we never learned the earth was round, the Americas would still be an unknown to modern society.
Besides, how many guys do you see give each other hugs when they meet? GENERALLY, not as many as women. That's just something women do. How many women do you see that care about all the internal workings of a computer/some other complex system? GENERALLY, not as many as men.
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?
Send/track messages to 100K people: www.xPressAlert.com
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.
Do something about world hunger. Click here
Everyone knows that only women can do the multiplying!
Interesting list, but it's apples and oranges. Your list talks about some ways women, as a group, tend to fare better than men in society.
This list *could* be due as much to chauvinism and archaic gender roles than to anything inherently physiological. e.g. women are less likely to be killed in war because they're less likely to be front-line combat soldiers due to societal intertia regarding the role of women, not because they happen to have a vagina.
See Kraft, Phillip, Programmers and Managers (Springer-Verlag) for details.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
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
Oh yes, I see. Very cunning.
What a fantastic way to find the female geeks here at Slashdot.
Force them to disclose themselves by defensive comments.
Very sly.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
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
My life is a good example of how things can end up not working the way I wanted them to but worked out pretty well.
Rewind eight years ago -> married a "career gal" wanted to be a DINKs as both careers were going well. Ended up having a kid, she decides she wants to be a homemaker. I was really unhappy about it and the loss of income. But I figured I was not going to force her to so something she didn't want to.
Today-> well knowing that I had to support a family I have been forced to make smarter career moves, twice being stuck in well-paying jobs I didn't like at all. However, our kids (five and three) are well adjusted, healthy, home is calm, my wife is very happy doing what she does and spending some of my money. But in return she keeps me happy. Realises that I do bust my ass to support them and doesn't hassle me when I want to spend a bit on myself or go out with the guys.
I think I ended up with it pretty good. Will have to see what the future holds.
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.
The question at hand is whether that there may be a biological reason why more women don't excel at math. It's about looking at the numbers as a whole and seeing if biology has a statistical influence. If that's the case- prove it. If it's not the case- prove it. It did not, however, say that all women are bad at math.
I think some people are getting all worked up about this and are giving their emotional outcries. That doesn't say anything- I want to see facts.
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
Exactly. When I saw this thread, I was expecting a lot of "listen to the reasoning, don't just react" statements. What I wasn't expecting was a lot of people not only agreeing with the claim, but even going so far as to say "women should know their place" and things like that.
e t_ Journal/vol25/25GSJ04b.html
... Different gender ratios never resulted in changes in male test performance; men consistently registered about 67 percent accuracy on math exams."
/ le wis/
Before a continue, a disclaimer: My partner is both female and a math major, and several of my friends in college were female math majors (or math/cs), so I may be a bit biased on this one.
I don't find this notion to be true at all. I went to a school that was 70-80% male, and yet the math department had an even mix of male and female. If there was any bias, it was on the side of pure science vs. applied science (the women tended to migrate more toward the "pure science" - chemistry as opposed to chemical engineering, things like that). Other schools have found similar things - for example, http://www.math.earlham.edu/WomensBrains.html
Anyways, enough with the anecdotal evidence. Lets get to studies:
http://www.brown.edu/Administration/George_Stre
"n a recent Brown study, women performed as much as 12 percent better on math problems when tested in a setting without men.
Women tested in single-sex groups scored a 70-percent accuracy rate on math exams, while women tested in groups in which they were outnumbered by men achieved only a 58-percent accuracy rate, said Michael Inzlicht, graduate student of psychology, who led the research.
http://www.awm-math.org/articles/notices/199107
(An interesting article about women in mathematics - several interesting tidbits, such as while only 25% of math PhDs are female, only 30% of all PhDs period are female)
http://www.gendercenter.org/education.htm
(This tidbit: "In 1992, women received 52 percent of biological science bachelor's and master's degrees, 67 percent of law bachelor's degrees, 47 percent of business bachelor's degrees, 47 percent of mathematics bachelor's degrees, and 33 percent of physical science bachelor's degrees. (6)" - references "Where Women Stand: An International Report on the Status of Women in 140 Countries 1997-1998" by Naomi Neft and Ann D. Levine.)
In summary: it looks like there are ample women in mathematics at the graduate level; however, at the postgrad level, the numbers drop significantly. However, women don't seek postgraduate degrees nearly as often as men anyways; the ratio of male to female postgraduate degrees in mathematics is only 5% different from the overall average. Such a small difference can easily be attributed to the environment - an environment which Harvard's president made abundantly clear.
Jesus: "Son of a
I think part of the problem is that for all the equality in the workplace, there just isn't any, from either direction.
For example, my team is 75% female. I am male. I do not have a problem working with women, and in fact, until my current position, every supervisor I ever had was female. That's regardless of industry...I've worked in hospitality, IT, and finance/insurance.
The female members of my team consistently require special treatment for scheduling due to their children. When I say "consistently" I mean one or more of them require a day off or out of the office, or a late start or early stop every week. 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. These scheduling events (I won't say "problems") have seriously harmed my team's productivity, and set us back several months by conservative estimates.
Our HR person has instructed us (team leaders) that we can, in no way whatsoever, force any of our female employees to choose between their job or their children without making the company liable to a lawsuit. In other words, all any of the women on my team have to say is "My kid..." and they get to work whatever schedule they want, and usually less than a typical 40 hours.
Yes, they can work from home, but from the logs, they rarely do. If you call them on it, they say "Well, I was going to, but my kid was sick..." and you have to let them slide.
On the flip side, the male members of the team must be here every day without fail unless calling in sick or using a vacation day. 8-5, no work from home, nothing. Occasionally we get to leave early for a doctor/dentist appointment. Other than that, we are here every day, and we work all day. We are not allowed the same flexibility as the women.
Women demand equality, they demand that they be allowed to have both children and a career, yet when it comes time to actually DO both, they end up choosing one or the other a good portion of the time. You can't say anything against them, you can't write them up for missing too much work and not being productive, you can't write them up for contributing less than others on the team even though they make the same or more in salary (the women on my team do).
Maybe the solution is to allow men the same flexibility as women, even if they don't have kids. I'm single without children...if I was allowed the same scheduling flexibility as the women on my team with children, maybe I wouldn't care as much. At this point, however, there definitely isn't equality, and demanding any would just get me branded a sexist.
So, to me, it is a valid concern for an employer to consider whether you have or are planning to have children. It might not be valid legally, but I have epxerienced firsthand that it DOES have ramifications and DOES effect productivity. Given that it does effect the workplace and productivity, why shouldn't it be a valid concern for an employer?
My point is that you can't have it all. Sometimes you have to compromise. If children are a priority, then maybe the compromise is less career advancement. If career advancement is a priority, then maybe the compromise is not having children.
>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
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.
>No-one disourages anyone from doing the sciences.
You're either a man or a very lucky woman. I'm a PhD student in computer science. I do cryptography, which is a rather logical, math-based discipline.
I have been discouraged from "doing the sciences" more times than I can comfortably count. I have been told "little lady, you can't possibly have any idea what you're talking about. where is your husband?" at a research conference. It didn't stop me, but you'll probably admit that with enough such exposures, it might just stop a pretty high proportion of people.
Hey, I'm good at what I do. What good could it possibly do to perpetuate this sort of crap, when it makes smart people avoid diciplines in which they are capable and qualified?
Lea
Actually, as someone who worked in insurance, theres a bit of truth in both arguments.
Men submit fewer claims than women, on average. However, male claims tend to be more expensive and to involve damage to third parties.
Womens claims tend to be less expensive than men's, and involve more damage to property (lamp posts etc).
The distinguishing factor is that men tend to drive greater distances than women, so if you express both male and female accidents in terms of cost/mile/person ON AVERAGE, its only slightly more expensive to be male.
Bear in mind, thats not the case in the 20-25 year old range, where male accident figures greatly outweigh womens.
A few years ago I had occasion to be talking with the leaders of some of the US Electronics Assembly industry locally. I began to ask about the differentials in employment for women in that industry as they totally dominate the assembly lines. The response I got was one which I have looked into in depth since that time and found that these men were correct.
They reported to me substantial differentials in women and men regards work situations. They included that only about 10% of men had the color discrimination capacity of women. Women on average could descriminate well over 10 times the number of colors that men could and this was not related to color blindness. Women had on average 10 times the discrimination for fine detail and these two factors were the reason men were discriminated agianst in electronics assembly. This was also the dominant reason for export of the processes to China etc because it was illegal in the USA to discriminate so.
I am a Registered Nurse. I have learned professionally that a great deal of very concrete scientific data exists on differences between men and women. These include sensory and environmental and developmental differences. The data supporting the math claims is quite beyond any question. Women have as a average a mathematical capacity differential that is in the order of 10:1 on performance testing different. This is biological and has long been known to be so. Tell the MODS I am talking science and not policy and am not being troll this is just facts.
Being aware of Adm. Grace Hopper USN and Ada and other exceptional females (including a daughter of mine) I could hardly apply an average to anyone. But being ignorant of what is going on or politically correct in this matter is just stupid. We have allowed our political motives to get out of line with our science here.
Hillary Clinton (Ex Prez Wife and US Senator) was willing to accept and actually testified and got policy changed in medical research over this very issue. Prior to her efforts medicines as a whole were never tested on women to determine if they had differential effects to men. They are now and the results are most intersting. I am no supporter ot many of the Clinton policies but this was a very correct action. In medicine it is saving lives.
In our world many problems develop because we are politically motivated and not science moderated. How on earth can it be that we can see that women and men have differences in strength, temperment and even have as a whole different ratios of muscle to fat in their bodies and cannot see that they behave differently? How can we be so arrogant as to breed animals for temper and abilities and be unwilling to see that various humans have differences? This accusing those who discuss overwhelming scientific evidence as if they were bigots has got to stop.
Never Politically Correct ~ I prefer the facts If you don't like what I say, get a life, or comment yourself.
Jimmy the Greek made similar comments:
The black is the better athlete, and he practices to be the better athlete, and he's bred to be the better athlete because this goes way back to the slave period. The slave owner would breed this big black with this big black woman so he could have a big black kid. That's where it all started.
He was fired for that ignorant comment.
The problem is that such generalizations sound very plausible on a common sense level, but they are never backed up with scientific fact. They are essentially hypotheses designed to prove a certain situation, one that typically involves treating someone of a certain group differently (often less favorably).
I could make the comment that "Men are more aggressive in discipling their children because in the wild, when hunting, if they weren't their child would likely die.".
Sounds plausible, right? And what's the harm in people holding that philosophy?
Now how would you like it when a woman judge has this in her head when deciding to award custody of your children? Or when you're appearing before an all-female hiring panel to be a child care provider. Would you like it if the "genetically more likely to have abusive" is running through everyone's heads?
> 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.
wasn't it that mental capabilities mwere passed on by the X chromosome? Hence making the curve of intelligence flatter for men, hence it is more probable for a man to be a genious but aswell more probable for a man to be mentally retarded? I remember reading somewhere that since women had 2 X chromosomes it made them statistically more likely to be average. Anyone had any insight on this?
Mild autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger's Syndrome, are 9 times more common in men then women. AS has been called an extreme male personality, good at systemising (science-maths) - poor at empathising. The result is demonstrably more Nerds in Maths - Engineering - Maths dominated Science courses in universities. Women are less likely to be Nerds, QED.
http://www.emedicine.com/ped/topic147.htm
Google Mathematics+Asperger's
Statements like that bother me. Let's break this down...
I have heard men make comments like this my entire life
All her life she has heard men saying that she is less likely to excel at math or science than the guy sitting next to her? In short, without any test scores, transcripts, etc. She's probably got worse grades than any random guy on the street. Even if that's the case (and I'm assuming that's not what she meant, but I wanted to point out that the statement doesn't fit this situation), what is the significance of this? Not much. It's no different from saying that the average black guy on the street has a better chance of making it into the NBA or NFL than the average white guy on the street.
if I had listened to them I would never have done anything
If she would have given up her dreams just because she thought the odds were slightly against her, then I would have no sympathy for her if she had.
In short, who cares what science says your odds are? If you are confident that your abilities don't fit that trend then why the heck should it affect you? Saying that the odds are not in your favor is not the same as telling people not to try, or that they have no hope, or that you won't even give them a fair shake. I think we can all agree that using a statstical assessment to defend positions like those is not only unscientific, but flat-out wrong. But it's obviously so. No one is going to "get away" with using this study for those purposes.
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
Even assuming its conclusions are true, the study cited by the article doesn't provide proof that women are necessarily bad in math. It might be a case for why women are bad in branches of math that do require visual manipulation like geometry. I don't see much visual manipulation in arithmetic and algebra or even in much of what goes under the heading "computer science." Hey, even the whole story doesn't provide a "case" for why fewer women are into computers. Programming is more about logic than raw math power.
I'm a sci-fi vegan: I don't want the aliens to think we have as much right to live as the fried chickens we eat.
Not only that, but women endurance in general is far superior. Look at adventure racers. Women kick ass in most teams - though they are harder to find as it is not popular. But they usually can not navigate. :)
But it is all beside the point. The point is that significant differences exist, and it is absolutely normal to acknoledge that. And like many people pointed out - this is just the third, worst type of lying - statistics. Use it appropriately.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
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.
Still, it isn't normal (or rather, shouldn't be) to use those differences as justification for discriminatory policies.
/. thread: "Women suck because they don't do math/science."
Which, sadly, it is. Just look at this whole
Gee, I wonder why not? Thanks for the encouragement, guys.
My wife and I have digital cable, get a new-for-us but gently-used car every 3-5 years, eat out a couple of times a week or more, support a couple of relatively expensive hobbies, and take two fairly nice week-long vacations a year including a stay in our timeshare, all on just my single middle class income so my wife can stay home and take care of our daughter.
How do we do it? We keep track of how much we spend each year on non-monthly expenses like car and house repairs, vacations, hobbies, gifts, and other unexpected expenses, divide by 26, and put that amount in savings accounts every 2 weeks. It is amazing how much less stress an unexpected expense is on your marriage when you are prepared for it.
Contrast this with typical consumer behavior of charging unexpected expenses on a credit card because they are maxed out on their regular monthly expenses and you can see why most people think they need two incomes to survive.
This space intentionally left blank.
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
I cannot believe my eyes! "Pompous" is right! Last semester at Mt. San Antonio College I took a course titled "Psychology of Women." Some wonder why there is a course so specific, initially considering it to be sexist, without realizing that many studies that have contributed to today's psychology theories have been done with groups consisting of white males. Having taken this course I learned a few interesting things, one being about a few groups of women that took a math test. The control group was not reminded of their sex while other groups of women were reminded of A) their gender or B) ethnic background. Finding: women not reminded of either attribute (gender or background) did better than the women that had been reminded; women reminded of their gender or race did worse! I'm simply astounded at this moment, that people are so ignorant.
See pics of me at http://photos.yahoo.com/chiromyu and get to know me at http://www.livejournal.com/users/sweet__kitty
Sorry ma'am, but you were not fighting stereotyping. You were fighting against idiots. Idiots are not fun to fight against, but it's part of civilization, and getting rid of stereotyping is not going to rid you of that problem.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
"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.