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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."
Now we just need them to study why they are so bad at driving too! ;)
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.
I just wanted to chime in by saying that "have less aptitude for" does not automatically mean "all suck at".
Machine9dotNet
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.
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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.
"Well, women have this wonderful nurturing instinct, but of course they're not so good at things outside the home, like voting or schoolwork, and certainly the hard sciences of engineering and math would never appeal to them."
compare with
"Let's face it - black people are just better than us at basketball. Of course, they're not very smart, but that's not their fault!"
As recently as 45 years ago it was the social norm in America that middle-class women did not express an opinion to their husbands. (Of course they had husbands. And good ones, too! They didn't go to college for nothing.)
It's easy to lose this perspective in more recent times, but one must remember what these people have gone through to get where they are, and one must wonder whether the overt tones of bigotry have been eliminated or have just become more subtle. The indignation people express often seems like overreaction; but not everyone who has an opinion has an irrational foundation.
("Mommy truck" and "Daddy truck" hereby qualifies as the funniest excuse for scientific proof ever, by the way.)
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.
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.
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.
(cough)
Does anybody else see the irony here?
Actually, I was trying to be Insightful, not Funny.
"Let's not forget that people used to say that women couldn't drive an automobile."
Well, a long time ago, driving an automobile required a certain physical strength a lot of women didn't have. Starting the engine required using a crank, for one. That's the big one I'm not even sure I have the strength for. Manual steering was another hurdle.
Of course, things like electric starters and power steering have made driving a much less physical exercise. Biometric driver authentication is peeking is head out now, which means no more wrist-wrenching to start the car. And drive-by-wire is only a few years away. Pretty soon, the toughest part of driving will be opening the door.
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Well, studies have shown differences between men and women. This is no surprise. Studies have not on the other hand been particularly revealing as to whether it's down to nature or nurture. Of course, in the example of his good at maths/bad at maths one, it all comes down to the question that you ask.
If you ask, "Are men better at maths than women?" you can show it to be true easily by showing the number of graduates of each sex - just as you can supposedly prove that white men can't jump by looking at basketball results. Are either of these results rigorous proof of the assertions? No. They just show that as of today, white men apparently less often jump and women less often take maths degrees.
As a matter of pure interest, note the UK A-level results; girls outperform boys in science and maths on a regular basis at age 18, according to those.
So one might say that really what this guy has done is asked, and answered, the wrong question, using a mixture of anecdotal evidence (that stupid story about his daughter's trucks; why is he so upset that she shows such a good grasp of metaphor?!) and what appears to be pure presumption.
Can women do maths? immediately splits ability by gender, which is daft, seeing that gender is a pretty blurry line. Even the differences in language processing in the brain so popular for authors of self-help books are only true in a small set of circumstances, for a small proportion of the population; probably you could split by toenail length and get an intriguing correlation, too.
You might find it interesting to read Beyond Binary Thinking, an interesting introduction to exactly this field.
One thing I have noticed over the years, is that when anyone says something "controversial" people get in an uproar. Why is it so hard to believe that one gender is better at something then another gender?
I still know women, until this day, who say that women are equal with men in every possible way, both mentally and physically. Last I noticed - the average woman is not as strong as the average man, the strongest woman is not as strong as the strongest man. The same thing goes for a lot of physical attributes. People always get upset when we talk about it but its true.
So why isn't possible that women are not as proficient in the math's and sciences as men? Maybe this is a state of social order - though more so about 45 years ago. But there is always the potential that our minds work differently enough (They do in so many other aspects) that woman are less capable then men in math and science, while men are less capable in say art and literature?
I by no means am claiming to be an expert on who has more proficiency in a topic - but from my major in college I do know there are substantial differences between the way men and women think, and act.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I read the article this morning. When I came to the second quote (...things we had refuted in the first half of the day) it just read to me like he was being criticized for not being part of the group-think.
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The problem is that people still say that there are differences between men and women. How many feminist think that most of the worlds problems are because men are running things? That men are more violent than women? Yet lots of people would not say that is sexist. It seems like it is okay to say anything negative about men, white people, Christians, or US citizens.
The problem is that in general you can not make a blanket statement about the genders. I will bet that there are Women that are extremely good at math and science. Judging from the freaking grammar Nazis that pop up on here, some males are good at grammar and spelling. It is very possible that there are difference between the genders. We know that there are physical differences. Women tend to have higher endurance and higher pain tolerance. Men tend to have greater upper body strength. Is it so hard to say that maybe males generally are better at making quick decisions and spacial relationships i.e. skills that increase your chances at hunting. While women are better at planning and long term goals i.e. things that increase your chances when gathering and taking care of children? I mean isn't it logical that women would tend to be better at taking care of children since they are the only ones that can feed a baby? I think part of this negative feeling is from the old "separate but equal days". We seem to have a problem with the concept of equal but different.
Just because most of your gender tends to have talents one field does not mean that you can not excel at a different one.
We need to deal with groups of individuals and not individual groups.
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I'd be interested to see what peer-reviewed, repeatable research there exists on actual gender differences.
I lack links to peer reviewed studies (since most journals rightly fear that the internet will eventually drive them out of business) to back these up, but I can provide a few examples that a quick Googling will verify...
1) Female brains weight roughly 200g less than male brains.
2) Females use both hemispheres of their brains (five separate locii, IIRC) for language tasks, while males use only one hemisphere and (again, IIRC) two locii.
3) Males perform significantly (in the rigid statistical sense) better at 3d spatial orientation tasks than females do.
And, of course, the one that caused this entire argument, 4) Males score DRASTICALLY higher on tests of abstract and symbolic logic (ie, math). I don't even know why that counts as controvertial anymore. That particular horse died so long ago, we can't even beat the carcass, just sort of stir up the dust.
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.First I want to state that I always beleive in hiring the best person for the job no matter what. I hope that we can agree on that statement. If so then we both agree that afirmative action/quotas are bad.
:-) Also we do agree that word about people that do things like this gets around.... It is unfortunate that by trying to spread "diversity" they are promoting raceism.
Now on to my main point.
I will have you look at most of the universities in your area. In those look who is in the top level computer science classes. What do you see? Almost all men. By almost I mean it will be around 90-95% men and a larg portion being white men. So looking at that statistic shouldn't most I.T. jobs be filled with 90-95% men? Now go in to most fortune 100 companies and look at their I.T. department. What percentage of that department is men? I think you will be shocked to see that a very large percentage are women (greater than 35%, and in a lot of cases greater than 50%). Now look at all the new hires that have taken place in the last 3 years in those companies. How many of those are white males?
It is my belief that most fortune 500 companies want to appear like they care about "diversity" but when it comes down to it they will put those hires in departments they don't think much about (I.T.). So then I.T. gets stuck with a bunch of underqualified people and then people start to say that their I.T. department suck and they need to outsouce it. Yet it is their fault for sticking underqaulfied people in there to begin with. I have yet to see any sales department be forced to take "underqualified" people. I have yet to see a marketing department take underqualified people. I have yet to see any scientific department be forced to take on lesser quality people.... yet I.T. gets it all the time.
Lastly I want to say again that all this can go away if companies start to hire the best person for the job. The only good news is that if they don't their competitors might
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
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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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.
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