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."

Lack of rational thinking

Not saying the guy's right but a lot of the comments I've heard seem to be based on this being automatically sexist as opposed to people showing good studies that demonstrate the this isn't at all correct.

More of a "You can't say that." than "That isn't correct.

substantiation

From the article, this guy says:

"It's possible I made some reference to innate differences," he said. He said people "would prefer to believe" that the differences in performance between the sexes are due to social factors, "but these are things that need to be studied."

And one of his critics:

"Here was this economist lecturing pompously (to) this room full of the country's most accomplished scholars on women's issues in science and engineering, and he kept saying things we had refuted in the first half of the day," said Denton, the outgoing dean of the College of Engineering at the University of Washington.

Now, who's substantiating his comments and who isn't?

Re:Lack of rational thinking

There are historical reasons that people see such comments as "automatically sexist".

"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.

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."

During Dr Summers's presidency, the proportion of tenured jobs offered to women has fallen from 36 per cent to 13 per cent. Last year, only four of 32 tenured job openings were offered to women.

("Mommy truck" and "Daddy truck" hereby qualifies as the funniest excuse for scientific proof ever, by the way.)

Unfortunately any study would be irrelevant.

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.

Re:Lack of rational thinking

So let me get this straight...a guy suggests that maybe we shouldn't automatically conclude that gender differences in math/science might not be cultural and that perhaps we should shine the light of scientific inquiry on the problem, and a bunch of women go ballistic and don't want to challenge this sacred notion.

(cough)

Does anybody else see the irony here?

Great!

Now we just need them to study why they are so bad at driving too! ;)

Re:Great!

Actually, the Insurance industry has known for years exactly who the worst drivers are: males. Especially the young ones, filled with 10x more testosterone than brains...

I'd be interested

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.

I can barely Imagine how pissed off I'd be

If someone got up on stage and claimed that men were innately bad at having babies.

It would be an ugly, ugly scene.

Re:I can barely Imagine how pissed off I'd be

Hey, my father gave birth to a baby, and I'll be damned if he wasn't the best baby-maker I've ever seen. Of course, he had to work twice as hard at making babies to even earn a sliver of respect in the woman-dominated baby field. But after years of perseverence, the other baby makers came to think of him as "just one of the girls," ...

Women bad at maths....

economists bad at genetics.

Take your pick. I know which I think is more likely.

Phil

Doesn't this guy say nearly the same thing?

Simon Baron-Cohen, a psych prof. at Cambridge has a book:

The Essential Difference: The Truth about the Male and Female Brain [amazon.com].

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 :)

Re:Doesn't this guy say nearly the same thing?

Are empathy and `understanding systems' different? Surely empathy is simply a subset of `understanding systems' tiered towards the system known as the human brain.

Give him a break: he's an economist!

Being an economist, he wouldn't even know what real science is. What he practices is a pseudo-science, at best.

Or maybe

It's because women don't stay in the technical fields due to the sexist and condecending culture found there.

Get out the Asbestos undergarments...

...this is obviously a flamewar waiting to happen. Or it would be if slashdot wasn't mostly male ;p

I just wanted to chime in by saying that "have less aptitude for" does not automatically mean "all suck at".

female on slashdot

I'm sure the female slashdot member will be upset by such a statement.

Stupid phrasing of the obvious

Men and women are different. Whoda Thunk!?!

He just said the right thing the wrong way... he was apparently trying to "be provocative" according to the same AP article [cnn.com] on CNN.

He also gave an example of what he intended (emphasis mine):

"It's possible I made some reference to innate differences," he said. He said people "would prefer to believe" that the differences in performance between the sexes are due to social factors, "but these are things that need to be studied."

He also cited as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral upbringing. Yet he said she named them "daddy truck" and "baby truck," as if they were dolls.

That example says "innate difference" to me, but I'd like to see more detail.

Book recommendation

For anyone interested in reading about the differences in the way the male and female minds work, there is a very interesting book: The First Sex : The Natural Talents of Women and How They Are Changing the World [amazon.com] by Helen Fisher.

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.

Total bullshit

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.

PC == Keep your mouth shut??

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.

Lessons of Married Life

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

Re:Sooo stupid.

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.

Hmmm.

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?

Re:I already knew that

From Family Guy [familyguyquotes.com]:

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.