Harvard Pres Says Females Naturally Bad at Math 1746
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
More of a "You can't say that." than "That isn't correct.
Sooo stupid. (Score:1, Insightful)
You'd think the president of freaking Harvard would know better.
Women bad at maths.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Take your pick. I know which I think is more likely.
Phil
Or maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Get out the Asbestos undergarments... (Score:5, Insightful)
I just wanted to chime in by saying that "have less aptitude for" does not automatically mean "all suck at".
Re:Sooo stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh well. Supposedly we learn by our mistakes.
Unless their fatal. Then it's just natural selection.
PC == Keep your mouth shut?? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Doesn't this guy say nearly the same thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great! (Score:5, Insightful)
Encouraging and discouraging (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that people think first "You can't say something like that?!" before ever considering "That can't be correct can it?"
substantiation (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, who's substantiating his comments and who isn't?
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.)
Re:Sooo stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Unfortunately any study would be irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:I can barely Imagine how pissed off I'd be (Score:3, Insightful)
all are very important traits that women defeat men at every day of every year. its a shame that these abilities are considered less important than physical strength and the ability to add two numbers together...
Re:Stupid phrasing of the obvious (Score:4, Insightful)
Based on TFA (I know, I know), I'd have to say the guy really is a pompous jerk who wants to believe his sexism has some actual merit, and will find ways to prop up his beliefs. It's something we all do to some extent (just recall the conversation you have with yourself when you're sleeping for 10 more minutes instead of getting up when the alarm goes off), but it has no place in public/professional comments in any academic setting.
Yes, it's true that it is AWFULLY hard to separate nature vs. nurture when it comes to behavior, preference, and aptitude across large groups. But to suggest there 'might be innate differences' (which is the best possible way you could put it) without referring to any existing studies to that effect is just wrongheaded. And again, it comes down to first having to show there IS a difference, and then having to show that it's tied to gender as opposed to childhood development. GFL.
Xentax
Look at child custody. (Score:1, Insightful)
It's not funny, and it has killed some children. But that's what a subscription to dogma gets you.
Bell curve of a population, not all individuals (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Re:substantiation (Score:2, Insightful)
math and science = sexist, condecending culture (Score:2, Insightful)
I disagree with you in that you seem to be saying it isn't because women lack sufficient talent, but that they lack the backbone to pioneer where there isn't already a copacetic culture.
The short of it is that you refute the aptitude argument and explain the phenomenon with a preference argument, and then you proceed to speak to those preferences. The preferences you suggest are that an affirmative (or at least neutral) environment is more important to these female scientists than advancing science. I'm going to need to see some data to back that up.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
My irritation with all these vagely socio-biological arguments is that they are almost always used to justify the status quo. For example, people used to say "men are natural hunters, women are natural home-makers and organisers, therefore it's correct that the man should be the boss and the woman the secretary".
Anytime you see the word "natural" used in an argument, be very suspicious!
Re:PC == Keep your mouth shut?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Politically incorrect statements are the fringes of thought. Some, over the course of years, will become accepted as the "right and moral" form of thought. Discouraging people from speaking their mind discourages social progress and reform.
--
Evan
Hmmm. (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Or maybe (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Give him a break: he's an economist! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
And I bet none of them were conservatives; so much for diversity.
Maybe one day we'll end up with a system that treats everyone with some respect, and this sort of crapola won't happen. Until people like this are gone, and we don't have systems in place that promote people just because of whatever class they happen to fall into, it's not going to happen. It's just going to continue.
Re:substantiation (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, who's substantiating his comments and who isn't?
To be fair, just because she thinks the hypothesis was refuted doesn't make it wrong. Especially knowing how sensitive the topic about differences between genders is, a lot of people go out of their way to find the results they're looknig for, and are completely unwilling to consider anything else.
While withholding my opinion about the accuracy of his statements, I do think it's an issue that still needs to be examined. For her to categorically reject the notion while there is still much ambiguity on the subjct, I believe she was acting emotionally rather than logically.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
My wife is a doctor, and I have read studies on the influence of women in medicine. The basic conclusion is that after the male dominated culture makes allowances for women's differences (by not forcing them to act as males) that having women as doctors not only improves care for the women's patients, but when working in teams seems to make the male doctors better doctors as well. The difficulty is the initial effort to overcome the medical culture that has been created by men.
Basically being different doesn't mean better or worse on its own, but when different approaches work together you can get better results.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [odu.edu], an interesting introduction to exactly this field.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Unfortunately any study would be irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean it's just as easy to point out all the violence in the world, note that it's mostly male and say "they're not worthy of education because of what they'll do with it".
But a view like that would immediately become suspect because not all males are violent homicidal "freedom givers".
I've met quite a few ditsy stupid females in my life time. I've also met quite a few power-tripping idiot males [oh, wait they have an MBA!!!]. I've met some stupid black people and I've met some ignorant chinese people.
So what?
I've also met some very intelligent females who did well in courses like Calculus and Algebra. I've met generous and kind males. I've met some very welcoming black folk and I've met a few chinese that I get along with just fine.
All this "president" did was show that even the supposedly well enlightened can be biggots.
I mean I'm sure there are physical conditions that pre-disposes someone to be good at math/science. I just don't think they're gender specific. I think more than anything social pressure is the culprit for any "lacking in numbers" the females might have. I also think they bring it on themselves.
From what I saw while at college, if you come to class with makeup on I can't help but not take you seriously. Sorry, thems the breaks. And no guy and their biggoted ways made them dress in tight shirts, wear makeup and drop the math courses. They did that because it was the popular thing todo.
But to suggest that it's gender specific is really lame and very 1950s'ish.
Tom
Re:Doesn't this guy say nearly the same thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would say that our study of math is, in many ways, just a expression of this male-ness. We wish to explain everything in terms of equations and systems because they are usually predictable with great numerical accuracy (say with electric charges, we can easily predict the force between different charges, even if we don't quite understand totally how and why electric fields function) and are typically repeatable with similar results (definition of experiment anyone?).
The human brain may be a system, but understanding some parts of this system is simply not innate (it can be taught though). At the same time, weakness in math by girls may simply be that the entire system was derived and devised by men, with that type of thinking involved. I must say that, while I am fairly good at math (male), there are plenty girls in my engineering classes that are much better at math then I am. however, if you looked at any of my high school classes, only 1 (out of 20 or so) girls were better at math then I. It all depends on your sample really.
Medevo
Re:Book recommendation (Score:3, Insightful)
So, it is okay for her to say that males are - on average - better at engineering due to evolution, as long as she qualifies that by saying that women are better at what counts?
The real problem is that people are so sensistive now you can't even hint that men and women are different, unless you qualify it by saying that women are equal or better. Different is different, good or bad, and until there is real, peer-reviewed studies showing how they are different people will continue this discussion about pre-historical gender roles, nature vs. nuture, and extreme example (my brother sucks at math but my mom was an engineering god!).
People, on average, have become too sensitive.
problem is in the phrasing (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:PC == Keep your mouth shut?? (Score:3, Insightful)
I imagine such a study would be looking at differences rather than 'limits'. Why prejudice the research with politicised terminology?
One reason to perform such research might be to examine whether politically enforced 'balance' in enrollment stats is based on a realistic understanding of human nature.
Consideration of these issues does not automatically make one a closet fascist.
Re:PC == Keep your mouth shut?? (Score:1, Insightful)
What reasons could you have for running a huge study on the predisposition to genetically-related disease, other than to exclude groups from insurance? Oh, wait, because identifying a problem is the first step to trying to solve it.
Men and women have different life expectancies, but if science were to pretend these did not exists we would never find the reason for them. The same with mental differences.
Frankly, if we can help future boys to be better at English (or go through school without being drugged into submission) and girls get better at math because of the results of such a study, I think a little bit of politically-incorrect thinking is a small price to pay -- and if the difference is because of socializing rather than genetics, that is an important result as well.
Re:substantiation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
The light of scientific inquiry has incidentally been shining on this problem for quite a few years now. There's a wealth of research out there on these topics, and I am sure his contribution would be very welcome, if he had in fact made one; sadly, all he has succeeded in doing is
a) stuffing his foot in his mouth, and
b) elegantly demonstrating the fact that he hasn't actually read any of it.
Re:Stupid phrasing of the obvious (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:PC == Keep your mouth shut?? (Score:3, Insightful)
What reason could you have for running a huge study on the intellectual limits of one sex or another, or one race or another, but to use that information to exclude that race or sex on the basis of their supposed lack of ability?
Oh I don't know, what about for the purposes of actually furthering human knowledge and science? What, you think we should just completely ignore the subject and push it under a rug, since someone might be offended by the results.
Only some sex differences are "negative" to women (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:PC == Keep your mouth shut?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, your explanation is totally implausible. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that women on average perform worse than men on standardized math exams. What kind of a bigot are you that you make the jump from that to "ok, now we should exclude all women from mathematically intense fields and courses of study"? Even if women on average do not perform as well as men in math, that does not mean that all women should be excluded from math, whatever it means to be excluded from math.
Certainly there are many, many women who are better at math than the average man. While someone like me is above average at math, my wife is certainly better than me at math. She is a business analyst, and there is no way I could step into her shoes at her position. Why do you think that studying the human brain means we should exclude my wife from her job that she does very well? It makes no sense.
We study to gain knowledge. Perhaps as a part of this study there is a breakthrough that leads to the discovery of a cure for Alzheimer's or Parkinson's or something. We don't know what studies will show. But to not study something for PC reasons is ignorant. I hope they soon figure out why some people are scared of knowledge. Better yet, I hope they figure out why men can't ask for directions. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent driving around and around, too proud to stop and ask for help.
Herrnstein's Bell Curve (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Today's Progressive Views (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This is not what he said (Score:5, Insightful)
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.Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Any study that purports to measure "innate" male/female differences must find a way to account for the massive and well-known social bias against women. Any study must realize that the social effect may be larger than the innate effect.
Whatever natural differences between men and women exist, we all share one thing in common: we are learning animals, the greatest learners on earth, and there is no "nature" argument that can ignore the massive effect of "nurture". Claiming "capability to learn math" as an innate difference has already pointed out that math is learned. Have any of these people "showing good studies" (I'd like to see them) studied what happens when you give women additional support and schooling in math, maybe tailored to whatever their needs are? Is this supposed difference insurmountable, or can it be overcome with nurture? Funny, nobody ever seems to want to find that out.
All of which is just a prelude to my real point, regarding "You can't say that." Which is that nobody ever just says "women have less mathematical aptitude". Nobody ever says "women have less innate ability at math, so let's give them additional tutoring to help and maybe we can cover the disparity". No. It's always "women suck at [X] so it's okay that we don't admit/hire/promote/assist as many, and let's not try to give them a boost because it would be a waste of time". In other words, the statement is always used as a way to justify discrimination against women -- discrimination that existed long before any possible proof of the statement itself.
So when people just assume that "women suck at math" is a sexist statement, it's because every single time I've ever heard it uttered it has been.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Dismiss Harvard president for intellectual idiocy! (Score:3, Insightful)
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.)
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
Hand Cranks stopped being used in the 1930's [about.com]. Even then, they were no more difficult than a waterwell's crank that women have been using for centuries.
Even though maunal steering only went away in the last 20 years, it only becomes an issue if you are trying to move a car that isn't in motion. Some very weak people might had a hard time parallel parking, but not everyday driving and stopping.
Re:Unfortunately any study would be irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
Gender is a phyisical condition.
I just don't think they're gender specific. I think more than anything social pressure is the culprit for any "lacking in numbers" the females might have.
Prove it. What you've said is an unsubstantiated hypothesis and will not hold up in scientific circles. What happens if your studies *do* show an innate difference? Does that automatically make you sexist?
But to suggest that it's gender specific is really lame and very 1950s'ish.
Why? There are *many* differences between men and women. And so what? It doesn't mean that women can't do math, it just says that they are not genetically apt to be good at it because of their gender.
This negative disposition is probably small and can be offset by other genetic factors. It's not suggesting women can't be good at math, but another attempt to help explain why the math/science field isn't 50/50. If the facts are there but you ignore them because it's not popular, who wins? Surely not science, and not women.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, because having a political opinion is as much an inborn, immutable trait as is the color of your skin or the number of Y chromosomes you have. Sure.
The reason that nearly no women probably went for the jobs in the first place is because of this guy.
You've obviously never been in a position to apply seriously for an academic position at an elite university. Who the president is and what his views on your gender are does not top things like the prestige and resources of the place. And besides, when applying, you know that they can't be too overtly recist/sexist or there will be trouble. No, those positions have literally hundreds of applicants of both genders; most of whom are fully qualified for the job. 4/32 is pretty obviously problematic.
Re:Unfortunately any study would be irrelevant. (Score:4, Insightful)
- Muscular strength (advantage males)
- Dexterity (advantage females)
- Constitution (advantage females)
- Spatial analysis (advantage males)
- Multitasking (advantage females)
- Lifespan (advantage females)
These are all measurable.
Somehow, though, when you venture into mental measures, no one wants to touch that with a 10-foot pole because it might offend someone. I'd have no problem if someone told me that I, as a male, has the propensity to be stupid in economics. So what, it doesn't take anything away from me (I know I'm already stupid in economics). Even if someone told me that, as a male, I had the propensity to be stupid in something that I'm actually good at. That's the bit about statistics... You can't use a single example and assume that it is the norm, no matter which side of the statistic it falls on (the sample size is too small).
Just like on
I wouldn't be surprised (or offended) if some group actually did prove that women have the propensity to be 'smarter' at some things than men and men 'smarter' than women at other things. Men and women aren't the same no matter how hard you try to make them the same. We can have the same rights, the same ambitions, the same ideals, but there is nothing wrong with being different and/or having the propensity to be more enabled to do one thing or another than the opposite gender.
If, in fact, someone shows measureable differences between genders at some things, my advice would be do embrace the differences instead of denying them. Explore yourself to see if you follow the norm or are an exception.
Such research could be used as a good starting place for you to explore yourself to see where your own strong areas are and exploit your strengths in life.
Now, if you get into the area where laws and/or mandates based on these propensities are passed, then that is a different story (however, there are many biased laws based on gender already).
Re:Women bad at maths.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, remember that "driving a car" also implies maintenance such as changing a flat tire. And realize that tires of the period were unreliable by today's standards. Changing tires was a much more common activity than today. Think about the effort required to jack up the car. (Admittedly, not much, with the proper jack. But all jacks are not created equal, and the one in my car sucks.) Then think about lifting and moving tires. Then think about tightening the lugnuts so the tire doesn't come off on the road. (Another item I sometimes have trouble with.)
Frustration Galore - little ranty (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
But not if you get in the way of the rights groups. Then you must keep your mouth shut. Making people feel good about themselves is much better than inquiry.
And, I pretty much ignore most gender/race science discoveries. They are bad science for the most part, with researchers bubbleing with good intentions, working towards a certain conclusion that they want. While I think those who find opposite from the groupthink perfer to remain quiet.
Please not, I'm not racist/sexist. I just think that there is some truth in the fact that we are all diverse, and that certain groups might have propencities towards certain aptitudes. But thats to the flexible nature of humans, it might take more work, but we all can be equal, even if we aren't by default.
In my experience, I've informally noticed that women don't seem as good at logical arguments as men, resorting to emotive statements instead of logical proofs. "I just feel that way!". One of my best freinds was really guilty of this. But over the years she took many philosophy and math classes, and now can pretty much kick my ass in the logic department. The fact is, Americans don't want to work to be equal, we just want to be by default.
Breath deeply (Score:3, Insightful)
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.Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Making such a statement assumes that the current teaching methods are perfect for both sexes. It also assumes that we have perfect knowledge about the inner workings of the human brain. If men are better than women at math, which hormones cause improved math skill?
Standardized testing only proves that women currrently taught in the U.S. educational system tend to be poor at math compared to men. What factors cause this is unknown.
Re:substantiation (Score:3, Insightful)
Now why is it that in the US many women aren't excelling in math and science, where as in the rest of the world they are? I certainly don't think this points to a inherent lack of genetic quality in US born women. I think it is men like the president of Harvard who try to push their views on women from a young age in the country. That, and American women who want to believe that they didn't succeed because they can't rather than because they were unwilling to try.
Re:Today's Progressive Views (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Frustration Galore - little ranty (Score:3, Insightful)
I read one bit about the racial IQ argument that I liked, and it applies to the gender vs mathematics ability argument: It's all about bell curves. If men are on average better at math than women, you still know nothing about the potential of any given individual, especially as the bell curves for both groups aren't that far apart.
I don't have a problem with the standard line that women are wired for complex social networking and nurturing whereas guys are wired for aggression... and that the wiring involved happens to grant men greater aptitude for math. The human brain is a pretty flexible thing, and certainly there are plenty of examples on either side of the gender line that show exceptions to the rule aren't particularly rare.
If someone wants to do actual research on the subject, that's fine - it's up to the rest of us to make sure that research isn't used as a justification for returning women to a second class status. It's NOT a good reason to quash all attempts to look into the theory.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's say this construction compay hires people based solely on an upper body strength test. And that whiles 80% of men who apply are hired, only 30% of women are. Is this sexist discrimination, do the different numbers simply reflect the fact that men tend to have bigger muscles?
Now, it is far from proven that men are on average better than women at mathematical thinking. But it is equally unproven that the sexes are equal in their mathematical aptitude.
If it is the case that men have some statistical edge in mathematical aptitude, then perhaps we should be striving not for a 50/50 ratio in academic departments but rather for 65/35 or some other number.
It has been social science dogma since the 1960's that all gender differences are socially constructed. This notion was based not on observation but rather on philosophical ideals. The evidence refuting this postulate is substantial: my favorite can be found at this link:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-12/ta
Regression (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a woman and innately different. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Precisely. It sometimes astonishes me how few people seem to understand this.
I think it is extremely difficult to decouple social and genetic gender factors when doing any such study, because proper control groups don't exist.
I mean, say you're studying the behaviour of small children, which is probably a good start. You can't treat children like laboratory mice. You can't completely control the environment in which those children are brought up, or ensure that they are in fact treated in exactly the same way regardless of gender. So you can't state with a high degree of accuracy that little boys or girls are showing a particular trend because they are genetically predisposed to develop that way. The parents could be horribly contaminating your experiment at home.
Many parents seem to believe that buying your daughter a toy truck = a gender-neutral upbringing. Yet parents often treat their male and female children differently without realising it, because their behaviour is governed by assumptions so deep-seated that they are invisible.
The most effective way to conduct studies like this would probably be to find as many parents as possible who break social stereotypes (and thus may be less likely to pass social stereotypes to their children), and compare children brought up in such environments to children brought up in more "traditional" homes.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Politics gets in the way of science. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Who says that a degree in IT is a prerequesite for working in the field? Just because you see men in the college courses doesn't mean that these are the people who will be staffing your helpdesk, your operations center, etc.
There are other skills required to work in the "IT field" that aren't taught in any school, which many of those men in "top-level classes" never acquire.
I'd love to see these companies where females are 35-50% of the IT workforce -- maybe in a call center... I've generally been the only female on my team, and one of a handful in the larger group. In the last 5 years, I've been the only female on the team everywhere I've worked. This is California (Northern & Southern CA) and Colorado, and for large companies as well as small.
"Appearing" to care about diversity should never come before hiring the best person for the job. True diversity in the workplace comes from hiring the best people you can find, whether they be black, white, asian, hispanic, male or female, gay or straight.
Re:Today's Progressive Views (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Today's Progressive Views (Score:2, Insightful)
Agree (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Lack of rational thinking (Score:3, Insightful)
Agree with you. What the speaker said might be true and if true would mean that men are predisposed to doing better at math. He didn't say that there is no woman out there that can be good at math and all women might as well learn how to cook instead. Now that would have been a derogatory statement.
With diligence and work anyone male or female can excel at math. As you said there are physical differences and that cannot be ignored, it's not only a matter of having or not a penis but also having different concentrations of hormones and having a different brain wiring, that translate directly into having different predispositions.
At the risk of opening another can of worms (actually bait), it is interesting how this relates to the issue of homesexuality. Here the people from the same liberal and feminist camp will argue that homosexuality is innate, that people are biologically hard-wired one way or another. So they will claim that even individuals of the same gender, same race, can have such a inborn physical difference that makes them have different sexual orientation, while they cannot accept that very much more obvious physical and biological differences between males and females might pre-dispose each of them for doing better at various tasks. I am not saying whether one or another is the case, but just pointing out the inconsistency.
Re:Today's Progressive Views (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Stupid phrasing of the obvious (Score:3, Insightful)
At the end of the day, I'm not sure what this kinda stuff buys us anyway. There are obviously women who ARE highly capable at math/science/engineering/etc. There are obviously men who are good at multitasking (I'm one of them, IMHO). I'm not sure why we're even interested in establishing whether one gender is better - for any reason - than the other, as a group. You still can't judge any individual man or woman by such data - no matter how thoroughly researched it is. It's like SAT scores - they speak about the GROUP, not the individual.
Xentax
Re:I am a woman and innately different. (Score:5, Insightful)
I am very happy with my decision to not have children, I'm very happy to be pursing a career and an advanced degree in engineering, and I'm sick and tired of being disparged by everyone about it. I am happy that women in previous generations fought for my right to be given the chance to attend university if I am deemed a worthy candidate on my own merit. I truly hope that your post is meant tongue-in-cheek and sarcastically, but unfortunately I've heard those exactly words spoken to me in complete seriousness far too many times to be able to tell anymore.
Politicized pseudoscience (Score:0, Insightful)
Well, there's your answer.
Your lab is full of empty-headed hairy-legged earth mothers who want to "save the world", torturing the data for artifacts of statistical noise that can be used for further scaremongering and grant chasing.
I don't know the details of your operation, but I can guess. Politicized pseudoscience, a few drops of fact in an ocean of speculation, with an anthropocentric view of Nature more in keeping with a medieval churchman than a modern scientist.
And the north is different? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:And the north is different? (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? Women teachers aren't allowed to date? Or do you mean "with one of her students"?
If not, I'm sure that'd be an easy lawsuit to win.
Re:I am a woman and innately different. (Score:4, Insightful)
Women who are educated simply shouldn't have children at all. All children can be raised by poor people instead. This way, the children will grow up in ghettos, not get an education, get involved in crime and drugs, and wind up in jail or dead. In 50 years or so, society will collapse due to the enormous cost of the penal system and the lack of young people who aren't a drain on the system, so your whole dilemma will be moot as society will no longer exist.
Re:Is it really a mystery? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Different but equal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like more of a "dad" problem than a "mom" problem.
Re-read your post and imagine that there were fathers who could step up and do *their* jobs.
Re:I am a woman and innately different. (Score:2, Insightful)
Exactly, what do "we" gain by having a more egalitarian society? And who's "we", Kimosabe? I don't remember granting anyone permission to speak on behalf of my interests.
I just love you for-the-good-of-society types who apparently define society as "everyone but you".
The problem is markets. Markets have two roles, buyer and seller. They force people to think only in terms of what they, as individuals, will gain, rather than the greater social effects of a decision. While Universities may not participate in markets directly, they are still impacted by market pressures, and as a result end up having to think about the bottom line, despite their institutional inclination to think about wider ramifications. This is a problem, because the bottom line for an individual is NOT the same as the bottom line for society.
You seem to be able to ignore the fact that your beloved "society" is merely an aggregate of individuals. So when a aggregate of individuals though mechanisms such as markets expresses their preferences, then "society" has made a made a value judgement concerning what it considers to be it's bottom line. What makes your judgement about what's "good for society" better than their's?
Re:Give it a rest (Score:4, Insightful)
People, both male and female, should cut the crap and just act like engineers, chemists, biologists... like PROFESSIONALS.
There are differences...and that is a good thing. (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Slashdot comments and facts (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously, for making such a big ado about "facts," you sure have a bad habit of plainly asserting things to support your argument without ever referencing or sourcing where those "facts" came from.
I think it has been long established that unless other factors play into it, women are driven by different drives than men.
This really isn't saying much at all. When do you have a situation without "other factors?" What are these "factors"? What drives are women driven by and what are men driven by? Can you cite any studies that demonstrate any of these things?
I don't pretend to understand whether it's a cultural matter or a genetic one, but there are a variety of biological reasons for women to be less capable of maintaining abilities in math and logic (which are devoid of emotion).
It seems by saying they're "biological reasons" then you are pretending to understand it as a genetic matter. Last time I checked, your culture didn't influence your biology. And again, no studies, nothing but assertions. And what does math and logic being "devoid of emotion" have to do with it? You seem to have a very shallow understanding of the issues at hand, along side your absolute lack of backing up your "facts."
Now I have seen other studies among toddlers showing that on the large, boys are more successful at getting around obstacles (read as stubborn if it helps you to think so) than the girls who were prone to simply giving up in frustration
Ah! Mentioning some studies without actually citing them isn't much better than asserting things planly. There's a lot of details that need to be evaluated to determine whether a "study" really is demonstrating what it's trying to demonstrate. Just assuming that "a study said it, therefore it's a fact" is quite bad.
The notion is that as a toddler, there is less chance of a child being tainted by learned roles and behavior although there will still be some of that.
Do you have ANYTHING to base this assertion on? Toddlers have learned a hell of a lot by the time they're toddlers.
But frankly, I am a little annoyed when studies are criticised for reasons that have little to nothing to do with evidence to the contrary and more about a conflict of opinion or ideals.
Well that is a good reason to be annoyed, but it's quite off-topic. The harvard guy in question didn't have any "studies" to back up what he was saying. He was just spouting off, quite like you're doing. In fact, your whole post is either off-topic or horribly disingenuous, unless you really mean to characterize Summers's comments as the "facts," or being supported by the "facts." Alas, you don't mention this at all.
We don't want to hear that men and women are not equals -- that would mean all sorts of problems in our future because after all, look how far we've come by legislating that women are equal to men:
This is probably the most ignorant part of your entire little diatribe. The law is supposed to treat all individuals as equal, under the law! . Are you suggesting that we legislate that women and men are unequal?
We have an unprecedented number of single-parent families and all of the dysfunctional children that accompany those numbers. We have an unprecedented divorce rate that never stops climbing. (Studies have shown that 80% of all marriages start where men ask the women, but it is in the 90% range where women initiate divorce.) Women in the workplace are supposed to be equal but statistically, they spend less time at work than men do for the same job.
Several more assertions without citations. I'm sure you've heard the phrase "lies, damned lies and statistics." Statistics (or even worse, superlatives based on figments of statistics that may exist somewhere) without a source are not only useless, but dangerous.
Before women start
Re:I am a woman and innately different. (Score:1, Insightful)
Why should the employer be the one to pay? Does he get to play with the kids? Does he get to have an opinion on how the kids should be raised? No? Then don't ask him to FUCKING PAY FOR YOUR LIFE STYLE CHOICE. Jesus christ.
It's not up to society to "cope", it's up to YOU. Need an income while you're raising a kid? Then get a man. Or if you're a lesbian, get a woman. Get someone to help support you. Or save a bunch of money. If these aren't options, then you CAN'T AFFORD TO HAVE A BABY. Yes, babies cost money. If you didn't structure your life properly to have one, then sorry, you're shit out of luck. I'm sorry, that's life. Don't blame me. Don't blame employers. They didn't make the rules.
Oh, maybe the problem is that you can't have a career and raise a baby. Guess what? There's a lot of things you can't do at the same time. You can't have a career full time and go to school full time. That's how our universe works. You can only be in one place at a time. But we're supposed to pretend like somehow a woman invested just as much time in her career when we know she took time off to raise a kid? You know what, I don't want the company I work for to play pretend. I want it to make fucking money and be productive.
Could society make it easier for you? Sure. But is it our duty to? HELL NO. We don't owe you anything. At all. It's not like the world doesn't have enough children. You're not doing this for us, you're doing it for yourself. And there's nothing wrong with doing something for yousrelf. BUT DON'T ASK OTHERS TO ACCOMMODATE YOU. Please. I'm so sick of it. I do have empathy for working mothers, I really do. But it my sympathy shuts down COMPLETELY when people start telling me I owe them something. Fuck that.
the grass is greener (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Give it a rest (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually I take my work and do it like a person. I don't know that 'coding like a man' would imply, really.
One thing that occurred to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Today's Progressive Views (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Discouragement is the issue. Re:How to do pullups (Score:2, Insightful)
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?).
My seven year old daughter disagrees (Score:2, Insightful)
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?
Re:How to do pullups (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Breaking new ground (Score:3, Insightful)
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.