He never said that his example was proof, just an anecdote that leads him to believe that the subject needs to be researched more thoroughly.
As for myself, I believe that we spend too much time and money trying to justify stuff that doesn’t matter. I don’t care if a it’s a man or a woman that builds the bridge, just so long as it doesn’t collapse while I’m on it. Women do their things, men do theirs, and I think we should stop being such bitter, whiny twits about the whole thing.
It’s not outside his area of expertise. He’s an economist. He’s wondering why a certain job in society is not equally filled by men and women, and he’s looking at the root causes of it. That’s what economists do.
If someone thinks a “gender studies expert” or “gender anthropologist” has a better chance of getting to the bottom of this than a guy with economics degrees from MIT and Harvard, they’re crazy.
A couple more things.
Just because people were wrong about bio-determinism in the past doesn’t mean that it’s always wrong.
When it’s a fact that women have lower achievement in math & science, you need to start from the ground-up in these things, and not throw away any hypothesis.
My own personal experience. . .
From what I understand, women in the past may have been discouraged from Math & Science, but that doesn’t immediately explain why it’s a problem today. I was a mathematics undergraduate, and an applied mathematics graduate student. There are women’s mathematics awards, women’s mathematical scoieties, women in engineering advocacy groups, etc. etc. etc. If there is pressure against women going into higher mathematics, it was too subtle to show up on my radar. But, I know its not that simple.
So, while I’m willing to keep an open mind on the subject of innate gender differences, I will say this, I never thought there were innate differences at all. At all. Zero, nada, zilch, and if there were, to quote myself, it was too subtle to show up on my radar.
I’m pretty sure more women from my undergraduate class went to graduate school than men.
On the other hand, none of the women I entered graduate school with finished their Ph.D.s and I don’t know what to say about that. The women who pulled out seemed to do it for the same reasons as me. . .you get up around 28 or so and you start thinking about a family, kids, job, whatever. We all get to the point where that’s a choice you have to make. I wouldn’t doubt for a second that at that point there’s a lot more pressure to leave on the woman than there is on the man.
As far as any discernible gender differences in ability, I didn’t notice it all at any level in my education.
But he didn’t make any authoritative statement - he made a suggestion, inviting comment. That’s what this argument hinges on - he is not saying that innate differences are the cause, he says that they are a possible cause that should be studied. This is not a statement that requires evidence, since it is itself a call for evidence. In his own words:
Men have not entered into nursing (I am a nurse, female) d/t a variety of factors, most prevalent being the stereotype of all male nurses are homosexual, and/or they couldn’t “handle” med school or similiar “more rigorous” endeavors. The lack of men in childcare just might be d/t to the abysmal pay, low prestige and lack of respect given to that field–and yes, the fear of pedophilia is there, too.
I would think that the lack of male midwives (my father is an MD and a male midwife, among other things) is due to the lack of demand for such a thing.
Summer makes several mistakes in his assumptions. I am all for researching gender differences and how they impact on ability. But to speak carelessly, and with ignorance, a man in such a position, argues an insensibility that is frightening. His daughter’s play preferences are in not germane to the conference.
I am dismayed by the fact that women are not moving upward under his administration.
Argue from authority much?
And what, pray tell, does that mean?
Looking at academic testing and fields of choice in academia, I would be surprised if there weren’t racial differences in how people succeed. If there were testing showing that Latinos or African-Americans scored more poorly in mathematical or scientific types of thinking and analysis, would you all be willing to accept that there were therefore “innate differences”? Or would you be arguing that differences in opportunity, education, and cultural factors play the major role?
There are certainly (small) mental differences between various groups. I think study is fine and I don’t think by any means that we should censor these. However, an academic looking at his daughter and applying it to his point is just as irrelevant as any ‘personal experience’. Furthermore, excessively examining differences between the sexes and assuming factors about individuals from that study is sexist and ethically wrong. I am all for study that will help us understand differences in the brain and learning so that we can help all people have equal opportunity to succeed in every field. However, I am leery of people who are quick to point out “differences” when it would seem to limit the opportunities of certain groups.
ie. some “competitive” element which is more important to men than women? And what if I suggested that this difference might somehow be innate, arising from our evolutionary history?
Why should this impact be gender-imbalanced? Surely this would only explain why fewer educated people avoided this field?
Why is there a lack of demand for male midwives? Can they not be as competent as female mathematicians?
This study of studies I pointed to before is quite compelling:
One entire standard deviation is very difficult to argue with, statistically speaking.
No its not. In science, a one standard deviation difference isn’t that statistically significant. Two or three, yes, but one, not so much. Its evidence that at the 68.3% probability level there [i[may* be some difference in populations/values/whatever, but not complete and utter statistical proof.
Go look it up.
So, you think I was saying “believe me because I’m trained in such and such a field”?
I never implied such a thing. I’m not a behavioural scientist, or a gender studies scientist, I’m a physicist.
I’m arguing from my own experience. My own experience of going into schools, of teaching. I’m arguing from what others have seen. Fuck, I’m arguing from the experience of my female peers, who were good scientists, but who were put off going into scientific careers. I make no claims whatsoever about being an expert in this field. What I will claim to be, is someone who has experienced the societial pressures that put girls off doing science, and someone who is seeing those same societial pressures at play today, still putting girls off science.
I am not claiming to be an expert in this field, far from it. I am however, claiming that I have seen far too many good female scientists scared off the profession, and that that needs to be remedied.
Huh? If the findings are robust to the 90% or even 95% level of confidence, they are by definition significant. Whether one standard deviation matters very much differs among disciplines. I do not thing “significant” means what you think it means.
Fair enough, maybe I’m just imposing my discipline’s definition of “significant” onto another area of research. For that, I apologise.
Actually, I would be interested in finding out the ages of the study participants - I assume that they’re all adults.
This is just a WAG on my part, but many times I’ve heard that when young children learn they form more new neural connections than adults. Thus it’s much easier for a child under the age of 10 to learn a new language than it is for an adult to do so. And the child that learned a second language will have an easier time of it if they try to learn more languages when they are older.
Perhaps social differences in how children learn science and mathematics can lead to the results seen in the study. “The mind is a muscle” yadda yadda… so maybe boys that have learned from a young age that science is a good career and aren’t intimidated by it will grow up to be men who have better spatial reasoning with rotating objects.
Basically, I’m just saying that a study showing differences in spatial reasoning in adults doesn’t necessarily mean that the difference is genetic.
As I’m sure you know, it depends on the sample size. If I guess 52% of coin-tosses correctly for 100 throws, it’s not significant at 1% (or 5%, depending on what level of rigour you’re working at). If I do it for 10,000 throws it most certainkly is. I would be very surprised if the peer-reviewed research said there was a significant sex difference in “pure” spatial tests if the sample size didn’t back it up.
13 year olds, I believe, although I believe similar tests show differences even in very young children which surely cannot be down to ‘society’?
I’ve always found this kind of discussion interesting, because it’s at the same time so incredibly basic and insulting and important to so many people, and yet at the same time, it really doesn’t matter.
I mean, suppose, hypothetically, we came up with some study that proved BEYOND ALL DOUBT that women were 5% “worse” at math and science. So? Does that mean that we should discourage women from being mathematicians and scientists? Would that mean that we would retroactively de-publish every paper that Angua has written? What actual practical impact would it have?
I mean, only some very small percentage of the smartest people actually end up being mathematicians or scientists, and some proportion of them are women, and if that proportion is 30% (or, for that matter, 70%) instead of 50%, so?
As long as no one even THINKS of saying something like “women can NOT be scientists” or “women are NEVER good at math” or “we should not ALLOW women to take upper level math classes because they WILL FAIL”, then who cares?
Angua is good enough at science to be a good astrophysicist. Which means, on the scale of things, she’s in the top (very small) percentile of all people at astrophysics. Who cares whether she’s in the top (even smaller) percentile of women at astrophyics or not?
My personal view, based on no specific evidence but just my own experience and readings, is that:
a) there are real differences, physically and mentally, between the average man and the average woman (although many of them are not terribly significant)
b) the statement in a) above has no bearing on the actual abilities of any individual of either sex
c) gender-based social pressures and constraints usually have far more impact on individuals than a) or b)
Sorry, this statement really bothers me in its absolute certainty that an unpleasant idea cannot be true due to its unpleasantness. There might be an innate difference, however un-PC it may be. Boys may have a slightly better innate capacity ON AVERAGE for math and science. Or girls might. Girls may have a slightly better innate capacity ON AVERAGE for languages. Or boys might. Either way, there’s no reason to get all dismissive about it. And to Angua, even if boys were 3% better on average by some rubric, then there will certainly be many girls who are better than most boys; heck, the #1 scientific mind in the world could still easily be a girl given such a difference.
In any case, it has not been proven conclusively true in either direction, but the research to this point (pointed to by SentientMeat) suggests there are some innate differences.
Big whoop. Let the research continue, and let’s not jump on the poor Harvard president for making reasonable conjectures. Heck, the research might even show that girls have an innate advantage for more things than boys.
I am merely commenting on the speed of which a reactionary in any are will lose reading comprehension. Nobody is saying anybody is intellectually inferior or stupid, only suggesting that there are differences in how men and women think and what their strengths are. The reactionay, however, is blind to reason, and jumps in screaming about how they are being called inferior, when that is clearly not the case. I personally don’t know, or care on way or the other. I am only making a commentary on how quickly the thin skinned PC police once again lose all reading comprehension skills. That is what is typical.
As for this little gem:
Now correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn’t this topic be IN this guys field of expertise? He does have his PhD in social science, no? More cherry picking for the reactionaries? It is ok to gloss over facts when one is filled with righteous idignation?
FWIW my sister is nearly done with her PhD in Virology, and excels in both math and science. She is very much my intellectual better in those areas. Of course there will be those better than her, both males and females, and I while I doubt she will ever be the next Gould of her field, she certainly will do good.
Anyhow, my little anectdote.