You've probably heard that Harvard President Larry Summers made remarks about women in scientific academic positions that caused an uproar about a month ago. He seemed to say that innate differences between the sexes may account for some of the underrepresentation of women in such positions. This caused many to get pissed at him, and many to come to his defense saying why can't we just consider the question as a scientific matter? As a scientist myself, I frankly sided with the latter group based on characterizations of his remarks that I had read.
The trouble was, nobody knew exactly what he had said.
Now, he has rectified that, and released a full transcript of his remarks. I have to say, it all looks quite different when you read the whole thing. After the jump, I'll summarize his comments as best I can and add some thoughts...
Summers' remarks were of some length, but this is what I perceived to be his main points.
He said that the underrepresentation of women in science and engineering positions in academia boils down to three main factors, which are in this order:
- Commitment and job intensity. Top jobs demand total commitment of the employee, even expecting the employee to be thinking about the problems pertaining to his job even in his/her off hours. Men are more willing to make this total commitment; women are less willing due to family etc.
- Innate differences. His statistical arguments were ones I hadn't heard before, and I encourage you to read the whole speech if you want a full treatment. But briefly, he said not that men are on average more capable techinically, but there is a difference between the standard deviation between men and women; i.e., the tail is longer for men. Since academic jobs are searching for truly exceptional talent, the higher s.d. for men leads to more men at the top levels than women.
- Social factors and discrimination. It is often said that women are socially pushed in certain career directions, and men are encouraged in different directions. Summers downplays this, saying that even as little kids boys and girls seem to display different preferences even when raised to be equal, and he sites the experiences of kibbutzes as an example. He also discounts discrimination as an explanation, claiming that if all these highly qualified women and minorities were being passed over by discrimination, somewhere a university actively seeking them could put together a dynamite department of all women and/or minorities; yet this hasn't been observed.
So what to make of all this?
First of all, those who were defending him early on were saying that he's simply posing the question as to whether innate differences might explain things, and academics must be open to scientific inquiry. I was sympathetic to this argument, but it's not really what Summers said. He didn't just ask the question, he also answered it, and his answer is that more men than women have the exceptional talent demanded by, say, an MIT physics department. That's still debatable scientifically, but he didn't just pose the question.
Second, all his arguments ultimately dismiss pretty much any problem in hiring. He feels that discrimination plays next to no role. I find that unlikely.
Now he did later speak a bit as to what can be done, and said that universities could do more to support women with child care, etc., to make it easier to make the commitment, and that societal pressures should also change. But these remarks seemed rather weak after he had pretty much dismissed all charges of discrimination.
Ultimately, I have to say this: I think discrimination and societal pressures play a much larger role than Summers allows. I also think there may be merit to his other arguments, and that there may indeed be non-sinister factors that contribute in some measure to underrepresentation of women, and people should be open to seriously considering such possibilities. But we shouldn't pretend that that's the end of the story, and discrimination should be taken more seriously and opposed with more vigor than Summers seems to feel is warranted.