By now everyone's heard about the remarks Harvard president Lawrence Summers made re: the dearth of women in math and science careers. If by some chance you haven't, here is
a good news report on the controversy.
[Update: Daily Kos won't let me include the grafs I'd intended to put in here - they exceed the limit of 1150 characters. Says I "didn't read the rules" and didn't "use the extended entry." Wrong on both counts, but anyway, see the extended entry for the context for the next sentence.]
Obviously, it was his second and third "points" that created the brouhaha. But what about the first?
In his talk Friday at a conference on women and minorities in science and engineering, held at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Summers listed three possible explanations for the small number of women who excel at elite levels of science and engineering. He said he was deliberately being provocative, as he was asked to do by the organizers, and relying on the scholarship that was assembled for the conference rather than offering his own conclusions.
His first point was that women with children are often unwilling or unable to work 80-hour weeks. His second point was that in math and science tests, more males earn the very top scores, as well as the very bottom scores. He said that while no one knew why, "research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people attributed to socialization" might actually have a biological basis -- and that the issue needed to be studied further.
Several participants said that in making his second point, Summers suggested that women might not have the same "innate ability" or "natural ability" as men.
Summers' third point was about discrimination, and he said it was not clear that discrimination played a significant role in the shortage of women teaching science and engineering at top universities. However, he concluded by emphasizing that Harvard was taking many steps to boost diversity.
It's certainly true that women with children are understandably reluctant to work "80-hour weeks." But is it really true that men with children are often able and willing to do so?
Think about what an 80-hour week means in practice. 12 hours, 6 days a week, plus 8 hours on the seventh. Add to that at least another couple of hours per day for meal breaks and commuting time, and the only time you'll even see your kids is on Sunday mornings!
So I suspect the problem is less that men are better able or more willing to work such an insane schedule, and more that society is more willing to excuse a man than a woman for doing so, so they're more likely to give in to relentless pressure from the university.
Which brings us to the main point: What business does a university (or any employer, for that matter) have expecting its employees to work 80-hour weeks to be successful?? And why did Larry Summers just throw that into the discussion, as if it were a completely natural expectation?
After all, there's a word for workplaces like that, and it isn't "university." Need a hint? It's one of the few words Nike won't put on your sneakers for you.
Yeah. That word. Sweatshop!
If Larry Summers were really serious about "boosting diversity," he'd start by eliminating the sweatshops at Harvard's science and math departments.
OK, enough about Harvard's labor practices. Is there anything more to be said about the "controversial" parts?
Perhaps. First, I'll concede that his second point was distorted a bit in media reports. He didn't claim that men were better at science and math, on average; he claimed that there may be more variability in men's science and math skills than in women's.
If so, the best and brightest, as well as the dumbest and dimmest, would be mostly men. Since a university science department hopefully consists of mostly the best and brightest, this could account, partially, for the shortage of women in these departments.
But is it true? The evidence for such a belief is pretty thin. The only thing that comes to mind is a study conducted a couple of decades ago, in which boys and girls were tested on their math knowledge.
I'm doing this from memory, so I may not have all the details right. But as I recall, they tested boys and girls who were entering the sixth grade, in order to test whether "differential course-taking" accounted for differences in math achievement. Since they found differences in math knowledge at the sixth-grade level, before students are generally allowed to choose their own courses, they concluded that differential course-taking and discrimination were not the only factors influencing sex differences in math achievement.
But importantly, the study doesn't prove that those factors had no effect at all! It couldn't - it wasn't designed to do that. But a bunch of sexists misread this study as "proving" exactly that, when it did no such thing.
Also, the study couldn't evaluate the "socialization" hypothesis - that from very early ages, girls are discouraged more often from showing interest in math and science, while boys are pushed harder to succeed in these fields. Yet the sexists claimed that this study showed the differences to be innate.
Needless to say, it was the "sexist interpretation" of this study that was trumpeted in the SCLM, not the much more limited conclusions of the actual study.
I'm not aware of any later studies, but it looks like the only thing we've learned is that the differences are in variability, not average ability. We still don't know whether they are innate, the result of socialization, some combination of the two, or something else entirely.
Methinks Larry Summers was unduly influenced by the SCLM, and unthinkingly regurgitated their conclusions the other day, rather than sticking to what the evidence shows.
As for discrimination, I wish some of the researchers Summers was, er, "summerizing" had made a greater effort to talk to the women in math and science departments. If they had, I doubt they'd have dismissed the significance of discrimination so readily.
Of course, "horror stories" are a form of anecdotal evidence, which is weaker than other evidence. But it shouldn't be ignored completely! Besides, even if there'd still be a gender imbalance without discrimination, the fact that there's an imbalance in the first place will foster discrimination, which will, over time, worsen the imbalance!
Unfortunately, that seems to be human nature. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be fought against!
One of the most pernicious effects of these sorts of discussions is the way they make discrimination acceptable. After all, if we can show there would be a gender imbalance even without discrimination, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that things would inevitably be pretty much the same as they are now. So why even bother trying to improve?
In the real world, words have consequences. You would expect a President - of a university or of the United States - to be mindful of this.