(no subject)

[confuseacat]

There was an interview in the times (try bugmenot if you don't want to create an account) the other day with a history professor from Harvard. Here's a quote:

"Q. Were you sorry to see Harvard's outgoing president, Lawrence Summers, attacked for saying that men and women may have different mental capacities?

A. He was taking seriously the notion that women, innately, have less capacity than men at the highest level of science. I think it's probably true. It's common sense if you just look at who the top scientists are."

The whole interview reads this way and makes you wonder how exactly he made it into Harvard. He's a bigger idiot than Summers.

Comments

[the-olive.livejournal.com]

Yeah, because getting to the top maps perfectly with having the innate aptitude to get to the top! And academic potential totally overwhelms any vestige of gender socialization! Totally!

[workingproject.livejournal.com]

Friendly reminder:

Men have a wider spread of intelligence. Both sexes have the save average IQ. There are, however, more extremely stupid men than extremely stupid women and more extremely intelligent men than extremely intelligent women. Whether you place the "blame" on biology or society, those are the facts.

Bearing this in mind, please qualify your statement that this history professor is an idiot, and also your implication that Summers is an idiot (in anything besides the public relations area) as well.

[confuseacat.livejournal.com]

I actually hadn't heard of that information and would be very interested to know where it came from. It's not that I don't believe it, as it's not too surprising. There are meta-analyses I hold in high regard which show men have, on average, higher math abilities than women, for example.

The problem is that we're a society that's obsessed with gender differences. When we see results from studies that show a difference, we apply those results to explain fully the current position of men and women without first seeing if that's fair. The math differences found in studies could possibly explain why only 45% of mathematicians are female. A lower percentage than that would have to come from other sources, like gender socialization. I imagine the research you mention on the spread of intelligence is similar. It could probably explain a small difference between the genders of the top people in science, but I would guess that it's invalid to apply that research to explain the vast majority of differences we see. Again, it would be interesting to read these studies if you know where they came from.

The question of whether the blame is placed on biology or society is extremely important, and this is why I think Summers and this history professors are both idiots. They're making the claim that the male/female ratios we see today are due to innate differences. There's a huge body of research that shows this isn't true. They just didn't know of that research. I wouldn't have had a problem with someone like Summers presenting an innate difference theory in an academic setting and suggesting it be tested (as he did) so long as this hadn't already been proposed and tested many, many, times already. He's an idiot for not knowing the existing research (which he apologized for later.) But he's a far greater idiot for perpetuating the very real and damaging stereotype that women can't achieve as much as men because they lack something innate.

[workingproject.livejournal.com]

I don't know of the studies the information came from, but I can find the link to the Associated Press article if you'd like.

Frankly, I don't see any problem. If a woman is exceptionally skilled at math and isn't accepted into a position at one institution because she's a woman, that institution is worse off for not having accepted her--another institution undoubtedly will accept her and be better off for it. If you think that society is guilty of breaking the woman's spirit, that's her fault. If she wants to be successful, she has to fight for it like the rest of us. The world is not a nice place and has no reason to be. We didn't get to be the top species by being warm and cuddly. We got to it by killing the things that were competing against us.

Summers and this history professor are probably not idiots. I suspect, rather, that they're extremely intelligent. They're just not skilled in the field. They are, respectively, an economist and history professor. Summers has the obligation to deal with topics outside his field of expertise because he's the president of a major university, and the history professor was defending his boss's good name.

[the-olive.livejournal.com]

Unadulterated faith in The Market is so delicious.