You've probably all heard about Harvard President Lawrence Summer's provocative statement that innate differences may help explain why women lag behind men in succeeding in math- and science-based careers. The NYT takes a closer look at the research:
Researchers who have explored the subject of sex differences from every conceivable angle and organ say that yes, there are a host of discrepancies between men and women - in their average scores on tests of quantitative skills, in their attitudes toward math and science, in the architecture of their brains, in the way they metabolize medications, including those that affect the brain.
Yet despite the desire for tidy and definitive answers to complex questions, researchers warn that the mere finding of a difference in form does not mean a difference in function or output inevitably follows...
To further complicate the portrait of cerebral diversity, new brain imaging studies from the University of California, Irvine, suggest that men and women with equal I.Q. scores use different proportions of their gray and white matter when solving problems like those on intelligence tests. Men, they said, appear to devote 6.5 times as much of their gray matter to intelligence-related tasks as do women, while women rely far more heavily on white matter to pull them through a ponder.
What such discrepancies may or may not mean is anyone's conjecture.
I have to admit, what I find fascinating about the whole thing is not so much the science behind it as the public reaction to any mention of this topic. Summers was essentially vilified for speaking about an area that has some solid research behind it. Meanwhile, we were treated to the spectacle of female audience members having to leave lest they "throw up" at his remarks, which doesn't exactly support the image of women being tough enough to handle intellectual debate.
I tend to agree with Linda Chavez on the topic:
...as uncomfortable as it might make feminists, the empirical evidence points to small but important differences in scientific and mathematical abilities between men and women.
On average, women perform better on verbal tests, while men demonstrate greater visual-spatial capabilities, and these differences are more striking at both the lower and upper extremes of intellectual ability. Boys outnumber girls in remedial reading classes — by large ratios, in most studies — but they are even likelier to outnumber girls among the most gifted in math and science. In one Johns Hopkins University study of gifted pre-adolescent students, boys outperformed girls among the top scoring students on math by 13-to-1.
One thing the media tends to downplay whenever discussions of intellectual ability arise is the fact that men tend to be further out on both tails of the intelligence spectrum. It's silly to complain about the "unfairness" of the relative proponderance of male geniuses when developmentally-delayed children are more likely to be males.
For example (from the NYT article):
Among college-bound seniors who took the math portion of the SAT in 2001, for example, nearly twice as many boys as girls scored over 700, and the ratio skews ever more male the closer one gets to 800, the top tally. Boys are also likelier than girls to get nearly all the answers wrong.
Something you don't often hear when people are whining about the "unfairness" SAT score disparities.
Back to Chavez:
For years, feminists have tried to explain away these achievement differences by suggesting girls are not encouraged properly to pursue math and science. Lately, some have even started blaming how these subjects are taught: too much emphasis on competition and being "right," too little on collaborative learning and nurturing self-esteem.
A strategy, by the way, that's guaranteed to get women who make it to the math programs laughed out of them. If there's one thing that any person, male or female, needs to succeed in the hard sciences, it's a burning desire to get things "right."
I do believe socialization can play a big part in the effort to guide more women towards math- and science-based careers; it's just that those "feminists" who believe in dumbing down the topics and focusing on "nurturing" are going about it all wrong. Any child, male or female, who is interested in science should be encouraged to be a tough, competitive, confident little know-it-all, and should be required to not only understand the importance of research but also to know how to use it to back up their claims.
When I was 4, my parents bought me the full set of the Encyclopedia Brittanica's Young Children's Encyclopedia - and encouraged me to be a total smartass with it. I still remember with glee the day I won a bet with my sister - who was then in high school - because I knew that a chicken's eyes were on the sides of its head, not the front.
Hey, it wasn't much, but it was a start. Without that encouragement, I daresay my career - and this blog - might not have ever gotten off the ground.
Posted by kswygert at January 24, 2005 10:24 AM