Am I the only one that's boggled at the anti-woman slant of most of the comments on this thread? I didn't realize that most of TnT believes that women are inherently inferior to men.
Thalia
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Re: Well hell...
Thu Sep 21, 2006 at 12:20:19 PM EST
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Thalia, I don't believe it is negative to point out difference of the sexes. Women are great at a lot fo things, and not so great at others. Same with men. People who think Men and Women are the same are denying reality. Some things peopel do not want to cede in the debate, because to do so could lead to the wrong results.
I will definitely concede that there is way too much sexism, and too many barriers for qualified intelligent women to advance in the sciences and other areas. But I also can agree that there are inate differences in the sexes and the way they think that favors one sex over the other in certain fields as well. It isn't all about smarts either. Some people are very suited for certain fields. Some people have great organized thinking, others are more creative and imaginitive, and still others are problem solvers, some good with numbers, some good at articulating thoughts.
Existence is no guaranteed level playing field. It isn't fair. But there are special needs people not born with all the tools to succeed. There are some who do not have teh proper social structure to blossom. And gender plays a role in how well we develop and HOW we develop in certain areas. That is not anti-woman. Heck, I love women. If it wasn't for a woman, I never would have been born. I want to see women develop and succeed in their lives and careers. But I say that knowing that some women choose career paths that are more difficult and perhaps not teh best career path they are suited for. (Men too. There are a LOT of men who should not be CEO's and management types.)
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Re: Well hell...
Thu Sep 21, 2006 at 01:05:13 PM EST
5.00 (astute)
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I was pretty much with you until:
That is not anti-woman. Heck, I love women
Do I really need to explain to you why that second statement is rather painfully condescending?
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Re: Well hell...
Thu Sep 21, 2006 at 02:30:46 PM EST
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What are you talking about? One of my best friends is a woman.
Now with caps!
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Re: Well hell...
Thu Sep 21, 2006 at 01:20:29 PM EST
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Loving women is condescending? Shoot, then there's no way to win. When loving becomes equivalent to hating, there's no way to find middle ground.
What would you prefer? Apathy? "I don't care about women, whatever!"
I am totally lost. But that wouldn't be the first or last time when having a conversation with women that I felt "I just can't win!" Maybe that explains the difference between men and women. When you give a comment as warm and effusive as to express love, and it is viewed as condescending, then one party is not in touch with the other at all. There is a disconnect.
If women are going to take offense and feel condescended when a man expresses love, then they are definitely inferior thinkers! They can't take at face value intent and a simple expression as "I love women" to mean just that. Or they find that love is an expression of condescension. Geesh!
(I am SO needling you Thalia. Don't let me get under your skin, I am poking fun at you and being disingenuous. I never get serious when talking about sexism, because that just leads down a very uncomfortable road.)
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Re: Well hell...
Thu Sep 21, 2006 at 06:22:11 PM EST
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That is not anti-woman. Heck, I love women....
Loving women is condescending?
See coquito's post
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Re: Well hell...
Fri Sep 22, 2006 at 11:46:56 AM EST
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Bad idea, sue - I forgot my sarcasm tags. Oh crap, did it again... Oh... d'oh!!
Now with caps!
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Re: Well hell...
Thu Sep 21, 2006 at 05:54:44 PM EST
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It's not negative to point out differences between men and women. But it IS negative to say "women are just not as smart as men and that's why Jane can't get a job as a professor." It's also untrue. The statistical differences are in percentages, and none of those percentages approaches even 70%. In other words, the assumption that all of the most brilliant scientsts will be men, because they have a genetic advantage, is simply bogus. I may be female, but I'm probably better at math than 95% of the people on this board, and I know I'm better than 99% of the SAT takers. There are quite a few brilliant female scientists. Attributing the lack of representation to genetic inferiority is an approach that frightens me.
Thalia
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Re: Well hell...
Thu Sep 21, 2006 at 05:11:16 PM EST
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"But I say that knowing that some women choose career paths that are more difficult and perhaps not teh best career path they are suited for."
And the career path for you probably does not include having teh spelling skills.
Illegitimi non carborundum.
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Re: Well hell...
Fri Sep 22, 2006 at 07:59:48 AM EST
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Gosh Mayorbob, you are SO right. The word "the" always gives me fits when typing. I end up misspelling it 8 times out of 10 as "teh". Drives me crazy.
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Re: Well hell...
Sun Sep 24, 2006 at 11:22:47 AM EST
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I'm not buying the inferior argument, but I will mull the different aptitude idea.
Why are most imperial societies patriarchal? Why are the ones that lasted male dominated? Women are as catty and conniving as men ..so where is the political representation? Is it heresy to think that after looking at the shadow of history, there is an aggregate tendency for men to rule and women to stay in the shadows? aka "barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen".
What explains the barbie doll, commando gunship toy gap?
Where do stereotypes of the dumb blonde come from?
I'll freely admit that if you pick any random woman they will probably kick my ass at math (to your point down thread), what I don't so much acknowledge is that you picked 100 women at random, and I picked 100 men certain aggregate group tendencies won't shake out.
Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.
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Re: Well hell...
Sun Sep 24, 2006 at 08:07:24 PM EST
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Why are most imperial societies patriarchal?
It has been pointed out that the proportion of young, single males is a strong indicator of the chances of war. A society that doesn't value women is likely to see fewer female children survive, ergo, patriarchy leads to national aggression.
I suspect the different social roles of men and women through history had something to do with pregnancy and its limiting effects onactivity. Nowdays, you don't have to get pregnant unless you want to, so the limitation becomes a matter of choice, and we see more women moving into previously male-dominated areas.
Notice that the patriarchal political cultures are the ones who want to prevent choice in the matter of pregnancy. What a surprise!!!
This story brings up an interesting split between two camps here. With about one exception, all the comments seem fall (in many cases by implication) either in the "it's discrimination" camp or the "it's genetic" camp. No middle ground.
When president what's-his-name at Harvard made his comment about women in the sciences, it started off similar discussions. Myself, I'm willing to admit that, taking men and women as whole, men may be more genetically apt at math ("science" is a bit broad of a subject) than women. Again, "may." That's as a group though. I would expect that, on an individual level, you'll find brilliant female mathematicians as well as brilliant male ones, though, if there are differences I would expect to find a.) more brilliant male mathematicians and b.) that the top 10 brilliant mathematicians will mostly be men. (This attitude got me quite a drubbing from the women in my life, by the way, which is a whole other discussion).
On the other hand, I think the evidence for discrimination is not only well-documented, but should be superfluous. Anyone who's been alive for more than 5 years should have been able to note, with their own eyes and ears, that gender discrimination is alive and well, even in the "rational" sciences.
Given that, I would expect the current situation to be a result of discrimination for sure, but possibly some inherent differences. The latter though, seems to be largely taboo currently, and I couldn't say for sure if it's true or not. Suffice it to say, Steve Urkel's arguments in that direction haven't been convincing :)
Why not deal with the two situations on their own then? Whether or not there are genetic differences does not change the fact that gender discrimination is wrong and needs to be dealt with before any semblance of equality to be reached. Even if we can never achieve a 50/50 split between female mathematicians and male ones, something closer to parity is surely possible. But if there are differences, why shouldn't we know about them and face that difference head on?
Now with caps!
So a panel of 17 feminist activists (and one token man), including, comically, the recently departed diversity hustler Denise Denton, concludes it's sexism? How surprising.
Unfortunately, these ladies can claim they have proven discrimination, but they havent.
They can claim they have rebutted the extensive evidence of innate differences between male and female brains and mental ability but they haven't done so, and it's dishonest and unscientific for them to pretend they have.
The report states a major reason for the dispartity is "anyone lacking the work and family support traditionally provided by a `wife' is at a serious disadvantage," despite the fact that unmarried male scientists are more productive than married ones.
The write-up mentions the SAT, stating "Whether SAT scores of college-bound seniors have any bearing on the performance of working scientists is highly debatable, but such measures and other cultural stereotypes may influence perceptions", note that while more women take the SAT than men, of the 2% of test takers who score above 750, men outnumber women about 2:1. Understand what this means: the math SAT is, in comparison to the verbal portion, relatively easy, as it requires only knowledge of math through algebra and geometry. If women had the same proclivity to excel at math as men, it would show up here. Since women can't perform close to the level of men on the easy math, why should anyone surprised men outnumber women in the physics department of Harvard? Note too that in a certain sense this 2:1 ratio only seems large; it's entirely an artifact of greater variability on both ends of the intelligence spectrum combined with a small average difference in g and mathematical ability. These small differences get even more magnified when one is looking at the tiny subsection of the population who are elite scientists.
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Sad is when you ignore the facts
Tue Sep 19, 2006 at 07:09:19 PM EST
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Please read your own references.
1. The first one concludes with: In addition, women are better represented at departments that do not grant graduate degrees and in the lower ranks of the faculty." The report also finds that "women still earn less than men, even when they have the same years of experience and work in the same sector."
Way to refute that there is discrimination!
2. Your second source is a blog. It is not evidence of anything except one man's personal opinions. I'm not impressed. I found Barres' discussion of his personal experiences significantly more informative than someone who expresses "utter disgust for the exploitation of personal information in Barres' commentary," but fails to express such disgust and Summer's exploitation of personal information.
Furthermore the author points out that there is greater variance between males (greater range) compared to females. He does not suggest that this means that there are no women qualified at the higher ends of the spectrum. Nor does any other respected scientist.
I also have yet to see a single actual reference that suggests that college professors are in the highest .1% of IQ ranges, which is where this variance may be noticable. Not that facts should slow you down.
- Your third source uses the SATs to gauge skill. Amusingly, the A-levels in Britain, administered at the same age with a similar subject set, result in women having higher overall scores. Maybe it's just that the genetics of American women are different than the genetics of Britons. Give me a fucking break.
- I'm not sure what the heck the relevance of married v. unmarried scientists is to this discussion. But that study actually reviewed the biography of 280 "famous scientists" and failed to account for quite a large number of facts (for example, it counted Einstein as unmarried despite his two marriages, because he was unmarried through most of his life.)
Thalia
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sad is when you ignore the science
Tue Sep 19, 2006 at 09:00:41 PM EST
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"women still earn less than men, even when they have the same years of experience and work in the same sector."
Perhaps they earn less because they aren't as good scientists?
"Your second source is a blog"
My second source was an overview containing links and references to relevant published studies. The ladies on the NAS comittee think the science they disagree with is wrong, yet for some reason they choose not to publish any articles refuting the research summarized on that blog in refereed journals (oh, I forget, all the journals are sexist). This study pretends to have disproven this body of work, in reality they ignored it. That's not science, that's politics.
"Furthermore the author points out that there is greater variance between males (greater range) compared to females. He does not suggest that this means that there are no women qualified at the higher ends of the spectrum. Nor does any other respected scientist"
Nor do I. So what are you raving about?
"Your third source uses the SATs to gauge skill"
Yes, because they are highly useful for that. Unlike the A-levels, we have a distribution of scores, not just a cutoff.
"I'm not sure what the heck the relevance of married v. unmarried scientists is to this discussion"
It was cited by the NAS report as a major reason for why men are more successful in science than women.
Ah such BS. I am going for a masters in comp sci now, and there're about 2 semi-bangable women in the whole program. And you can claim discrimination if you want, but then you have to claim that white people are being discriminated against too, because everyone in the damn program is indian.
I have several conflicting opinions about all this. First of all, I worry about the methodology used by this study. Far be it from me to criticize these Academies, but I've been taught to be leery of science by press-release, and since I can't access the actual study, this falls into that category at the moment.
I guess I've always felt that, like inequities in other areas, the gender bias in science would slowly go away as humanity moved forward into the era of flying cars and the United Federation of Planets. And some of the press release's own data causes me to wonder about their conclusions.
For instance, "Forty years ago, women made up only 3 percent of America's scientific and technical workers, but by 2003 they accounted for nearly one-fifth." Okay, this 600% increase demonstrates that a certain amount of progress has been made. Although the study complains that "four times more men than women hold full-time faculty positions," many of those faculty positions were filled 40 years ago, when women made up only 3% of the pool. It's great that women received more than half of the BS's in science over the past six years. But very few of those women will have received the Ph.D. that is the barest requisite for a tenured professorship. The comparison of "more than half" to "one-fifth" is very apples and oranges-y.
So should I go back to my complacency? I don't know. I find myself wondering about cultural attitudes. Should I be complacent that the average American would rather vote a fanatical Muslim or a promiscuous homosexual into office as president than me, an immoral atheist? Sure there are laws against discrimination, and prejudice is generally looked down upon, but I can't make people think that I'm presidential material. And I don't see how we can make people look at women and see potential scientists. Or a world where the "I can't operate on this patient, he's my son!" riddle doesn't make any sense.
In this sense, I think the tepid recommendation of data collection and 'compliance' tracking is at least a useful tool for demonstrating where particular problems may exist.
On the anecdotal side, I'll note that of the three-way tie for UCLA's award for outstanding physics graduate of the year for my year, one of the three was female, and I can assure you the selection was not out of political correctness. During my years as a student and TA, I typically found that the girls in physics were far less numerous, but far brighter on average. I always suspected that they were swimming against the cultural stream and only the strongest swimmers, um, made it up to the spawning ground? What a terrible metaphor.
Oh, and I had her in my class when I was a TA. Easily the top student in the class of 100+ freshmen. I all but begged her to switch majors to physics. But no, she stuck with math and now is the professional actor/actress with the lowest Erdos-Bacon number in the world.
The cosmos contains nothing of greater importance for the negligible atoms called human beings than the condition of being elegantly amused. --HPL
