2008 Woodie Awards
Man Smart, Woman Smarter?
Phil Desantis
Issue date: 3/25/05 Section: Opinions
- Page 1 of 1
The days of January grew ever colder for Harvard University President Larry Summers after a speech he gave on gender disparities. Out of the gate, his speech was "provocation" and wanted "rigorous and careful" thinking on the topic of a gender gap for the best-tenured science professors. According to Time Life magazine, his idea for why women have done less in math than men are because 1) women are just not so interested as men in making the sacrifices required by high-powered jobs, 2) men may have more "intrinsic aptitude" for high-level science, and 3) women may be victims of old-fashioned discrimination.
Before the torches light and feminists raise an icy finger to the oppressive overlords, this view is still backed up by a lot of science. There has been a divide for years between men and women on math and sciences scores at the high school level (men score 7 percent higher then women on the SAT). Men still dominate science and engineering jobs; women hold just 13 percent of the mathematics jobs in doctoral science and only 7 percent of the country's engineering jobs.
In the same breath, many people believe that the gender gap is from women having lowered expectations of their abilities. Women are told that men are engineers and scientists, so they join different fields that are more "feminine," like education and health sciences. Are women being pushed into careers dissimilar from their interests, skewing the numbers into self-fullfilling prophecy that women simply are not as good at math?
This gender gap has raised an issue between science and opinion. Summers was not going to make any friends with his statements, but he certainly had the right to say them. Some would yell blasphemy to such ideas, but it would only take eyes to see those men and women are different. It is more than reasonable to think that their brains would also be different, perhaps favoring different career paths.
Favoring, however, is just a push in a certain direction. Just as some men favor math, some do not. The same would obviously be true for women. Society needs to redefine what it sees as a "woman's" job. If women are never seen as rocket scientists, then they might never see themselves as that role. Just as women were once seen as inferior in the workplace, now more women than men are going to college and have been for the last decade.
The way to fix the problem is to recognize it as such. Teachers, parents and business professionals have to realize that women have just as much to offer as men, especially since most research suggests motivation is one of the biggest reasons for success. Jumping the gender gap, just as it was to get women in the workplace, will not be a great leap forward. It will be steps in the right direction until the gap is crossed and behind us. That is just my idea, but I ain't no rocket scientist, ya know?
Before the torches light and feminists raise an icy finger to the oppressive overlords, this view is still backed up by a lot of science. There has been a divide for years between men and women on math and sciences scores at the high school level (men score 7 percent higher then women on the SAT). Men still dominate science and engineering jobs; women hold just 13 percent of the mathematics jobs in doctoral science and only 7 percent of the country's engineering jobs.
In the same breath, many people believe that the gender gap is from women having lowered expectations of their abilities. Women are told that men are engineers and scientists, so they join different fields that are more "feminine," like education and health sciences. Are women being pushed into careers dissimilar from their interests, skewing the numbers into self-fullfilling prophecy that women simply are not as good at math?
This gender gap has raised an issue between science and opinion. Summers was not going to make any friends with his statements, but he certainly had the right to say them. Some would yell blasphemy to such ideas, but it would only take eyes to see those men and women are different. It is more than reasonable to think that their brains would also be different, perhaps favoring different career paths.
Favoring, however, is just a push in a certain direction. Just as some men favor math, some do not. The same would obviously be true for women. Society needs to redefine what it sees as a "woman's" job. If women are never seen as rocket scientists, then they might never see themselves as that role. Just as women were once seen as inferior in the workplace, now more women than men are going to college and have been for the last decade.
The way to fix the problem is to recognize it as such. Teachers, parents and business professionals have to realize that women have just as much to offer as men, especially since most research suggests motivation is one of the biggest reasons for success. Jumping the gender gap, just as it was to get women in the workplace, will not be a great leap forward. It will be steps in the right direction until the gap is crossed and behind us. That is just my idea, but I ain't no rocket scientist, ya know?
