Re: Harvard Pres: Women Lack Ability In Math, Sciences

From: Jayne Kulikauskas (momkulio_at_yahoo.ca)
Date: 01/20/05 

Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:41:17 -0500

"Jo Schaper" <joschapern4ospam@2socketdot.no5net> wrote in message
news:10uusuonifutb6c@corp.supernews.com...
> Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:

Jo as quoted by George wrote:
> >>"As a woman apparently lacking the genetic abilities under discussion, I
> >>would advise the men in this discussion to take the time to find out
> >>what Mr. Harvard President Sir actually said, (at least as reported in
> >>the news media):
> >>
> >>Please read:
> >>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/education/19harvard.html
> >>No transcript of his exact words are available.
>
> > I thought this account seemed like an even-handed one:
> > http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24410~2659688,00.html
>
> Your story also came from a NY Times reporter. This thread came into
> s.g.g. already in progress so I had to go find what people were talking
> about, since it had already escalated almost into chaos. The one I cited
> was also the most even-handed one I could find.

Since the article you linked to required a subscription, I didn't read it.
Could you please quote the part that gave you the impression that Summers
said that women were unfit to do science?

> > <begin quote>He discussed several factors that could help explain the
> > underrepresentation of women. The first factor, he said, according to
> > several participants, was that top positions on university math and
> > engineering faculties require extraordinary commitments of time and
energy,
> > with many professors working 80-hour weeks in the same punishing
schedules
> > pursued by top lawyers, bankers and executives. Few married women with
> > children are willing to accept such sacrifices, he said.
> >
> > Hopkins said yesterday, "I didn't disagree, but didn't like the way he
> > presented that point, because I like to work 80 hours a week, and I know
a
> > lot of women who work that hard."
> >
> > In citing a second factor, Summers cited research showing that more high
> > school boys than girls tend to score at very high and very low levels on
> > standardized math tests, and that it was important to consider the
> > possibility that such differences may stem from biological differences
> > between the sexes.<eq>
>
> I was deliberately ignoring the remarks of the female attendees, because
> they expressed their disapproval, but didn't add anything
> particularily to what Mr. Summers is alleged to have said.

I agree that Hopkins' comment is irrelevant, but I did not want the quote to
appear with ellisions.

> >>He is quoted for three ways which women may be unfit for these
> >
> > professions:
> >
> > He described 3 possible factors that could account for women's
> > underrepresentation in these professions. He never said anything about
> > women being unfit.
> >
> >
> >>1) Reluctance of married women with children to work long (some articles
> >>say 80-hour) workweeks in pursuit of their vocation;
> >>
> >>2) That innate sex-related/genetic differences make women less capable
> >>of math or science; or
> >>
> >>3)That they are still discriminated against because of their gender.
> >>
> >>
> >>To refute these remarks:
> >>
> >>1) Is undoubtably true of both women and men with families, who value
> >>their spouses, children and own productive lives both at and away from
> >>their vocation. Both math and science can be harsh masters and
> >>mistresses. While hard work is necessary for success in any endeavor,
> >>this stereotype of the brilliant mathematician/scientist with no time
> >>for anything but work is false--One need go no further than Einstein and
> >>his violin, or Richard Feynmann and his theater and drums to note that
> >>a) home life suffers greviously in the case of many so called
> >>'brilliant' people; b) recreation is necessary to all humans to keep
> >>from going crazy. No one can be a genius 24/7 for 70 years on end and c)
> >>if there are children, someone must mind them, whether parent or nanny,
> >>or the kids turn out badly.
> >>
> >>2) This is an easy remark to make, but a hard one to substantiate. Also,
> >> math and science, though both use numbers, are not equal. My best
> >>friend in grade school excelled in math, but had no use for science. I
> >>excelled in science, but math has always been a harder row to hoe. It's
> >>not 'socialization pressure', nor genetics which cause women to back off
> >>from math or science--it's the textbooks, the pedagogy, and the teachers
> >>along the way.
> >
> >
> > Could you give some references to support this claim please?
> > (Preferably web-based since I don't want to
> > drive to the university library in all this
> > snow.)
> >
>
> Which claim? That my best friend excelled in math, and I in science?
> About the textbooks, the teaching methods and the teachers? I made no
> claims in my essay that this was scientific, statistically normed
> research.

Thank you for clarifying. I received that impression when you said, "It's
not 'socialization pressure', nor genetics which cause women to back off
from math or science--it's the textbooks, the pedagogy, and the teachers
along the way." It sounded to me like you were referring to established
facts rather than your opinion.

> This has been my experience, in my first 16 year trip through
> the US education system, and then another 4 year stint to complete a
> second degree 25 years later. I have always held non-traditional jobs,
> and have been notoriously immune to socialization pressure since about
> the age of 10. I do what I want to do, and gender stereotypes can go
> hang for all I care. I've had one professor who told the class the first
> day that the women could leave because he didn't believe women should be
> college-educated. I stayed. I've had female professors who have made it
> doubly hard on the women, because they know it's a rough world out
> there. I worked side by side with blue-collar printers for 20 years, and
> have hung out with geologists of all stripes for about the same time.

I have spent a comparable amount of time in the Canadian education system.
I have never had a professor that seemed to treat women differently from
men, even when I was in classes in which I was the only woman.

> My statement is my opinion, based on my experience. I endured the math
> textbooks for two go rounds. And was very disappointed in the late '90s
> to see that the celebrated 'gender-neutral' texts were still the same
> old story, with fingernail polish applied over a few of the word
> problems.

I never noticed any of these issues in math textbooks and did quite well in
the subject.

[snip comment by George]

> >>Children of either gender will be drawn to study what interests them.
> >>You can make a million gender-neutral textbooks about girls building
> >>rocketships and calculating trajectories, or figuring baseball
> >>statistics, and you're just not gonna 'win the audience' except of a
> >>very few. Face it, most math texts don't explain "why" something is, or
> >>how it go to be that way--they just throw a lot of squiggles at you and
> >>say, if you do thus and so to the squiggles, you win. Math and science
> >>texts (especially physics) are full of discrete examples whose contexts
> >>boys are already familiar with--throwing balls, building things from
> >>wood, making electrical circuits and so forth.
> >
> >
> > And why aren't girls familiar with these contexts? Because
> > they are usually
> > not interested in these things. Doesn't this suggest some innate
> > differences to you.
>
> No. As a matter of fact, I shot off baking-soda rockets, worked in my
> dad's basement shop running the power tools and building boxes and
> boats, played sandlot ball, and put together impossible contraptions
> with an Erector Set. I even built plastic models of the U-505 and the
> Starship Enterprise. I did not care one whit about baseball statistics,
> (nor movie stars) but saw my brother read the Sporting News and memorize
> stats at the same time I was memorizing things like the color, luster,
> hardness and fracture of minerals, or worked with my chemistry set, and
> grew copper sulfate crystals on my windowsill. I also cooked in my
> Easy-Bake Oven, played with Barbies and the girls on the street, largely
> because pre-adolescent boys were cruel, and would hurt you if they
> could. My earliest experience with 'socialization' was being taken by
> the teacher from the blocks and trucks to the play kitchen (repeatedly)
> in kindergarten.There was a boy there who liked the kitchen because he
> liked food, and he got shuffled to the trucks and blocks. (He's probably
> a famous chef now.) I retaliated by 'opting out'--getting crayons and
> paper and drawing so I didn't have to go to the kitchen. Had enough
> kitchen chores (like table-setting and dishes) to do when I was home,
> anyway--but my brothers too, did dishes. This was before feminism. And a
> good thing, as none of them have ever married, so they have to do
> housework.

My favorite activity in kindergarten was blocks too, but I do not recall
ever being discouraged from this. When older, I preferred playing with boys
than girls at recess since the boy's games were more interesting.
Nevertheless, I was aware that I was not like most girls. There is an
important distinction between what individuals do and what is typical.

> Most girls I knew (in the late 60s-early 70s) 'were' interested that I
> did such different things, but they had mothers who were more interested
> in them becoming 'ladies' than real people. The mothers were also afraid
> of power saws and chemistry sets, and their girls were forbidden to
> partake. Heaven knows what the twenty-something and early
> thirty-something females now are into. Those I had as students weren't
> domestically trained. I think they must be into media hype, because all
> I ever heard about were shopping, Hollywood celebrities, clothes and
> money. But those (plus sports) were all I heard from the male students.
> Precious few of them (either gender), seemed really into a hobby, or
> their studies.

I am around the same age as you and yet my experiences were quite different.
As a girl, there was never a question in my mind that I was good at math and
science and that these were career options for me. My family was
encouraging and approving when I announced that I wanted to be a marine
biologist. My marks in all my subjects went down towards the end of high
school, as I became more involved in non-academic life like running for
student council, the school musical, various clubs and partying in general.
I ended up not going into science, but not from any sense that I couldn't do
it.

> >>Math books are written by
> >>men (for the most part) for boys, using examples out of their own
> >>boyhood. These fellows' idea of humanizing a text is throwing in clipart
> >>of old famous white dead mathematicians in wigs. I can recall several
> >>word problems in probability I couldn't do-- I could do the math all
> >>right, but didn't understand how one played some game (I think it was
> >>figuring canasta hands) and without known the distribution of the hands,
> >>I was clueless. But hey, I'm a woman. I *asked* somebody to help me!
*|;-)
> >
> >
> > This has not been my personal experience of math texts. Do you have
> > some
> > references that indicate your experience is the norm?
>
> I don't claim my experience is the norm, and I never stated that I was
> either omniscient or infallible. However, before I made that statement,
> I dug up all my recent math texts (community college intermediate
> algebra through stats and Calc II). I also made a cursory examination of
> the other math texts I have in my library. Not a single one has a female
> author. The trig and calc books even have some of same problems (with
> the same numbers)(!) as my husband's college trig and calc books from
> the early 1980s. They aren't even by the same authors. The only material
> difference is that his books have trig and log tables and problems in
> degrees, and mine don't, but have calculator and electronic graphing
> exercises, and trig problems in radians. I suspect some of the calc
> problems may have been written by Newton himself. *|;-)
>
> Oh, and his books do not have the dead mathematicians. But they do have
> explanations of procedures in plain English paragraphs, explaining not
> only what to do, and how to do it, but also the historical significance
> of the usage of the procedure in a practical application. I often went
> back to his text for that reason alone. Mine just have diagrams and
> bullet points and equation problems, except for the word problems,
> which, as I stated are at least 80% drawn from experiences most common
> to boys or men.

 I homeschool my children and when selecting math textbooks for them I make
a point of finding materials that suit their learning styles. I have never
personally noticed a corelation with gender, but this is too small a sample
for that to be significant. I have read articles that indicate there are
typical differences in the ways that boys learn and that girls learn. The
books I am using now with my 9 year old boy and 7 year old girl have word
problems from experiences of both genders.

> Here's an example: the row the boat across the river problem, in which
> you are to row your boat at W speed perpendicular to the shore when the
> current is moving at X speed and you are attempting to intersect a
> landing on the other shore at point Y, Z feet downstream. What speed do
> you need to row your boat?
> Now, this sounds like a straightforward rate problem. However, if you
> have ever canoed in a current, it is the stupidest problem on the
> planet, because a) the current in a river is not uniform, but has a
> channel and eddies, b) only an idiot would try to row *directly* across
> a current, c) you cannot accurately measure the speed of your rowing
> across such a small distance, and d) your speed will be variable,
> anyway. So what is the point? Now, that may be the difference between a
> thinking or a non-thinking brain, or some may say a male and female one.
>
> Why not make a realistic problem, not one where your answer will be
> false because it is based on untrue assumptions? But,aha, you aren't
> supposed to get a realistic answer, you are supposed to get the right
> one, calculated by ignoring the way the river, the boat, and the person
> actually work. If I had never canoed, I'd say, gee, it's a vector
> problem, and put the right numbers in the right squiggles and the
> teacher would be happy. But the boat would still end up somewhere else.

This sort of thing never bothered me. I knew that these problems weren't
meant to be realistic and how I was supposed to do it. I often was amused
by their silliness, but it didn't interfere with my ability to do them.

> >>I'd love to see a generation of boys raised on math books with examples
> >>of calculating how to make a creme rinse from its basic components, how,
> >>given X amount of prepared food, to redivide it evenly when unexpected
> >>dinner guests arrive,or how to even out 'playtime' with an even set of
> >>dolls, and an odd set of girls.
> >
> >
> > Apparently you think that they would do badly. Why would
> > you love to see boys doing badly? I would
> > love to see education that allows both sexes to
> > do their best.
>
> No, they would not do badly if they look at the problems the same way
> the male authors are expecting females to look at current problems in
> jet-plane impact energy releases, flying cannonballs, air-traffic
> control patterns, load-bearing capacities, antenna-erecting and
> miscellaneous other construction projects. That is--ignore the subject
> and concentrate on the numbers. Perhaps that is the problem. Since it is
> obvious most math problem solutions have little relation to real world
> solutions you are liable to encounter yourself, it is more difficult to
> concentrate on their solution. Of course, the only thing more gender
> neutral and mind numbing that this are pages and pages of
> differentiations and integrations with no context whatsoever.

One theory that I find compelling is that typical math instruction goes to
the abstraction level too quickly and the children need to spend more time
working at the concrete level. (This is for both boys and girls.) I have
been using a manipulative-based program for a couple of years now and I am
very impressed with the results. If you are interested you can take a look
at www.mathusee.com

> >>How about the spatial calculus involved
> >>when figuring out how much material in 30 inch wide yards has to be
> >>purchased to most efficiently yield the irregular pieces needed to sew a
> >>Halloween costume. Hey, it's math, right? There are plenty of 'spatially
> >>literate' men who haven't a clue how to take a Dutch cut out of a ***
> >>of rectangular paper, much less to cut and sew a shirt while wasting
> >>only minimal cloth.
> >
> >
> > Neither do I have a clue about this. I do not think that I ever
> > encountered a math problem as
> > much outside my experience as your sewing examples.
>
> Well, someone's got to figure out how much material it takes to
> economically make a dress pattern. Dutch cuts are common in printing; it
> just means getting another piece out of an 'odd' scrap of leftover,
> thereby maximizing your use of 17x22 or 24x36 parent *** of paper.
> This is actually easy, but you have to visualize what you are doing
> before you start cutting the stock. Just the same as Michelangelo had to
> cut away everything which wasn't David. I think spatial thinking is a
> teachable (and learnable) skill.

I remember when we did geometry theorems and proofs in high school. I
grasped it immediately. I could just look at the shape and knew the answer.
The majority of the class could not do this and, even after much class time
on it, many still could not do these questions. Perhaps it was teachable
in theory, but that is not what happened.

> Neither the young men nor women were
> very good at it until I showed them with real world examples. And 3-D
> thinking is essential in geology, because you are working with 3-D
> concepts. Actually, you gotta throw time in there as well, making it 4-D
> at least. Just about any manual skill (especially in arts/crafts)
> requires some 3-D thinking ability. But it does not necessarily require
> math or science to comprehend it.

That is consistent with the theory I mentioned earlier.

> >>Part of the answer to 'girls don't understand math and science' is yes
> >>they do, but the questions they find interesting are different, and
> >>often defined by men as uninteresting. Girls and women are not
> >>stupid--they're less likely than men to get fixated, and beat their
> >>heads to a bloody pulp on a lost cause. They just go around the problem,
> >>which often means abandoning both math and science.
> >
> >
> > Western education systems has been greatly influenced
> > by women in general
> > and feminists in particular for the past couple decades. I find it
> > implausible that men are defining the questions in math and science.
>
> In my experience, this statement is simply flat wrong. Of course, we
> really don't have many feminists (whatever they are) around here,
> either. Women may be a lot of the elementary grade teachers, but most
> administration, school boards, college trustees, principals, educational
> consultants, math and science teachers and professors and therefore
> textbook writers are still overwhelmingly male in my part of the world.

I'm in the Toronto area, where the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education is extremely influential at the policy level. Much of what I have
read coming out of OISE is fairly obviously feminist in orientation. Women
are well represented in most of the areas you mention.

> >
> >>3) The glass ceiling still exists, for one reason: Ambitious men are
> >>defined as go-getters and successes. Ambitious women who do not become
> >>pseudo-men are defined by society as bitches (or worse). If one wants to
> >>be a whirlwind of successful genius, people's feelings are deemed
> >>irrelevant--it's a pursuit of a dream or an idea to the kill. That is
> >>seen as acceptable in men, but not in women. One need go no further than
> >>a person whom even Mr. Summers would call a female genius--Marie
> >>Sklodowska Curie--who was nearly denied her second Nobel in 1911 because
> >>of a morals charge. (Marie Curie--A Life, by Susan Quinn) Imagine a
> >>widowed male genius being in the same predicament because of an affair.
> >>Preposterous!
> >
> >
> > Not in 1911. People took sexual morals, even men's, pretty seriously
> > back then.
>
> Perhaps you need to reread some of your history books, if you do not
> believe in a double standard for gender behavior, both then and now.
> (Hollywood excepted--those folks have no standards, regardless of their
> gender.) Men have always gotten away with much more than women, and had
> people think not much less of them for it--as the saying goes--wink,
> wink, nudge, nudge. People may have publicly been Victorian, but there
> was just as much scandal then as there is now, or will be in the future.
> People's behavior doesn't change--just society's assessment of it. True,
> people in 1911 had to have a better public persona than they do now,
> when scandal entertains the masses on TV. But women had to have a much
> better pattern of public behavior than men to stay in societal good
> graces. Even today.

I was just reading about a male professor who lost his job for a morality
issue around that time period. I could look up the reference if you'd like.
I agree that women were judged more harshly, but men in public positions
also had to avoid scandal.

> Or just look in the morning news. Heck, a big honcho for a securities
> firm here just 'voluntarily retired' for nearly the same crime and at
> the same level of culpability as Martha Stewart. He's remaining a
> partner in the firm, and she's in jail. Now, I'm not even close to being
> a Martha fan, but there is no doubt she obtained her fame and fortune
> whilst being 'uppity', and that's her major crime. Otherwise sauce for
> the goose would be sauce for the gander.

I have not followed this case.

> >>Yes, there are women who love math, and love science and excel at both
> >>(or if they don't excel, they can quite capably do what has to be done
> >>to get to the point they need to be.) Or maybe they just redefine the
> >>problem, and discover new things instead.
> >>
> >>In any event, Mr Harvard President Sir has apparently decided to eat his
> >>words, buttered and with honey on them, via his retraction:
> >>
> >>http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/womeninscience.html
> >
> >
> > This is clearly not a retraction. It is a statement that
> > his comments were misunderstood. He says
> > in this statement exactly what he was saying all
> > along.
>
> I disagree. Along with other hats, I've done some work in public
> relations (I have one of those dire liberal arts degrees, too.)
> 'Misunderstood' is a waffle-word for retraction, when saying
> 'retraction' would cause the person to lose face. This is the Harvard
> Office of the President trying to 'spin' what he said into something
> acceptable.

While it is possible that a retraction could be worded that way, in this
case, the statement exactly matched what I had earlier concluded he said.
The reports that I found most plausible claimed that he was saying this
right from the beginning.

> > Your argument is a refutation of Lawrence Summers'
> > alleged claim that women
> > are unfit for math and science professions.
> >However, he did not claim that.
> > You apparently created a misrepresentation
> > of his view in order to refute
> > it. In other words, you have committed the
> > straw man fallacy. Since your
> > entire argument is a logical fallacy, it is not logical at all.
>
> Oh, please... I don't believe that for a minute. Part of the difficulty
> with the entire issue (from a journalism perspective) is without a
> transcript of his remarks, NONE of us know what the man actually said,
> just what is reported that he said. All those reports are colored with
> biases.

You chose an especially refutable version of his remarks to believe. Why
choose this version over the others that portrayed Summers as saying
something reasonable?

> Now, you've said, 'well, he didn't say that'. But you have no
> proof either, as there is no transcript. I gathered as much gist, as
> well as I could, from as many sources as I could muster, going back to
> the earliest web reports, and only those from reputable newspapers
> (Boston Globe, New York Times included).

You are right that, without a transcript, I do not know with certainty what
he said. However, when sorting through the reports I considered the
plausibility of various claims. How likely is it that a highly educated,
experienced public speaker would say that women are unfit for or incapable
of math and science, knowing that his entire audience would consider this
patently absurd? It is reasonable to assume that every person there either
was a woman in these professions or personally knew some. It seems so much
more likely that the reports were correct which claimed that he was talking
about the importance of considering all the possible factors in women's
underrepresentation in these fields.

> My response was to the thread
> as it appeared (truncated) on s.g.g. and all the people signing their
> names with masculine first names, who were ranting uncontrollably about
> women being genetically unfit for math or science. That's it. I'm not on
> some social crusade, one way or the other.

I can understand how difficult it is to follow this thread. George has been
cross-posting it to various groups, apparently seeking some support for his
position. It seems that when he doesn't get it one group, he adds yet
another. He has even responded to several of my posts leaving out the group
that I am reading it in, presumably to discourage me from expressing my
views. He has done this with others as well, so that one must read many
different newsgroups to see where this thread has gone. I was trying to
track it on Google until I gave up in disgust at George's behaviour. I
think there may be a few people who could be described as claiming that
women are unfit for math or science. However, my sense is that the majority
of posts, like mine, have been objecting to the misrepresentation of Summers
remarks.

> > I would also like to note that it seems inaccurate to characterize my
>> posts on this subject as "gesticulating at each other".
>
> None of your posts before this one were propagated to s.g.g. Therefore
> you could not have possibly been included in my original conclusion.

As I said, it is difficult to follow this thread. I was the only poster
with a female name that I had noticed so I assumed that you must be talking
about me. Thank you for clarifying this.

Jayne

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