New at Reason

David Weigel | October 3, 2006

Cathy Young examines the record of women in science and starts the clock to see how quickly the PC police try and shut her down.

Comments

|10.3.06 @ 2:19AM|#

the claim that childrearing responsibilities, which fall more heavily on women than men, are an important source of the disparities, is not an alternate explanation to sexism. that unequal division of labor and the consequences that flow from it just are sexism. I find it strange that young can't understand this.

Larry A|10.3.06 @ 2:38AM|#

"A committee of experts looked at all the possible excuses-biological differences in ability, hormonal influences, childrearing demands, and even differences in ambition-and found no good explanation for why women are being locked out."

When "experts" start out by labeling what they're looking at as "excuses" I think it's a good indication of the quality of their "science."

Scare quotes intentional.

the claim that childrearing responsibilities, which fall more heavily on women than men, are an important source of the disparities, is not an alternate explanation to sexism. that unequal division of labor and the consequences that flow from it just are sexism. I find it strange that young can't understand this.

But the "experts" found that childrearing responsibilities were not a source of the disparities. Therefore they can't be part of the sexism causing the disparities.

Moreover Cathy goes on to say, "We can also do more to reduce lingering prejudice against mothers who are not primary caregivers for their children, and against fathers who are."

|10.3.06 @ 2:59AM|#

The notion that there is any sexism preventing women from advancing in science is laughable.

My wife is biostatistician with her primary focus being drug discovery and genetics. Since she is one of only about, say, five women in the world who do this sort of thing, her company was desperate to hire her, they treated her much better than her male colleagues, and they did anything they could to make her stay after she had a baby. If you're a female scientist, you have it made.

Unfortunately for her employers, she decided to stay home and raise our children. I wanted to stay home myself, but I make about twice as much as her and she likes expensive toys...

|10.3.06 @ 3:56AM|#

Belle Warning,

Some women choose child care over work, because they find it more rewarding. That's their business. If a woman is pressured to do an unfair share of homemaking, that pressure normally comes from family and neighbors, not employers. Why would most employers want any employee to speed _less_ time in the office? Workplace bias can be a factor for some women, but it is not the only reason for a gender gap.

Many of the gender gap opponents would have more credibility in my eyes if they also called to a national campaign to recruit more men into women's studies departments. The gender gap in that feild is huge.

Ron Hardin|10.3.06 @ 6:11AM|#

Vicki Hearne on why there's a gap in math, long ago

http://home.att.net/~rhhardin9/vickihearne.womenmath.txt

Women's interest is held by different delusions than men's.

|10.3.06 @ 6:47AM|#

I was shocked by the summaries of this report when I read them. They clearly stank of political spin, not science. One of the hallmark clues was the absolutist statement that studies have not found any relevant substantial biological differences between men and women. Not only is this hogwash (I remember a list by Steven Pinker containing HUNDREDS of such findings), but simply the nature of this claim itself is outside of what scientists usually do. Real scientists almost always hedge, until something is as sure as gravity and evolution.

Anyone who thinks that the average man and women are identical, or that there are equal distributions at the extreme of any talent or ability, is delusional.

|10.3.06 @ 8:00AM|#

This is a virtually unprecedented moment in neurobiology: We've come up with the definitive answer on brain sex differentiation. We always knew that masculinization of the brains of male embryos had significant structural effects. Who new these effects were utterly meaningless in brain function? I guess all inequality really is the product of social constructs and gender oppression.

Ideologues -- including the social constructionist cult -- really ought to get out of science. I worked briefly as a lab techie at NIMH, where my supervisor once noted that brain sexual differentiation was one of his primary interests, but he was afraid to pursue the field for political reasons. That�s pretty sad.

|10.3.06 @ 8:12AM|#

Thanks again, Cathy, for great analysis on this topic.

I'm a woman scientist in my early 40's and I spend a lot of time thinking about why it is that women leave science. My sense is that it is almost entirely about the conflict between what Dr. Summers called "legitimate family desires" and the time demands for high-level achievement in science. (Incidentally, it has not served women scientist well that in all the hulaballoo over how Summeres ordered the second (aptitude) and third (discrimination) most likely explanations for the paucity of women at the top ranks, we've lost sight of the fact that he was probably spot-on with what he ranked first!). I think the data back up that sense, even if the reporting on the study gloss over that point.

I do want to raise one little caveat, and again this is more anecdotal than data-based. OK, it is entirely anecdotal, but I'll bet anything that the data would back me up, and that is the role that overt sexism and discrimination have historically played in keeping women out of science.

It is very common in my circles to hear women my age and younger say things like "I guess I'm just lucky, I've never felt that kind of discrimination or experienced any overt sexism", to the point where I think we need to say, That's not just luck, that's reality. However, what we hear about from older women is that they have undoubtedly experienced what most reasonable people would call sexism or discrimination. What is astounding is the sharpness of the age cut-off, whcih I would place around 45. It is as if sexism was there, and then suddenly disappeared. Kind of a tipping-point phenomenon. Not surprising, though, since "feeling" discriminated against usually reflects some kind of combination between objective reality and subjective experience. Modulation of each component by just a little bit could make the "feeling" go away.

Interestingly, just having more women around makes it better. Your crochety old genetics professor can not on one day tell you about the path-breaking experiments of McClinotck, Chase, Franklin and Nusslein-Vollhard, and the next day that woment don't belong in science. And I can tell you that sitting in a faculty meeting or conference where even only 25-30% of the others in the room are women makes it pretty close to a gender-blind experience. And sadly, it can be very instructive to have a nasty old biddy as a departmental antagonist, because then it becomes clear that much of the rank-pulling and insulting and general unhelpfulness toward jounior faculty that is commonplace has much more to do with academic politics than it does with sexism. When a female assistant professor experiences that as coming from an entirely male set of senior colleagues, it "feels" like sexism. Not to say sexism has no part in it, but if it is also coming from female senior faculty (I had to walk uphill both ways in the snow with no legs, and we didn't get any maternity leave, missy!), one can more clearly see it for what it is.

I've kept some of the original reporting on Summers comments and responses to them, and it is very clear that women in the over 45 group were much more offended than those in the under 45 group. While I can't stress enough that I think the reaction to this borders on the hysterical and does not put women scientists in any kind of favorable light, I can at least rationalize (though NOT defend) the response of the older women in the group. Whether discrimination has been cause 1, 2 or 3 for discouraging woment from careers in science, most the older women have almost certainly experienced overt discrimination and sexism at some points in their career, very likely early in the formative years. It can't help but color every interaction they have.

thoreau|10.3.06 @ 8:53AM|#

mary-

I am fascinated by the points you make about senior female colleagues being every bit as difficult as senior male colleagues. I'm also somewhat dismayed, because certain people have assured us that gender integration will mean a less difficult environment with regard to internal politics.

What sort of science are you in? I'm a physicist, and the problem we have is not just one of retention, it's also one of recruitment. Women leaving a scientific career track may be explained by any number of factors, including some that you and others in this thread have cited, and there are any number of plausible remedies. But the best retention in the world can only do so much for you if your discipline has few women to begin with.

Everybody has their own theories on why physics attracts so few women compared to other sciences, and I have mine, but I have no idea if my theory is right.

The biggest problem I have with every explanation offered is that the same criticisms yielded against the basic sciences (a cadre of arrogant old men, training regimens that are incompatible with having a family, etc.) could just as easily be applied to medicine, yet medicine has made far more progress on gender integration than the basic sciences.

I care about the problems, but I remain unconvinced by the explanations, because the explanations almost all fail to explain the disparity between medicine and the basic sciences. Maybe I'm being too scientific about this? :)

|10.3.06 @ 9:52AM|#

feminists (at least of the "gender feminist" sort) discussing the science of gender differences - ignore the science. always. they are about as likely to give serious consideration to the scientific evidence, as an intelligent design proponent is. it's really quite sad.

larry summers was vilified because he dare mention that there is evidence that upsets the orthodoxy. i have spoken to feminists who STILL believe that even male/female strength differences are entirely socially constructed.

these are religious zealots. they are not scientists, or even "social scientists" (which so often is an oxymoron).

the usual response to discussion that there are male/female differences in cognition is how bad the effects of acknowledging that would be. iow, the truth doesn't matter if it hurts people's feelings.

there is no more perfect encapsulation of anti-science PC attitude than that.

|10.3.06 @ 10:01AM|#

To arrive at Cathy's article, or Summers conclusions you would have to:

Avoid all recorded history prior to 1990.

I was born in 1964, went to both private schools and public, and in every instance that I was personally aware of, or have seen recorded prior to 1990, women, or girls, were discouraged from persuing any thing related to "mens" discipline.

Some areas have made progress, like MD's. However, I can still remember the difficulty, my ex-wife had in getting into Chemistry and Auto's when she was in high school. (she was born in 1967, and even though she was eventually able to force her high school to let her in "autos" class, the teacher refused to let her work on cars, only allwoing her to "clean" auto parts).

I was just recently in a round table at a local university here in Chicago, in which the moderater consistently interupted all female speakers. And afterward complained about their presence (the topic was a certain new book on cosmology).

To arrive at the "it's all biology" argument, is to ignore 2000 years of recorded western history. It would be like saying Africans were slaves because they were inferior. There is tons and tons of evidence of male lead establishments rejecting female input prior to the 90's, there is very little evidence supporting Cathy and Summers props.

Cathy, and Summers show themselves for what they are, the equivalent of "Creation Scientists".

|10.3.06 @ 10:17AM|#

Johnny:

congrats on extrapolating all the causes of sex disparity in scientific academic achievement based on one moderator of one round table

I don't see in Cathy's article where she blamed the gap on innate biological differences in ability to achieve

|10.3.06 @ 10:22AM|#

Interesting thoughts. I'm a litigation attorney, which when I started out in 1988 was almost entirely male, but got up to 50% 50% pretty quickly afterward, a feat unequalled among traditionally male professions. The main difference between the professions where women have made great strides, like law and accounting, and where we haven't, as in scientific research, is that there are a lot of different things a person can do with a law or accounting degree, but pretty much only one career track in science, which is working at a big corporate lab or a university, which, in practice, is often the same place.

The difference between what I do, as a state agency prosecutor, and what a private practice litigator does is very small. I get weekends and she gets a lot more money, but we're actually doing the same things. There are lots of places for accountants other than the Big Eight firms. Even doctors have more choice in their career tracks. When there are more places to work, there are, obviously, more ways to do the same work, including at places that allow for family time. Thus, mothers flock to those fields.

In contrast, there just aren't many places outside a lab where a physics PhD can work. When there are only a small number of openings, the prejudices of those in charge of the openings make a much bigger difference. Thus, many women who got their PhD's back before or in the early days of feminism resent the bed of roses world today's grad students were raised in, and go out of their way to make things unpleasant. (I worked for a couple of their sisters in litigation who were 50 times more convinced that I wouldn't be worth retaining after my maternity leave than any man I ever worked for.) I'm not even going to touch the devastation that a devoted male supporter of James Dobson or a passionate sociobiologist can have when said man is the department head or supervisor of the qualification committee.

I can summarize by saying that progress takes longer in small fields, becuase there's no room for competition.

thoreau|10.3.06 @ 10:27AM|#

I can summarize by saying that progress takes longer in small fields, becuase there's no room for competition.

That makes as much sense as anything I've heard, and my own theory is also a mere corollary of your observation: If somebody is going to battle the chauvinists, she's more likely to do it in a field that pays better. Fields with more opportunities also generally have more opportunities to make money.

The problem is that even now I have no idea if this theory is right. Everybody else is so convinced that their explanations are the correct ones, so that counsels a certain amount of humility.

|10.3.06 @ 10:34AM|#

"Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering."
This report and similar ones just prove that Harvard, etc, are hiring incompetent women and calling them 'scientists' rather than 'politicians.'

Avoid all recorded history prior to 1990.
So...why didn't women, who are a majority, historically start universities and discriminate against men? Lack of abitility to do so, or some other reason(s)?

Not only are men smarter than women by about .3 std-dev (taken as groups, not individuals, of course...this unnecessary note is for the fools like thoreau who like to pretend that statements about groups refer to each person in the group when the results don't match what they'd like to hear)
http://psychology.uwo.ca/faculty/rushtonpdfs/in%20press%20Intell.pdf#search=%22men%20women%20iq%20jensen%22
but men's larger std-dev in mental ability means that "A study of the math-intensive academic marketplace predicts that women will top off there at about 22 to 23 percent" based on measured ability alone.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/women_and_minorities_in_science.htm

Check out the % of women in the hard sciences and engineering at good science/engineering schools: right around 20-25%, just as predicted by ability.

|10.3.06 @ 10:38AM|#

thoreau, you're probably right. It takes, what, 12 years of schooling after high school to get a physics PhD? After which, she gets to put up with all the hassle described for considerably less money than an engineer or MBA makes, and those professions allow people to start working in their middle 20's.

For what it's worth, I'm not defending any of the idiotic practices that make life difficult for research scientists of both genders. 90-hour workweeks as a routine matter are a stupid hazing ritual, not a good use of one's talent. Still, the losses to science in clinging to such practices won't be apparent for decades, and during that time, lots of talented women -- and probably men from less-traditional backgrouds, too -- will stay away from science in favor of more lucrative and flexible fields.

thoreau|10.3.06 @ 10:44AM|#

Karen-

4 years of college, 5-7 years of grad school, and 1-3 years of postdoctoral apprenticeship.

The dirty little secret is that the crazy hours cited are more of a peak phenomenon than a routine thing. And it's probably for the better that way: I get my best ideas when I step away from the lab, go home, and do something else. I work out the solutions to problems while swimming laps at the gym. A lot of other people report similar phenomena.

|10.3.06 @ 10:50AM|#

thoreau,
I'm in biology, the most women-heavy of the sciences, and I think my sense of tipping-point/critical mass-based phenomena regarding women in science draws on my experience as a biologist, especially when I compare myself to physicists and chemists. We biologists have it good.

Can I address the medicine issue? Again, anecdotes, not data. But first let me point out the irony of the fact that in the NY TImes reporting of the "study" and in the Letters to the Times discussing the article, so many women talked about how women were more suited for a medical career than men. So it's OK to talk about gender differences, innate or otherwise, if women come out with the advantage. I had to laugh.

But I digress. I think a major reason why you will find more women in medicine than in science, or a higher retention rate for women in medicine than in science comes down to two words. Part Time. These two words do not exist in a professional science career. I have flexibility, indeed, but that pretty much means I can choose which 60 hours I want to work, I can make up for slacking off this year by working extra hard next year, etc. All of my doctors are women, I have friends that physicians, and I have a bunch of former students in medical school and residency. Every single one of the women told me they chose medicine over science for two reasons. The first, the desire to serve, speaks more to why people choose medicine over science in the first place. Applies to men as well as women. But the second applies mostly to women, and speaks to the higher retention rate in medicine. Women physicians say they find it easier to structure their career around having children. Yes, they have to schedule things, put it off until the right time, make sacrifices in terms of how fast they get to the top. But most people are not interested in getting to the top-they just want to be good at what they do and pay thie bills. Medicine allows people, especially female people, to do that. In science, its up or out. So a lot of women choose out.

I have several comments to make about the role of aptitude and interest, and they are the kinds of comments likely to get me dis-invited to all the women-in-sciences lunches were my colleages to read them. However, I also have a pile of grant proposals to review and a meeting with my daughter's pre-school teacher and I have to figure out what to cook for dinner and I have to make sure my grad students are working and, and...Anyway, more later.

thoreau|10.3.06 @ 10:56AM|#

mary-

Do you think biology benefits somewhat from medicine's leaky pipeline? Somebody starts off pre-med, decides medicine isn't her thing but she likes science, and winds up a research biologist?

It's a nice theory, but I have no idea if the data support it.

|10.3.06 @ 11:03AM|#

Oh yeah, and about the gender-feminist line that gender integration, or a female-dominated culture, will make for love and peace for all people everywhere, clearly they have forgotten seventh grade. Karen's excellent post attests to that as well.

|10.3.06 @ 11:09AM|#

thoreau,
about medicine's leaky pipeline, I do know several women for whom what you say is true. Again, I don't know what the data say.

Actually, I am rather interested in finding out what the data say about all of these interesting issues. Unfortunately, I'm not sure we can even do such studies, as they might lead us to the "wrong" conclusions. I'm not sure such a study would be funded, though I have been making some overtures toward some social scientists at my university to beign to address these things in a systematic way. We'll see if anyone bites. My fear is that this kind of thing will be rejected by academia, and therefore driven to a centrist or center-right policy institute, and thus dismissed out of hand as being politically motivated right-wing propaganda.

But far-left bias in academia is another topic for another time.

Warren|10.3.06 @ 12:06PM|#

I graduated in the mid 90's with a BS in electrical engineering. The university, and every business I've worked at did everything they knew how to recruit women into the field. You can't beg women hard enough to make them EEs. In my classes there was at most two, more often one or none. The MEs had it a little better, perhaps 10%-20%. The Civil engineers were better yet. We didn't have a strong Chem dept. so I don't know about them.

The few women engineers I have worked with have all been top notch.

My personal opinion is that the math scares them. Even women who are good at it, find it deadly dull, and there are so many more interesting opportunities available.

|10.3.06 @ 12:43PM|#

nice strawman, johnny

really. i was waiting for it.

nobody. NOBODY says it's "all biology" to explain the differences.

what a stupid statement.

the issue is, to what extent is it biology? the evidence is pretty clear that there are gender differences in cognition - just like in most aspects of behavior and physical capabilities- there are gender differences.

as usual, arguments like this, ignore the science and use anecdotes and such.

the science is robust. anecdotes and strawmen are not

|10.3.06 @ 12:53PM|#

nice strawman, johnny

really. i was waiting for it.

nobody. NOBODY says it's "all biology" to explain the differences.

what a stupid statement.

the issue is, to what extent is it biology? the evidence is pretty clear that there are gender differences in cognition - just like in most aspects of behavior and physical capabilities- there are gender differences.

as usual, arguments like this, ignore the science and use anecdotes and such.

the science is robust. anecdotes and strawmen are not

|10.3.06 @ 12:57PM|#

thoreau-

�I work out the solutions to problems while swimming laps at the gym. A lot of other people report similar phenomena.�

Mostly how I get ideas. I actually solved a problem in my sleep a few months back. Never happened before; I was shocked when I woke up and it still made sense. It really was an inspired solution too. I don�t know if I would have ever come by it just thinking hard.

All-

The lab where I�m currently working tries very hard to recruit women. So do the other labs. During the last student-recruiting round my boss fought over the single female physical chemistry prospect with two other labs. It got dirty. There is plenty of room and accommodation for female students and postdocs, but they all want to be biochemists and the like. And I�m exclusively talking American women here. There are plenty of female foreign nationals going into my field; mostly Chinese and Indian of course.

When I was an undergrad there was a female Kazak graduate student in our department. An old boyfriend told her that working in the lab was going to make her old and undesirable for men. I get the feeling that most American women don�t find the core sciences appealing for this reason. Maybe not.

|10.3.06 @ 1:09PM|#

Warren, my experiences are similar, with a higher ratio of women (graduated in '01, BSEE).

Only semi-related: you know what they say about MEs, and what they say about CivEs, right?

|10.3.06 @ 1:25PM|#

An interesting question, is it biology, or culture, or both? Looking at the question from another angle:

I work in a field dominated by women - education. At the three schools I've taught at, the ratio of men to women has been about 3 to 1. Applying the logic used in the report cited we would have to assume that there is some kind of reverse discrimination involved. Obviously that makes no sense. At one time teaching was one of very few, if not the only profession available to women and male teachers were frowned upon. But that way of thinking disappeared with the buggy-whip. There is certainly no discrimination against men in the field today, nor has there been in a long, long time.

On the other hand, might there be some biological influence that causes more women to enter the teaching field than men? I tend to think that the so-called maternal instinct may play a role. It's possible that women are just more comfortable around children than men.

What I find to be the most compelling reason though is cultural/economic. Because teaching pays relatively little as compares to other careers, men tend to seek higher paying proffessions because they have traditionally been expected to make more money. Also, teaching allows women to spend time with their children while still having a career: they enjoy free afternoons, weekend, and extended, often paid, vacations.

IMHO, it is a combination of biological, historical, and cultural influnces that makes more women choose education as a career than men. Why would Science, or any other field for that matter, be any different?

|10.3.06 @ 1:36PM|#

I wish there were more women in science, in fact, that's probably one of the reason's I dropped out. I was a physics major in undergraduate ('03) and had to take business, econ, and history classes in my elective spots just so I could be around more women each week! The prospect of grad school seemed daunting...

In general I think both women and men drop out of science at an early stage because of stereotypes. I almost wanted to lie when people asked me what my major was, "econ" would have been so much easier to explain. Of course, I now see my physics degree as a badge of honor while I am surrounded by econ degrees!

thoreau|10.3.06 @ 1:38PM|#

pigwiggle-

Good point. The demographic composition of foreign grad students (with respect to gender) can be somewhat different from the demographic composition of domestic grad students. That, and the fact that astronomy has historically been better than physics at recruiting women, leads me to believe that there are social factors at work here. Whether the social factors come from parents, teachers, professors, other scientists, peers, TV, or whatever, there's gotta be a strong social component to this.

|10.3.06 @ 2:00PM|#

thoreau and pigwiggle,

I went to the gym at lunch and had the following brainstorm: men have only been going into to the professions in large numbers since the GI Bill made college affordable, and women only followed in the 1970's. The fact that women have made the strides we have done is quite remarkable. If one wishes to go back a bit further, a society in which most people had the option of any kind of career is quite a recent historical development. We're complaining about our inability to achieve perfection when we should be celebrating just how far we've gone. [Also, our inability to appreciate just how good we've got it now is one of my pet peeves.]

Having said that, I think that there are still significant social forces working against women entering the sciences, and that society is poorer for imposing those barriers. I'm lucky to work in an field where women have made the longest strides, but, really, science is a lot more important than law to our future. We do well to work on the social factors and worry about the biological factors later.

Finally, anyone else know the story about the invention of the Post-It? A 3M chemist who sang in his church choir got tired of having the pages of the sheet music torn by paper clips and set out to invent something that would mark the place and permit someone to make notes, without permanently damaging the text. That story alone should inspire all employers to encourage their workers to have a life.

|10.3.06 @ 4:35PM|#

TCR

I beg to differ with you about men and education. While I don't think a new PC movement is necessary, men do have a few extra challenges in the education field. My evidence is antidotal, so please take it with a grain of salt.

1. When women become teachers, people assume they are nurturing. When men become teachers, people assume they couldn't succeed at their first choice. I decided to become a teacher when I was in high school. Most people I told responded with, �But you have such high grades, why would you want to teach.�
2. Boys� problems get less attention than girls� problems. When my education textbook mentions the gender gap in math, a page long discussion of gender oppression followed. The gender gap in reading favors girls and is larger than the gender gap in math. It was mentioned without comment on the cause or solution.
3. Male teachers sometimes get extra tasks simply because they are men. There were a couple of times when my principle heard of possible fights after school. He sent a message to all the male teachers, but not the female teachers, telling them to wait outside and �look tough� at the end of the school day.

Education doesn�t have to be female dominated. Before the late 19th century, most teachers in the US were male. Generation X grew up with relative gender equality. The pendulum will swing back a forth a few times with less bias at each swing. Within 30 years, most people will consider the debate purely academic.