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UK scientist discusses general measured IQ differences between the sexes
Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 2010-05-08 16:03
Article here. Excerpt:
'It is my contention - based on a lifetime of academic research - that there is an explanation and I advance it all too aware of the howls of feminist outrage I am about to unleash. So, here goes: one of the main reasons why there are not more female science professors or chief executives or Cabinet ministers is that, on average, men are more intelligent than women. Nor do the shocks to the noisy advocates of equal opportunities stop there, I'm afraid.
...
For instance, at the near-genius level (an IQ of 145), brilliant men outnumber brilliant women by 8 to one. That's statistics, not sexism.
In this context, Professor Greenfield's indignation that only one in ten science professors is female doesn't seem all that bad. It also goes some way to explaining why, in almost 110 years of Nobel Prize history, only two women have ever won the Prize for physics, only four have won the Prize for chemistry and why no women at all have ever won the coveted Fields Medal for mathematics in eight decades of trying.
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By all means, take steps to ensure that boys and girls get the same opportunities in education, but let's also accept that those same opportunities will not produce the same outcomes. Men will always outnumber women in certain fields and vice versa.
My argument isn't based on crude chauvinist doctrine (although I'm quite sure my opponents will disagree) but on decades of research, relatively simple statistics and an understanding of the law of averages.
Of course, just because men, on average, are more intelligent then women, doesn't mean there are no individually brilliant women around.
If I'm right, it doesn't mean there will be no female professors of physics; it just means we should accept that there will be fewer of them. Nor does it mean that a woman will never win the Fields Medal for mathematics; it just means that we live in a world where such an event is very, very unlikely.
I realise my views are unfashionable, just as I realise the juggernaut of sexual equality and political correctness will take an awful lot of stopping.'
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Comments
IQ is one thing, but...
He may be right in the IQ-test sense. But it's also true males are more likely to have learning disabilities than females, too, comprising substantially more of the mentally-handicapped (or -challenged, depending on the severity) population than females.
I am also not a big fan of traditional IQ tests. They tend to have a lot of embedded cultural and test-taking technique biases in them. Some of the comments under the article point this out, while others, of course, are the typical shrill stuff. I do know this: Women are getting a lot of open-doors opportunities men are not getting, if they be only willing to walk through them, and this is one of the many things that is causing the number of women in all manner of positions to increase dramatically (ie, in the historical sense), so social engineering is indeed playing a big role in who becomes the next CEO of this or that corporation, etc. That cannot be denied. And if one's fundamental complaint is that the playing field isn't level, they'd be right: it's skewed in favor of women.
"rewards diligence more than it does intelligence"
"but the blame lies with our exam system, with its emphasis on coursework, which rewards diligence more than it does intelligence."
I couldn't agree more. I think this is one of the major flaws in our high school system.
Whether education should be approached in a practical manner as a means of preparing people for economic purposes or as a way to help "enlighten" people, an emphasis on diligence over intelligence is extremely regressive.
As far as how it relates to MRA, I think this reward system is a major reason boys are doing so poorly in school. Even in my first years of grade school I knew that the girls were the diligent ones. They more often had their permission slips in on time, wrote neatly in their notebooks, and would have a box of organized pencils, erasers, rulers, and so on. Without generalizing too much ill just say that the reward system described above is entirely the reason I didn't do well in high school. I was still motivated and participated frequently in some of my classes, if the teacher was good. I wish the homework would have challenged me to be better, but in truth it was just work for a grade, and personally I could not bring myself to do it. Thankfully the universities are different which helped me out a lot.
I'm not sure why high schools use this reward system. I think it partly has to do with the idea that teachers don't actually have to teach if they grade this way.