NY Times: Daring to Discuss Women in Science

Submitted by anthony on Wed, 2010-06-09 17:07

Article here. Excerpt:

'The House of Representatives has passed what I like to think of as Larry’s Law. The official title of this legislation is “Fulfilling the potential of women in academic science and engineering,” but nothing did more to empower its advocates than the controversy over a speech by Lawrence H. Summers when he was president of Harvard.

This proposed law, if passed by the Senate, would require the White House science adviser to oversee regular “workshops to enhance gender equity.” At the workshops, to be attended by researchers who receive federal money and by the heads of science and engineering departments at universities, participants would be given before-and-after “attitudinal surveys” and would take part in “interactive discussions or other activities that increase the awareness of the existence of gender bias.”

I’m all in favor of women fulfilling their potential in science, but I feel compelled, at the risk of being shipped off to one of these workshops, to ask a couple of questions:

1) Would it be safe during the “interactive discussions” for someone to mention the new evidence supporting Dr. Summers’s controversial hypothesis about differences in the sexes’ aptitude for math and science?

2) How could these workshops reconcile the “existence of gender bias” with careful studies that show that female scientists fare as well as, if not better than, their male counterparts in receiving academic promotions and research grants?'

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Comments

....always been ahead of males in reading comprehension and language skills is a result of social bias towards females, yet the last Bastian of natural male advantage must be attacked and ridiculed as the last 'old boys club'.

Why can we not accept that there exists differences between the genders that are not related to physical strength or that solely benefit females? I mean, NO JURY ON EARTH would take 90 minutes to return a not guilty verdict for a man who drugged and then murdered his wife with a silenced pistol after possibly years of laying the groundwork and shooting his corpse again two hours after the execution was carried out. and recruited his friends to help him clean up the body. But it's ASSUMED that women are not violent or vindictive by nature and thus, her level of planning and malice in executing her MUST mean he was a really bad guy and had it coming because no woman would go to such lengths unprovoked. Females are ASSUMED to be gentle and nurturing by nature and incapable of lashing out in anger, and only capable of violence in self defense or to protect their offspring.

Same with reading and language skills. If women are naturally better at it then men that's great. Multitasking and social skills, MUCH more subjective and harder to measure traits then aptitude in mathematics and science as there is not clear definition of either trait, but women say they are better at it so let's give it them. Though I've never seen a female able to command a unit in MAG while surfing on a laptop for strategy guides for the level, while eating dinner, and keeping the conversation going with friends in the room all at the same time. But I guess multitasking only counts of your breastfeeding and talking on a cell phone while shopping for shoes in the mall. Back to commanding units of online players in a video game though, isn't that some sort of skill involving communicating with other people and getting tasks done while building comradely at the same time? Would that not be a social skill? Oh yeah, I forgot, social skill only matter if you notice that your boss wears on tie when he's meeting his girlfriend after work instead of his wife, and that bitch you hate gained 5 pounds so you MUST tell everyone. Yeah I forgot, social skills don't actually require anything productive be accomplished so the kinds of thing men are good at like coaching, or mentoring just don't count.

But dammit girls are as good at men at math and science no matter what anyone says, and if we have to we'll just change math and science to prove it. No more correct or incorrect answers for math questions, writing a paragraph explaining your approach no matter how assed backwards it is is worth more point on tests. That way boys who just get the right answers will get lower scores then girl who got it wrong but can explain their own stupidity in math verbally.

Since it's hard to make girls do things they naturally do not want to do, the only reasonable solution is to make boys not want to do it even more them girls so the numbers equal out. If as many young boys are turned off as possible by 'new math' then the numbers of older boys perusing higher education in math will fall and if we can just get a few more girls to peruse math as a means of scoring a good provider husband with high earning potential for when she drops out and pops out, then the numbers will eventually reach parity or something - as long as boys don't have the advantage in ANYTHING, then all's right with the matriarchy.

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Submitted by Paragon on Thu, 2010-06-10 15:59