We blinded science with she
Friday July 18, 2008
Please, Thomas Dolby, forgive the excruciating pun in the subject line. This, from John Tierney's NYTimes science blog, is doubleplus bad news: Until recently, the impact of Title IX, the law forbidding sexual discrimination in education, has been limited mostly...
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Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Men dominate science because they are practical and unlikely to respond to their discovery of radium by killing themselves making glow-in-the-dark kielbasa like Madame Curie did.
Well, I took the test out of curiosity, scored a 21.
Still in the average, but definitely higher than most men, much less other women.
Which makes sense. I'm not super social, I'm not extremely emotional. I think that I'm more into social sciences (with the emphasis more on the science than the social) over mathematics kept the score down.
This surprises anyone how? The battle lines for Title IX dollars in sports have for the most part been settled...mens wrestling lost, womens softball and basketball won! At the collegiate level the ceasefire has been in effect for a while now. Bureaucrats busy little bees that they are have budgets and staffs to protect. What did we expect would happen. That they would just look around with self satisfied expressions say "Our work here is done", and leave?
You know, they may have a point; they're just not taking it far enough. The gender ratio in higher ed is very quickly approaching a 60-40 split favoring women. There is clearly a systemic injustice at work in the overall system. I propose that the whole system be "Title IXed" and that 1/3 of the women in or aspiring to college be told that there is no longer a place for them here unless an equal number of qualified male students can be found.
Math is hard.
"mens wrestling lost"
Where? You'd never know that here in the Midwest.
What's frustrating here is sort of twofold. First, there's the noxious assumption by certain agitators that any gender-line disparity MUST be due to wicked male sexism and discrimination, and that therefore this disparity must be "corrected" by any means necessary. Then there's the fact that if any instance of actual discrimination is discovered, the noise created trying to downplay or ignore it from certain segments will be deafening.
I swear sometimes I wish we reproduced asexually -- if only to shut the wild-eyed feminists and their male chauvanist counterparts up. :)
I took Cambridge University's online autism quotient diagnostic, and scored a 9 out of 50 (most adult men score 17, adult women 15).
I just took it. I scored a 35.
Wow...I'm going to have to think about this for a while...
I got a 35 too - used to be a fairly successful professional musician (so much for the performing arts I guess). I guess that explain why I went back and got a Comp Sci degree. And to think I wanted to be a therapist at one point - oh the humanity!
"mens wrestling lost"
Where? You'd never know that here in the Midwest.
Yeah, I know in Iowa mens college wrestling is popular and largely self supporting! But I know that across the country mens wrestling was often the first to go as it didn't generate any revenue at all. Football, Basketball, and Baseball (Football primarily) carry the the rest of the athletic department.
The problem also is that in order to get tenure-track positions in the sciences, you're doing your best work during the child-rearing years. Any woman who decides to have and raise ( or have them raised for you ) children and still pursue a career in science, is going to have an uphill battle, to say the least. I would be interested to see data based on woman who forgo children or , as now is the case, have them in their late-30s and early-40s to see what the distribution is. We may just be seeing a skew based on the women who decide to opt out of the charge for the brass ring of tenure...
Hmm. I took the quiz out of curiosity (and a desire to avoid actually writing my column for this week)and scored a 24. Still normal, but well above the average for women.
But I confess the aspect of my job that I dislike most is dealing with complaining people. I'm just terrible at it. The conversation never ends with a "satisfied customer" - the new goal of most news organizations.
On Title IX, my opinion is mixed. It clearly opened opportunities for me to participate in sports that had not existed for the generation prior. But I concede that it might have swung too far in the other direction. Although the football-to-be-worshiped-as-a-God culture here, seems to stifle all other sports much more than any women's sports do.
Interesting quiz--I scored a 10.
As for the objection that, well, women could be first-class scientists if they didn't also have to postpone career advancement to have children, etc., that's the same objection regularly made to explain women's underrepresentation in fields from science to technology to corporate CEO jobs to high-level government or military positions to a plethora of others. But the reality is that on the one hand, women have always had to make such choices, and on the other, that these days even a man may find his "career track" impacted if he participates "too much" in the life of his family (a company I won't speak of and an executive I won't name recently told some people whose identity I disavow all knowledge of that "Weekends and vacation are overrated," as part of a push to squeeze even more work hours per week out of the employees).
There are always going to be a handful of women who excel in even those branches of science where abstract mathematical reasoning is a prerequisite. There will always be a handful of men whose gentle, nurturing nature makes them ideal pediatric nurses (or stay-at-home dads). But we're kidding ourselves if we think we can force a quota on either option--the end result will be to direct people who aren't even close to being qualified for these fields into them, and set them up for failure.
Holy cats! I scored a 30. For a woman, this is astonishing. Maybe I should stop posting for a while and just THINK about this.
But, OTOH....I am fascinated by situations in which the usual way of choosing people to do particular things is not available for some reason or another, and we have to use a different batch of criteria, or anyway choose some people who would never have been chosen under the previous system. The results are often amazingly good. Wars tend to make this happen a lot. Women, and working-class people (outside the usual officer caste), and people from subjected races often get catapulted into eminence when the officer caste gets killed off or for some other reason is no longer available, and the newbies often do an utterly terrific job. Could this happen in science, if we let it? Why not give it a try? Look at Title Nine--nobody in a thousand years would have predicted how well women's soccer and women's basketball have caught on.
So many of you seem to be so startled by your scores on the autism assessment that I think I'll start a separate thread for that above. Come over and join the discussion!
I was part of the generation of girls who were pushed in the science direction, to even out the balance so to say. I went to a math and science magnet school and attended all sorts of leadership seminars and an annual "girls and math" day. I still went on to become an artist.
Ironically, I have a great appreciation for math, even though I've never been very good at it. I incorporate math-beauty in my art as much as I can. And I have a fascination for real-life fractals.
The other possibility we might consider is not requiring women to keep to the same educational and vocational timetable as their male age-mates. The data seem pretty clear that girls mature faster than boys in most of the academic skills. Why not let them start school earlier, and finish faster? This could leave them two or three extra years to bear children and then get back into the workforce at the same age as the guys, on track to keep up with them. The added advantage, for boys, is that they would no longer be expected to keep up with girls who are neurologically more mature.
This really does sum up a large part of the disparity in the sciences. Ditto for the military. I can see staying in as being a very viable option. The job is secure, the cameraderie and sense of mission cannot be matched on the outside, you can advance to specialized or commissioned officer, you can choose to become a true expert in your field, the benefits are great (100% free health care, we don't even pay co-payments for cough syrup, let alone procedures and consults,) everything is subsidized - but they give you six weeks of maternity leave, and six months after you give birth you are considered fully deployable (and remember these deployments can be up to 15 months long.) So I'm not even considering staying in the military.
"The problem also is that in order to get tenure-track positions in the sciences, you're doing your best work during the child-rearing years. Any woman who decides to have and raise ( or have them raised for you ) children and still pursue a career in science, is going to have an uphill battle, to say the least. I would be interested to see data based on woman who forgo children or , as now is the case, have them in their late-30s and early-40s to see what the distribution is. We may just be seeing a skew based on the women who decide to opt out of the charge for the brass ring of tenure...
Posted by: octopus | July 18, 2008 1:01 PM"
"The other possibility we might consider is not requiring women to keep to the same educational and vocational timetable as their male age-mates. The data seem pretty clear that girls mature faster than boys in most of the academic skills. Why not let them start school earlier, and finish faster? This could leave them two or three extra years to bear children and then get back into the workforce at the same age as the guys, on track to keep up with them. The added advantage, for boys, is that they would no longer be expected to keep up with girls who are neurologically more mature.
Posted by: Marian Neudel | July 18, 2008 2:24 "
Now that's an interesting idea, one which I myself have mulled in the nebulous half-formed science fiction stories that rattle around in my skull. A lot of girls could start earlier, and most women could probably get their bachelor's or technical qualification two to three years sooner. Perhaps this should be encouraged.
"Now that's an interesting idea, one which I myself have mulled in the nebulous half-formed science fiction stories that rattle around in my skull. A lot of girls could start earlier, and most women could probably get their bachelor's or technical qualification two to three years sooner. Perhaps this should be encouraged."
BTW, the last time I broached this proposal, in the context of another group, I got jumped on with both feet by people who thought I was saying that for a woman to have kids and stay home with them, even for a mere two or three years, was a waste of her time. I phrased it pretty much the way I did here, so it was nice that people actually heard what I said instead of what people they were mad at had said about a related topic.
Oh boy. Is this going to be rich to watch. If the Darwinists, and others in science think the christian Intelligent Design community has annoyed them, wait till the feminists get thru with their programs and departments. They will soon be wishing for an old fashioned Creationist debate again. The feminist tendency to declare UNFAIR, in capitol letters, everything that God and human nature happen to accept as normal, makes them twist everything they touch, like a pretzel to fit thier ideology. Like I said, it's going to be rich to watch.
I'm a female and I've always been interested in maths, music and physics. I also exceeded in those areas at school and later had my first degree in classical music theory and composition. I wished I could study the other two also but there was no course where I could combine all of them. Now my son is studying maths and physics (he's only 8 but is already several years ahead of his peers).
We are of course not the usual norm. My son and I have Asperger's. My husband used to be an engineer but now owns his own business in another area. He also has Autistic traits.
I've always wanted to study science but was discouraged because I was told, it is men's domain so I chose music instead (another subject that deals with systems).
People with Autism have extreme form of male intelligence and are naturally drawn to systems. But because of my Autism and my subsequent inability to suck up to men, pretend I care, flutter eye-lashes, stir shit, spread gossip and lie meant that I would not survive in a highly social environment of University. Women are expected to be experts at navigating social envirnments and I'd be bullied and pushed out, like I have been many times in the past in all the social-based jobs I did.
I tend to work best alone or in very small groups and prefer to get on with things, not chat about nothing and waste time (which is expected of you in social environment or they'll think you're weird, which they do. I hate always feeling like an outsider but gossip and shallow talk makes me physically sick).
So what I'm tryin to say is the descrimination the women in science are facing are more to do with their unrecognised autism - not because they are women. And it's true, 'normal' women would not even be drawn to the sciences in the first place (even though they'd get on with everyone great).
That's the real reason.
Roza
www.myspace.com/rozagy
I think plenty of women are drawn to science and math, but factors such as their APTITUDE, the attitude of male-dominated population already in those fields, and the general lower proportion of women in fields that demand more time and energy than women are willing or able to give if they have young children, are what tip the scale against them going there. But I think you may have hit on the aptitude bit in your posting.
Fewer women have the aptitude for hard science. There are plenty of women who have the aptitude, but fewer than there are men. I'm not sure why this should be controversial (except of course for the fact that you get more societal power and pay from being a nuclear physicist than a primary caregiver), I am sure there are plenty of fields for which fewer men have the aptitude. In the same way, women, on average have less muscular strength and are slower at running distances. This is an indisputable fact. There a number of physical differences between the genders in brain structure. Those who would disregard or discount the very concrete differences between the genders are overlooking a little thing called reality.
Affirmative action isn't the answer. A public relations drive to get more women who have aptitudes in science and math to consider a career in the same might be.
You just knew this was going to happen, right? The Liberal cannot accept reality as it is. He must try to change reality to fit his theories. Academic science departments often have liberal-minded people, so it will be interesting if they will allow their departments to self-destruct or if they will hold the line.
If the score differences between men and women is just two points it's not that massive. Granted it's not certain to me that you have to be more like an Asperger's person to get into science or math. (Which is not to disparage people with it. It likely does help some, I'm just skeptical it's necessary) The "life sciences", like biology, are increasingly becoming more gender even. Even with math I think I read somewhere 40% of bachelor's degrees in math are women, it's when you get higher up the chain (like doctoral level) that the imbalance gets pronounced. There does seem to be a real difference in the more abstract or mechanical elements. Traditionally few women become notable in geometry or mechanical drawing.
Still there are plenty of notable female physicists who never poisoned themselves or anything. Lise Meitner lived to be 90 and was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission.
However this is not as pronounced as the imbalance in reading and language. In every nation I know of men are not even close to women's average in reading or grammar. English programs are usually female dominated. The top positions might be more male because women are less likely to have seniority as they were less common as professors in the older generations. In time those will probably also be dominated by women, if they're not already. Nursing has, of course, always been female dominated. Whether programs will come in to encourage men to be nurses and English teachers I don't know, but my guess is it won't happen.
We all tend to resist seeing reality as it is. Some of us prefer imagining that it is still what it used to be, while others imagine it the way they would like it to be. You can put labels on those tendencies if you like, but none of us can bear too much reality at once.
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/eon0728hm.html
The New York Times is determined to show that women are discriminated against in the sciences; too bad the facts say otherwise. A new study has “found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests,” claims a July 25 article by Tamar Lewin—thus, the underrepresentation of women on science faculties must result from bias. Actually, the study, summarized in the July 25 issue of Science, shows something quite different: while boys’ and girls’ average scores are similar, boys outnumber girls among students in both the highest and the lowest score ranges. Either the Times is deliberately concealing the results of the study or its reporter cannot understand the most basic science reporting.
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