Wow, that guy who wrote the NYTimes article is an asshat.
I was part of that talent search that had the kids take the SAT in 7th grade. Got a 640 on the math, significantly below their 700 cutoff--though I was above that on the verbal. I'm in grad school, in physics, at one of the top programs in the country. And you know what? I'm actually better at math than a lot of the kids in this program, even without being in that top 1 in 10,000 according to the researchers.
I think the scientists are probably right that, even with completely equal social factors, we wouldn't see equal numbers of men and women--but the difference would be in the single-percent levels, not the current physics distribution of four guys for every woman. Also, even if some studies have shown that women fare better at "academic promotions and research grants", the problem with women in science is partially a leaky pipeline: you lose women at every step, from high school to college, college to grad school...so saying that the women who've survived that long do slightly better once they've gotten near the peak of the pyramid is probably just telling you that the selection pressures to get there are higher on women.
Careers in science aren't about raw math ability or slightly better promotion rates. They're about assembling and integrating background knowledge and learning how to ask questions in a way that can get you answers; they're also, for some people, about learning to build machines or use complex equipment. Women start out behind on many of those tasks because, on average, we play with dolls more often than we play with stuff like Legos, so we're not learning the visual-spatial skills for math at an instinctive level in the same way that the average boy is.
And the bias isn't totally the part where we do or don't get job offers or grants or promotions. It's also in the way that I know the first thing I say to a new group of people will not be remembered; it's not a contribution to the science being discussed, it's a way of proving that I deserve to be there at all. It's about the DARE officer who asked us to give a little speech on what we wanted to do with our lives, and who then laughed at me when I said I was going to go to Princeton, become an astrophysicist and work for NASA. It's the way some of my friends have told me that, in high school, they deliberately sabotaged their tests because being the smartest one in the class wasn't something they should be (although I should also say, that was probably a nasty combination of general gender bias and the Midwestern variant of Tall Poppy Syndrome). Or about the way that superminorities, less than around 15% of the population in something, tend to have more trouble regardless of the bias of the people around them. Or the way that girls more than boys pick up math fear from their teachers. From stereotype threat, from the image that science is not a social profession, from lack of role models, from images of scientists in the media... Fix all of that, NY Times writer, and then we can have your discussion about biological differences.
no subject
I was part of that talent search that had the kids take the SAT in 7th grade. Got a 640 on the math, significantly below their 700 cutoff--though I was above that on the verbal. I'm in grad school, in physics, at one of the top programs in the country. And you know what? I'm actually better at math than a lot of the kids in this program, even without being in that top 1 in 10,000 according to the researchers.
I think the scientists are probably right that, even with completely equal social factors, we wouldn't see equal numbers of men and women--but the difference would be in the single-percent levels, not the current physics distribution of four guys for every woman. Also, even if some studies have shown that women fare better at "academic promotions and research grants", the problem with women in science is partially a leaky pipeline: you lose women at every step, from high school to college, college to grad school...so saying that the women who've survived that long do slightly better once they've gotten near the peak of the pyramid is probably just telling you that the selection pressures to get there are higher on women.
Careers in science aren't about raw math ability or slightly better promotion rates. They're about assembling and integrating background knowledge and learning how to ask questions in a way that can get you answers; they're also, for some people, about learning to build machines or use complex equipment. Women start out behind on many of those tasks because, on average, we play with dolls more often than we play with stuff like Legos, so we're not learning the visual-spatial skills for math at an instinctive level in the same way that the average boy is.
And the bias isn't totally the part where we do or don't get job offers or grants or promotions. It's also in the way that I know the first thing I say to a new group of people will not be remembered; it's not a contribution to the science being discussed, it's a way of proving that I deserve to be there at all. It's about the DARE officer who asked us to give a little speech on what we wanted to do with our lives, and who then laughed at me when I said I was going to go to Princeton, become an astrophysicist and work for NASA. It's the way some of my friends have told me that, in high school, they deliberately sabotaged their tests because being the smartest one in the class wasn't something they should be (although I should also say, that was probably a nasty combination of general gender bias and the Midwestern variant of Tall Poppy Syndrome). Or about the way that superminorities, less than around 15% of the population in something, tend to have more trouble regardless of the bias of the people around them. Or the way that girls more than boys pick up math fear from their teachers. From stereotype threat, from the image that science is not a social profession, from lack of role models, from images of scientists in the media... Fix all of that, NY Times writer, and then we can have your discussion about biological differences.