The Boys of Summers
By At Balkanization, Mark Graber makes a great point about the Summers fracas:
Why does the president of Harvard focus only on those academic areas where superficial numbers suggest boys do slightly better than girls, ignoring those academic areas where initial impressions suggest girls do much better than boys?
Rather than genetics, doesnt it seem more likely that the tenured faculty in science departments are overwhelmingly male for the same environmental reasons which explain why most English departments have at least as many tenured men as women? Men in our society improve their standing vis-a-vis women in all disciplines from high school and college to professional life. When men start with a slight advantage, they wind up with almost total control. When men start with a severe disadvantage, they obtain equality, if not some advantage. This is culture, not genetics, unless one assumes the genetic effects of masculinity only kick in around age 25. This notion, obviously absurd, also contradicts medical observations that genetic predispositions generally begin to exert their influence early in life. (My emphasis.)
Exactly. One obvious problem with the arguments made by Summers et al. is that men have historically dominated all academic fields, and faculty in almost all fields, and continue to predominate in many (and are underrespresnted in very few.) If, as Saletan argues, women are just as intelligent on average, then shouldn’t there be a number of academic fields as dominated by women as the sciences are by men? If 28 out of every 32 English professors Harvard hired were women, it might be worth looking at genes (although it is still overwhelmingly likely that “culture” was the primary factor.) And we could debate whether this is good or not. But it’s just not what’s going on.
Another worthy subject of discussion is the affirmative action practiced in university admissions that benefits males. Brandeis, for example, changed its admissions criteria because based on grades and test scores 70% of the students admitted would be women. I don’t know if it would be that extreme everywhere, but if I understand correctly this is pretty common; girls tend to get better grades in high school.This Christian Science Monitor article found 50 schools that admitted significantly higher numbers of men than women to achieve a rough gender equality in their undergraduate classes 3 years in a row, and more than 250 that did it at least once in the 3 year period. Odd how you never here the Pinkers and Murrays complaining about this affront to American individualism or asserting this is proof that women are naturally smarter than men, isn’t it? As soon as they apply their tautologies consistently and are willing to fight for undergraduate classes that are predominantly female, I’ll listen to their arguments about how male domination of math faculties is how nature intended it. (Well, not really, but obviously this bluff will never be called anyway…)