Women in Sciences "issues of intrinsic aptitude"

[adihere]

"Women in Sciences - issues of intrinsic aptitude"

You guys are aware of the controversy with harvard president's speech,
SPEECH IS BELOW ,WHAT DO YOU SAY


Harvard president's speech still draws controversy.The firestorm at Harvard University continues to intensify. In January, the school's president gave a speech in which he questioned whether gender differences explain why fewer women than men excel in math and science.

They were recorded in print by what he thought was an "off the record" interview at a National Bureau of Economic Research conference.

Among his comments to a conference of economists last month, according to the transcript, the former U.S. treasury secretary compared the relatively low number of women in the sciences to the numbers of Catholics in investment banking, whites in the National Basketball Association and Jews in farming. He theorized that a ``much higher fraction of married men'' than married women are willing to work 80-hour weeks in order to attain ``high-powered'' jobs. And he suggested he believed that, in the sciences and engineering, the innate aptitude of women was a factor behind their low numbers in the field.

``My best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon - by far - is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity; that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude; and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination,'' Summer said, according to the transcript. ``I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them,'' he added.

Though Lawrence Summers has apologized, some are still calling for his ouster.

[shrikanthk]

This has been a huge controversy.
God knows what would have happened if the subject had been a racial one,ie if
Summers had made similar observations with regard to the African-american community. Who knows,he might have been excommunicated from academia.

More opinions on this issue here.

[meghashyam]

what if he is right ?

maybe women are not tuned for science and tech

[zango]

interesting train of thoughts - something that can be easily followed up upon in the reservations thread.

[thedragonreborn]

well the poor chap's been hollering himself hoarse denyin all that. it seems that there exists no recorded version as the meetin was an informal one and his comments being off the record...

he certainly sud have been more delicate or have avoided the issue, not for the issue's sake but takin into consideration his position as the head of such a prestigious varsity. it doesnt auger well for the varsity to have its head honcho caught with his pants down.....

anyway, it is general proved and held that women's brains are more capable at word and colour usage while men are more space-time cognitive. logically that means that men sud be better at maths while women sud excel with pen, paper, canvas and brushes. but this is not backed by irrefutable proof as there are exceptions to the above generalisations, with perhaps Madame Curie being the torch bearer for women. and there is certainly no dearth of the male of the species who eke out an existance by puttin pen to paper...

cheers