Deliberative Essay
Leanne: Hello, I'm Leanne Hinkle reporting for Boulder High news. As we approach the end of the fall semester, we seniors are all under pressure from parents and colleges to decide what we want to do with the rest of our lives. This pressure can vary, however, based on a student's gender. Over the years, there has been an increasing effort to get high school girls interested in majoring in math, science, and engineering. Some think this is progress from where we were years ago; others just consider it to be a nuisance. Either way, according to the American Institute of Physics, the number of women in the fields of math and most of the sciences still trails the number of men in these fields significantly (American Institute of Physics [AIP], 2003). The statistics are particularly alarming to women's rights advocates and many in the scientific community because of the possibility that thousands of women are being discouraged from these areas of study. The underlying questions this raises are these: Is science losing some of its greatest potential in women because of society's attitude towards women in these fields? Or are women just naturally programmed to have lesser skill in these areas and greater interest in other academic or social pursuits? To explore this, we join John Morrison, who is interviewing two college women- Danielle Fritz, a chemistry major, and Zoë Smith, a psychology major- who have already had to make this decision.
John: Friedrich Nietzsche once said, "when a woman becomes a scholar there is usually something wrong with her sexual organs". Today, anyone who hears that quote will hopefully find it utterly absurd, or at the very least mildly offensive. But however much one may now want to tell Nietzsche where to stuff that particular sentiment, it unfortunately reflects a long-standing assumption in our culture that women are intellectually inferior to men, especially in the fields of math and science. But why? We'll start with Danielle, and let these two speak to each other while I just record.
Danielle: Women are certainly just as capable as men at math and science, but bias is so deeply entrenched in our culture that it's even present in the upper echelons of the academic community. Just a few years ago, the president of Harvard got sacked for saying that women don't have as much "innate ability" as men in math and science. At least some people walked out on him (Kantrowitz et. al, 2005).
Zoë: I remember that, and the fact that he was fired is appalling. He was just trying to be provocative, not to offend anyone (Wisse, 2005). I think it's terrible that the president of one of the most prestigious research universities in the country can't voice anything that goes against some people's opinions (Wisse, 2005). He of all people should be allowed to spark controversy in the scientific community (Wisse, 2005). This question is an important one, to be sure, but the academic and scientific community can't live in fear of offending someone at the expense of actually researching it (Wisse, 2005). They shouldn't be afraid of coming to a not-so-popular conclusion (Wisse, 2005).
Danielle: Oh, I agree that he should be able to spark controversy, but saying something so offensive about so many gifted women isn't the way to do it- have you read his actual speech? He sprinkles it with things like "I'm probably completely wrong about this", and then follows up with "but..." and proceeds to trash women's cognitive abilities (Summers, 2005). That's not okay. Think of the message he's sending out to all the young women out there who are considering going into math or science- he even implies that his young daughters weren't cut out for math and science for heaven's sake (Summers, 2005)! He could have sparked controversy by presenting both sides of the argument and challenging people to find a viable explanation once and for all- he didn't. He took a side and argued it without thought or consideration for the people he was speaking to, with no more evidence than his own personal opinions, and no expertise in the field. He seemed to completely dismiss the many scientists and psychologists who think men and women's cognitive abilities are fundamentally the same (Summers, 2005). As for the research, a lot has been done and is in progress, but overall it does not support the idea that women are just not good at math or science.
Zoë: But it does! For example, it's a well-established fact that young boys are better at mental rotation, a measure of spatial reasoning, than girls of the same age (Kimura, 2007). This can be extrapolated to explain why boys are better at math.
Danielle: I agree that the studies done on young boys and girls show that boys are better at mental rotation and girls are better at language acquisition are valid. However, you can't read more into the data than is actually there. There is no evidence actually connecting a child's mental rotation ability to their overall ability in mathematics or science (Valian, 2005). Besides, you have to look at the converse argument; just because boys score lower on language tests when they are young does not mean that they can't become great writers (Sax, cited in Glazer, 2005). Furthermore, either sex can improve at either of these tasks with practice (Valian, 2005 and Glazer, 2005). Why should such tests in early childhood determine a girl's future but not a boy's? That's illogical, not to mention unfair.
Zoë: But these differences are also observed later in life. Older boys also score higher on mathematical reasoning tests (Kimura, 2007). While boys' and girls' average scores are similar, boys tend to cluster at the extremes of the data, meaning that there are more extremely intelligent males than females (Kimura, 2007).
Danielle: As for the standardized test scores, as Virginia Valian, a psychology professor at Hunter college, puts it "the differences on math tests do not account for the gender gap in who chooses to major in science- the gender gap persists even when you take test scores into account, so in a sense the question is moot" (Valian, 2005). Again, all you need to do to see why this evidence does not support your claim is to alter the context slightly. Asian students, both male and female, consistently score higher than American students on standardized math tests (Glazer, 2005). However, I doubt that you would suggest that this is because Asians are genetically predisposed to be better at math and science. To draw this conclusion from the evidence would be ridiculous, especially given that Asian American students do not score any higher than any other American ethnic group. The same is true for women in science and math- standardized test scores do not necessarily support the idea that women don't go into these fields because of society, but they certainly don't prove that it is biological either. On top of that, studies have been done that show that the mere act of writing one's gender down before taking a test causes women to score lower on math exams- there is always the possibility that the test themselves could be biased against women (Bower, 2007).
Zoë: Oh, come on. I wasn't expecting to be subjected to a feminist rant. If you ask me, the problem with our society is not that it's particularly biased against women, but that this feminist dogma is so entrenched in our culture that I can't even hold an opposing opinion without some crazy bitch jumping down my throat. Ruth R. Wisse, a professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, wrote an editorial after Larry Summers' original speech saying that "this accusation of bias, advanced by feminists and often accepted at face value by the academic community, attempts to transform guarantees of equal opportunity to guarantees of equal outcome" (Wisse, 2005). In other words, just because women have the opportunity to go into math and science doesn't mean that they are able or willing to do so.
Danielle: I know- life is rough with all those feminists trying to stamp out your freedom of thought. Ironically, racists have argued that same thing for centuries. I cite the racial analogy again because it raises such an important question: "is there much difference between scientific racism and scientific sexism?" (Cockburn, 2005). I would argue that there is not; the same evidence that you think supports the idea that women are biologically predisposed to be less capable of doing math and science can be applied to explain why there are fewer Hispanic people in math and science than, say, Caucasians. I see where you are coming from, and I really am not trying to act as the thought police here; if you want to believe that men are superior at doing math, fine. If you think that you personally are not as good at math as men, that's fine too- trust me, I don't mind- you're less competition for me. But when you start telling your daughters and sisters and young women who are just as capable as their male counterparts in math or science that they're just not as smart and should give up their ambitions, it's counterproductive and discriminates against them. When you propagate the myth that women who are innately good at math and science are the abnormality, it makes these young women think that there is something wrong or unfeminine about them personally. That is discrimination, plain and simple.
Zoë: How dare you compare me to a racist? You're missing-
Danielle: No worse than "crazy bitch"... but please, go on.
Zoë: You are missing the point. When affirmative action advocates argue that women should be given preference over men, or even that there should be a 50-50 quota in hiring or recruiting, it pushes men and boys out- that's just as sexist (Sommers, 2008). You can't give away jobs or positions based on gender (Sommers, 2008). Qualified men shouldn't be overlooked in favor of less qualified women for things like college admissions or jobs (Wisse, 2005).
Danielle: I agree that given the choice between a well-qualified man and a less-qualified woman, the man should be given preference; but often, that is not the case. A recent study by Madeline Heilman and her colleagues at New York University illustrates the fallacy of assuming that people can accurately judge how relatively well-qualified two people, a man and a woman, actually are (Valian, 2005). In the experiment, evaluators were asked to rate how competent and how likable an assistant vice president of an aircraft company was (Valian, 200). When they were told nothing about how competent the employee was, they rated a male employee as more competent than a female employee and rated the male and the female employees as equally likable (Valian, 2005). When the evaluators were told that the employee was doing a good job, they rated both the man and the woman as equally competent, but rated the man as more likable than the woman (Valian, 2005). So people have a tendency to assume that a man is more competent than an equally well-qualified woman, unless of course they are told that she is just as competent, in which case she must be less likable than an equally well-qualified man. A similar study was conducted by Rhea Steinpreis, a Ph.D. and licensed clinical psychologist, while she was at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee (Glazer, 2005). She sent an identical resume to 238 randomly selected psychology professors, some of which had the name "Karen Miller" at the top and some of which had the name "Brian Miller" (Glazer, 2005). Two-thirds of these professors said they would hire the applicant named "Brian" but only half said they would hire "Karen" (Glazer, 2005). With two studies that so clearly illustrate a gender bias, for that is really the only explanation for these findings, I don't quite see how you can argue that employers on the whole are non-biased enough to be able to judge a woman based on her skills and qualifications alone. If they were, then affirmative action would indeed be outdated and unnecessary. But the facts speak for themselves; we as a society haven't reached that point yet. Oh, and incidentally, I notice that you're not taking up arms against men who are "pushing" women out of the humanities and other language-oriented fields of study; one could just as easily say that because men are not as "innately talented" at languages (which I do not happen to think is any more true than women being worse at math), they should back off and let the more qualified women have the jobs they deserve.
Zoë: You can't just keep trying to apply the hypothesis that women's brains are innately more suited to soft sciences to unrelated situations.
Danielle: Why not? As I said, the evidence supports these other situations just as much, or rather as little, as this one. And what do you mean by "soft science" anyway?
Zoë: I mean things like social sciences- psychology, history, art, languages, biology- things that don't depend on math as much as the hard sciences, like physics, chemistry, and engineering.
Danielle: Biology?!? Biology is hardly a "soft science" by that definition!
Zoë: Doreen Kimura, a professor of psychology at Simon Fraser University, says that "while biological sciences certainly require some mathematical ability, it is not at a level required for physics" (Kimura, 2007).
Danielle: Wow. That borders on complete ignorance, even if Kimura is a Ph.D. psychologist. While biology may have started out as a less math-dependant science, especially in fields like classifying plants and animal based on their common traits, but seriously... now, biology is heavily based on technology and chemistry. And there are so many different subcategories of biology- you're honestly telling me that women go into biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology but not chemistry and computer science? Chemistry and biology are particularly interesting to compare. I assure you that biochemistry uses very nearly the same thought processes as chemistry- the only difference is that the compounds a biologist works with are carbon-based. Furthermore, the technology and computer science that biologist has to use, program, and create requires no less math than an that of an engineer or a physicist. It seems that it is not the case that women go into biology because it is not based on math; rather, it appears that some people consider biology a "soft science" precisely because almost as many women do go into the field as men. You can't base the definition of "soft science" on how many women get a degree in it and then use it to try to "prove" that women only go into "soft sciences". The reasoning is completely circular.