Gender debate revived at Harvard
The controversy sparked by former Harvard president Lawrence H. Summers in 2005 when he questioned women's "intrinsic aptitude" for science may be over, but the issue continues to provoke lively debate on campus.
Yesterday afternoon, Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis University and Steven E. Rhoads of the University of Virginia offered students vastly different takes on women's scientific prowess and why they make the professional choices they do, during a seminar titled "What Larry Summers and Nancy Hopkins Didn't Say: Women in Science."
Barnett cited studies of 3-year-old boys and girls that showed no difference between how they learn to count or read a map - precursors to an aptitude in math. And Barnett took issue with a popular 2003 study that found women's strengths to be making friends, mothering, gossiping, and "reading" their partner. She encouraged the audience to "challenge gender stereotypes."
But Rhoads said men and women are innately different, including in the way they learn.
"I'm the bad guy here," said Rhoads, author of the book "Taking Sex Differences Seriously." "Even if we encourage both [sexes to enter math and science professions] equally, there isn't any closing the gap."
The program was part of a conference titled "A Genuine Debate with Diversity of Views on the Legacy and Future of Feminism," sponsored by the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University. It featured keynote speaker Camille Paglia and seminars like "Sex and the Modern Girl" and "Feminism Encounters Islam." In fliers it was billed as "The Conference the Radcliffe Institute Didn't Want to Host!"
Summers, who resigned as Harvard's president in June 2006, sparked controversy in early 2005 when he said during an academic conference that the innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in math and science. Nancy Hopkins, a biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, walked out on Summers's talk and later said that if she had not, she would have "blacked out or thrown up." Summers, a former treasury secretary, remains on the faculty as a professor of economics at Harvard Kennedy School.
During her presentation, Barnett, who wrote "Same Difference: How Gender Myths are Hurting Our Relationships, Our Children, and Our Jobs," cited research that found a gender bias in the peer review process by which academics in the sciences get their work published. She also critiqued a Pew Research Center paper that found 60 percent of mothers wanted only part-time work, and 19 percent wanted no work outside the home. She said the samples of the mothers were too small and the questions were often poorly worded.
While there may be fewer women involved in math and science, Rhoads said, they tend to dominate in the field of psychology and the humanities. But this disparity has not raised concerns among academics, he said.
"We're not going to have affirmative action for men going into child development," he said. "I don't see that argument being made."
Deborah Blum, author of "Sex On the Brain: The Biological Differences Between Men and Women," offered some middle ground between Barnett's and Rhoads's views, saying academic achievement is based on a complex group of factors, including biology, environment, and genetics.
"I believe biology influences behavior," she said, but "the influencing behavior is not the same as destiny."
John McNulty, a graduate student at Harvard, attended the seminar while caring for his 6-month-old daughter, Eulaie. He said he was intrigued by one study showing that young boys tend to receive longer explanations about cause and effect than girls.
"I can personally think of many examples where I had that kind of discussion with my father," he said. "I'd like to provide my daughter with many of the same things."
