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Nature versus prejudice, or why women don't do sums.

  
 
Lurid Archive
09:14 / 19.01.05
I've long been interested in the discussion as to whether there are differences between men and women in mathematical ability. And the president of Harvard seems to have caused some upset by coming down firmly on one side by

suggesting that innate differences in sex may explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.

Now there is certainly some evidence that women do worse than men on spatial awareness tests and (I think this is right) on mathematical reasoning tests. An advocate for gender differences would say that this represents trends rather than a sharp dividing line, so that while there may be some women who are exceptionally good at math, they would on average be less numerate than men and so, at the highly competitive academic end, be less evident in math and science careers. They would probably add that biological differences are seen elsewhere - in sport, say - so why not here?

A response to that would be that it is impossible to separate the nurture from nature in these studies, and it is undeniable that cultural trends have excluded women from certain careers in the past. And therefore it is naive to assume that these pressures have disappeared and are much more likely to explain gender biases than minute biological differences.

For myself, I tend to side with the latter point of view, but I think that this debate is interesting when you compare it with the charges of liberal bias in US academia. I mean, you could dismiss *that* as a dishonest conservative plot, led by Horowitz. But I think that the liberal responses, claiming that a difference in numbers doesn't imply the existence of discrimination, could be equally applied to the case of women and sexism in science. So, being the sort of person who overvalues consistency, I'm interested in the differences between the cases.

I should say that I have a reasonable amount of personal experience to draw on. So, for instance, I've seen very little overt sexism and tend to feel that barriers must be due to systematic pressures rather than individual prejudice. But then, one might dismiss my observations as flawed since I am a bloke, and less likely to notice sexism - either from others or myself. But I am interested to hear how it looks to others.
 
 
Sir Real
12:59 / 19.01.05
Back when I was in school studying education one of our projects involved observing science and math classes at some of the local high schools. We were asked to note differences in how often girls were called on compared to boys, taking into account how frequently each asked to be called on and to note how the teacher responded to each genders inputs into the discusion. I had assumd going in that there would be some small bias towards to males, but perhaps not, it being (at the time) the 20th century and all. I was wrong. The differences were ditressingly startling and obvious to anyone looking for them. Ask around and I bet you'll find similar findings. Many women 'learn' that they aren't good at math this way.
 
 
Liger Null
21:08 / 19.01.05
What exactly were the differences, Sir Real?
 
 
astrojax69
20:00 / 20.01.05
l'anima - there are studies that unfortunately are only still in press - so i can't post it exactly - that show that females process [some particular] emotional responses in different hemispheres to men... in our study, respondents were shown a series of human faces - the responses of women to 'angry' faces showed women respond to an angry male face in the left h. & to an angry female face in the right h., while men processed both angry female and angry male faces in the left h. why the difference? we have no real idea! we presume it is quite primitive; our emotions are - so an evolutionary answer from neurobiology is most likely

but that nonconscious processes are 'hardwired', as it were, differently in women as to men - to the same 'real world' stimuli - is astounding news.
 
 
All Acting Regiment
20:23 / 20.01.05
While I'm sure there is a lot of scientic evidence for both sides, surely it's also worth studying why it is that it always seems IMHO to be white males who come out with a line on "we get a better deal because our biology deserves it".
 
 
Professor Silly
03:49 / 21.01.05
According to the Organisation(sic) for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, in some countries men do better than women in math (like Turkey), while in others they are pretty even (like most Europeon nations). But than again in Iceland, women do much better than men!!! So I would guess it has more to do with cultural differences than any kind of genetic predispostion.
 
  
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