You seem to be taking the broad umbrella theme of Summers's statement and fleshing it out with better points than he makes, but I don't see that the two of you exactly agree. And there is an intentional difference, too, between your acknowledging biological truths in your assessment of the general arch of his ideas and his motivation for stating the same (with entirely different, and insufficiently rigorous, points).

But we don't really know what his points were -- by design, no transcript for the conference exists. I'll admit I'm reading between the lines, but so is everyone else. The NYT article at least quotes him as saying he was trying to be provocative. From what I've read there's plenty of meat to criticisms of Harvard's hiring practices under his tenure, but I'm not as convinced that he was arguing for the status quo as others seem to be.

So we don't maybe have good ground for judgment, but that he went in with some intent to provoke the tenured women from his university—and apparently succeeded—would seem to lend more support to the hard reading than the delicate one. Impossible to say, probably, and maybe his critics knees all jumped the gun.

That said, I'm not sure how you're getting from the criticism of his critics to the point at which you and he are advancing the same argument (or at least the same supporting points).

Fair enough, but this ignores the fact that women have surpassed men by many -- probably most -- academic metrics. They've got higher GPAs, and there are between 5 and 10 percent more women in college than men.

And I'm not sure that this doesn't simply suggest that math and science are something of a last plantation. Girls used to be bad at everything, and it's hard to say with confidence that every factor that led to those previous statistics has been accounted for and answered. Girl achievement is still relatively new, but maybe within a generation or so you'll have a field that's settled enough (i.e., exhibiting sufficient equality) to guage the nurture side of the equation. One thing is true: Our previous estimates of girls' nature continue to be overturned.

I'm at work and in no mood to go digging around, but to my knowledge there have been no major studies on this published in the last few years. Prior to that (i.e., when I was in school studying psychobiology), there was no conclusive evidence either way. There's all kinds of methodological trickery around too...wanting to "be provovative" does not good science make.

My own research senior year dealt with visual enumeration tasks - on which gender differences were negligible and not of the sort to which Mr. Summers alluded; and on visual language processing, the "Stroop Task," on which I found only trend data, giving an edge to some but not all women.

Of course there have to be differences in how men and women process different types of information...we're very different charachters. The thing is, the idea of one being better than the other is rather stupid. Plus, there is essentially no way to control for societal influence on things like how good girls versus boys are at math. Or football. A more interesting study, which (again to my knowledge) has not been done yet,would be to examine math, spatial, and verbal abilities in top mathematics, engineering, and literature/linguistics professionals of different genders. *That* I'd like to see.

So we don't maybe have good ground for judgment, but that he went in with some intent to provoke the tenured women from his university—and apparently succeeded—would seem to lend more support to the hard reading than the delicate one.

I think he intended to "provoke" in the sense of "provoking a debate". Not "piss off". So I'm not sure an uncharitable interpretation is the most reasonable.

I'm at work and in no mood to go digging around, but to my knowledge there have been no major studies on this published in the last few years. Prior to that (i.e., when I was in school studying psychobiology), there was no conclusive evidence either way.

I'll grant that the situation is complicated -- the relative mathematical abilities of the sexes are highly debatable. But spatial reasoning tests are pretty clear-cut as favoring men. That's not interchangeable with mathematical ability, but it's in the same ballpark.

I'll admit I'm not qualified to deny Kriston's "last plantation" theory -- as a guy, I'm hardly in a position to deny that there exists prejudicial treatment favoring boys. But I will say that it's tough to find a more objectively meritocratic system than math tests, and that almost all of my math teachers were women (presumably negating any phallocratically-drive uneven distribution of instruction). If there is some unique socializing influence that's preventing female achievement in math, I at least am not aware of what it could be.

In any case, while I suspect that there is a minor biological advantage, I also believe there's a good chance that differences in chosen professions have more to do with biologically-informed preferences than abilities. (Cue arguments about whether little girls like dolls and boys like toy trucks because of social constructs forced upon them)

Well, at this point it's going to be extremely hard to field a coherent argument about any single variable or outcome. But isn't that sort of the point about Summers? His job in no way qualifies him to speak about the subject. It would be one thing if he said, "As an administrator, I'd like to support and recommend Dr. Research, whose work with these metrics proves (extremely small-scale, socially insignificant data-based result)." It's simply not his job to give off-the-cuff summaries of extremely difficult and controversial research produced by and affecting diverse fields of study. You could imagine the outbursts had he taken the mic and said, "Lemme tell you about this new theory, 's called fine tuning, see, cause of the universe's watchmaker deity. . . ." (OK, it's not generous for me to make him drunk, but hey, there isn't a transcript.) The fact is that what he said was not only a simplistic gloss of his university's (and by extension, academia's) work, he managed to misportray multiple fields and provoke women both specifically and generally.

But. Yes. I grant you that this is a sacred realm for the left, one that it generally resists data-based explorations. I'm not disputing specifically the points you present or saying that we shouldn't have this discussion. But the negative thing about these studies is that any time some item can be construed in a way that 1) disparages women (or minorities) and 2) can be understood by the laity, then you will certainly hear it reported in the public sphere. Summers presents the worst possible example of this phenomenon, because 1) he seemingly went out of his way to introduce the topic and 2) affirmed conclusions he doesn't understand with data he didn't present and in fact replaced with the anecdotal. No-nos, all around.

i'm actually pretty surprised at the amount of what i personally see as overreaction and assumption by some people on the left. we really have no idea of what summers said; like it's been repeated so many times before, there was no transcript. at the worst, it seems like he suggested genetic dispositions, for which there may be some scientific basis, as a reason for why women aren't as inclined to make careers out of science and math, along with a myriad of other likely and probably more reasonable and PR-acceptable topics (social construct, some biases, etc). it probably wasn't his place to suggest what he might have suggested, and it definitely wasn't the smartest thing, but i think we should at least have a better idea of his remarks before we get all hysterical and patronizing. the topic deserves more serious consideration than that.

additionally, who i'd really like to see talk about this is dr. nye, the science guy. jeff? what say you?

i guess i also wonder how much of the outrage is based on the fact that a president of an ivy-league university said this instead of a qualified scientist. i agree that i don't know where summers can get off stating these kind of things, since a) he's in the public eye and should be more sensitive and b) he has, um, zero qualifications and probably no knowledge of what he's talking about (and it appears that he didn't cite specific studies to back up his claims). but if a respected scientist came out with these sorts of allegations, would they be more seriously considered?

First I want to say that some of the "outrage" on the left is simply taking an opportunity to push a point into the public arena. Silence let's his point stand as the correct one so to speak. Capitalizing on an opportunity is good quick response PR usually.

I think it was irresponsible of him to make such a statement. Too many people take those statements to justify all dimensions of discrimination. Just because he purports that women may not be as genetically predisposed at math and science, does not mean that they shouldn't be offered the same opportunities. When the playing field is leveled, and it definitely is not in educating girls in the math and sciences, more at the softer levels than the actual education offered, then we can talk genetics. But talking them now seems a cop out to not address issues of equity.

Some other points...over 40% of all bachelor's and master's degrees in math are awarded to women. Math might not be the best example really. As for tenured women professors in math, if you look at the tenure system you will see a highly flawed system that should be examined way more closely than any gender difference. Also, Boston was the city that spewed out the late 189th century trash that educating women is bad for their health, a commonly held belief at that period of time. That's a personal bias against crap stuff that comes out of Boston and Harvard professors :-)

if a respected scientist came out with these sorts of allegations, would they be more seriously considered?

Maybe, maybe not. I'd like to think that the left does not fundamentally abhor data—only its programmatic applications. I think that Tommy said over at Yglesias that most of the outrage came from the data itself, but for my part, I disagree, and instead quibble with Summers's comments for the second set of reasons you cite (Catherine).

What an economist was supposed to bring to the conference, I'm not sure, and the Globe does specify that he was intended to be controversial. A share of the criticism ought to be transferred to the conference, I suppose, but then it is harder to identify a bloggable demon. But at root: If he was summarizing the research of the women at the conference, he 1) didn't do a good job, and 2) gave it a provocative context that the research did not intend, i.e., that girlbrain data explain to some degree why girls aren't professors. The most that Summers can really speak to is why Harvard gave 1 in 8 tenureships to women last year (or however that number ran).

Again, I hate math...a lot.

i didn't really want to get into this comment thread because i knew i would come off looking like a conservative, sexist, women-belong-in-the-kitchen-barefoot jerk, but oh well. here goes. some random, non-coherent points:

-i agree with the general consensus that summers of all people shouldn't be making these suggestions, and that he might have done it not out of a sincere interest in studying genetic differences between the genders, but as a possible and rather shoddy excuse for why hiring standards at some universities are not equally weighted in terms of sex.
-i also think that there is 100% definitely a lot of sexual discrimination and bias in the math and sciences (not to mention basically about every other field ever).
-but i don't think these points should make anybody shy away from studying the possibility that there are indeed genetic differences between men and women and their various intellectual abilities. i honestly don't believe that, for example, the reason that VA Tech's ratio of men to women in their engineering school has remained steady for the past six years at 83% to 17% is because of discrimination or people telling girls in 1st grade that they can't grow up to be scientists. especially when most engineering schools are absolutely gagging to have females - they are far more actively pursued than men. i don't think there's any sort of affirmative action in place, but when an e-school sees a qualified woman, they offer a lot of incentives for her to attend their school.
-however, there probably *is* a bias against putting female scientists into high-ranking public leadership positions, because if you look at the number of female scientists in ratio to the number of org. leaders, tenured faculty members, etc, it doesn't add up. so i'm definitely willing to state that there's probably all sorts of sexual discrimination, but i don't think it's the only main reason as to why females aren't as respresented in the sciences. i just think women (trend-wise, please don't think i'm making any individual assumptions) are better at verbal stuff, and men in many cases are better at spatial reasoning/math.
-and why isn't anybody outraged over the fact that in my class at uva, only about 20%, if that, of the english majors were guys? and most of the professors were women? there isn't, as far as i can see, any discrimiation or perception against men going into literature, especially as english professors - it's not like it's considered a "girly" job, as far as i can tell, and you certainly have to put in the hours, dedication and time to become successful, whether or not you've got a family. the disparity isn't as great as in the sciences, but it exists.

so in short, i guess i agree with the summary of yglesias's post on this topic - i believe there are gender-linked differences, trend-wise, in some aspects of intelligence, and there is also sexism in science academia. but i believe the reason women are underrepresented is a mix of the two.

i would also like to hear from my friends teresa and lisa, if they're reading this thread, as they are females who went to engineering school who are now making like 80k a year or something, are very successful in their fields, but have chosen not to puruse (as far as i know) master's or phds in the field. were there biases against you? why did you choose to go into science? what do you think of this whole thingyamibob?

Sorry I'm just now reading this thread. I don't know anything about what Summer said or his reasons behind saying it, but I would like to say a couple things.

and that almost all of my math teachers were women (presumably negating any phallocratically-drive uneven distribution of instruction)

i honestly don't believe that, for example, the reason that VA Tech's ratio of men to women in their engineering school has remained steady for the past six years at 83% to 17% is because of discrimination or people telling girls in 1st grade that they can't grow up to be scientists.

I would like to make a point that gender bias towards women, is not restricted by definition to the male gender alone. Because a woman is a woman does not make her non-descriminatory towards her own gender. In fact I actually vaguely remember reading about a study in which they put a baby in a room and ask individual/groups of women, men, and mixed groups to interact with this baby. The baby is dressed as either a boy or a girl (i.e. bows, ribbons, pink, and blue). Depending on their dress it was actually found that the women were more likely to treat a baby differently than the men. Things such as how they addressed the baby, what they gave the baby to play with, and even what subjects were discussed in the baby's presence were statistically found to be different based on the gender of clothes the baby was wearing. Now, I don't pretend to think that this type of specialized treatment leads directly towards women not persuing a Ph.D. in hard science, but I also don't rule this life-long difference in interaction out when it comes to how a person views the world around them. Children have many role models in their lives and equalizing the institutionalized education does not mean that any discriminatory difference is erased.

The difference in percentage of men to women in college english/engineering classes cannot only (or even mostly, I would argue) be attributed to innate mathmatical or verbal skills. Although, I do believe that there is most likely a genetic difference in the way that men and women process the world around them I have yet to see a study that has successfully eliminated all confounding variables. Simply because I was never told "you can't become a mathmatician or a physicist" does not mean that there wasn't some mixture of social signals that I unconciously internalized resulting in a confidence at the age of 18 that I did not want to become an engineer, and that engineering was boring.

good points, julie. you should also read this really interesting article that tommy posted at another web site called "john / joan."

Catherine, my inclination is to side with you... I'm very hesitant to demonize this guy (desipte his affiliation with Harvard). The issue of women in math and science is certainly very near and dear to women in math and science, and I would imagine that this guy's comments - whatever they were - have been blown far out of proportion by a small subset of the Harvard community. I haven't really followed the issue but that seems far more likely than the president of a internationally-renowned university saying that girls are dumb and there's nothing they can do about it.

I do have one question, though... clearly I'm lost in my young white male world because I'm having a difficult time identifying the institutional biases against women in math and science. Certainly, this has been a big problem in the past, but what are some specific examples of how it takes place today? Just from my own experience, every math teacher I had in middle and high school was a women. There are many well-organized outreach effors by organizations like Girl Scouts of America and the Society of Women Engineers, doing science demos for elementary school girls. As was mentioned, college engineering departments heavily recruit women. So I'm not really clear on where women are being supressed and in what way. Does it start in infancy?

Anyhow, is it really so inflammetory to suggest that the reason there are fewer women doing math professionally is because fewer women want to do math professionally? I think gender differences run a lot deeper than what's between your legs, and while it's wrong to judge individuals by these broad gender trends, it shouldn't be taboo to acknowledge that such trends exist.

And as for university faculties, I think it was amy over at kriston's place who had a very true comment about waiting a few years for the old men to die off. College faculties are lumbering beasts, easily thirty or forty years behind the rest of the world. Look at the new hires and I think you'll see a much more diverse crowd. At least that's my observation in the exciting world of chemical engineering, though I have no numbers to back that up.

Jeff as for an example as to how teenage girls and boys may experience gender differences I can at the moment only think of one example. This is, I must admit, a personal example and by no means relates to our current culture in general. When I was graduating highschool and heading to college I can't remember once being asked if i was thinking of going into math or even engineering, this in no way reflects on my abilities in the area, I was great in Math in highschool. On the other hand my brother, two grades below me, did get asked about engineering as a possible future field. I don't think that the people asking these questions meant anything by it, the difference was most likely unconscious. Also, neither my brother nor I were interested in math or engineering, he was, I believe, thinking about psychology and I about biology. You may think that simply being asked doesn't mean much, but I would disagree it's questions like those that inspire kids to think things like "maybe I should think about that" or "maybe i'd be really good at that, So-and-So seems to think so".

is it really so inflammetory to suggest that the reason there are fewer women doing math professionally is because fewer women want to do math professionally?

I don't think that that question is inflammatory at all, actually i think that it is very much to the point. But I also think that the real question is, "Why is it that fewer women want to do math professionally?" Anyway, personally I don't think it's that big of a deal. As long as women who do want to do math professionally and are good at it, aren't discriminated against. I could care less that most women don't want to be in mathmatics, even if the underlying reason is a cultural one.