Here at CV we occasionally pat ourselves on the back at the high quality of some of our comment threads. So it’s only fair that we acknowledge our dismay at the depressingly consistent character of the discussions about women in science; posts by Clifford and me being just the most recent examples. What a depressing exercise to poke a finger into the turgid world of pseudo-scientific rationalizations for inequality that people will believe so that they can feel better about themselves. Among other things, it makes it nearly impossible to have a fruitful discussion about what we could realistically do about the problem; it’s as if Columbus were trying to equip his ships to voyage to the Indies and a hundred voices kept interrupting to point out that the world was flat.
There’s no question: a lot of people out there truly believe that there isn’t any significant discrimination against women in science, that existing disparities are simply a reflection of innate differences, and — best of all — that they themselves treat men and women with a rigorous equality befitting a true egalitarian. A professor I knew, who would never in a million years have admitted to any bias in his view of male and female students, once expressed an honest astonishment that the women in his class had done better than the men on the last problem set. Not that he would ever treat men and women differently, you understand — they just were different, and it was somewhat discomfiting to see them do well on something that wasn’t supposed to be part of their skill set. And he was a young guy, not an old fogey.
Who are these people? A lot of physicists grew up as socially awkward adolescents — not exactly the captain of the football team, if you know what I mean — and have found that as scientists they can suddenly be the powerful bullies in the room, and their delight in this role helps to forge a strangely macho and exclusionary culture out of what should be a joyful pursuit of the secrets of the universe. An extremely common characteristic of the sexist male scientist is their insistence that they can’t possibly be biased against women, because they think that women are really beautiful — as if that were evidence of anything. If they see other men saying anything in support of women’s rights, they figure it must be because those men are just trying to impress the babes. They see women, to put it mildly, as something other than equal partners in the scholarly enterprise.
These are the same people who used to argue that women shouldn’t have the right to vote, that African slaves couldn’t be taught to read and write, that Jews are genetically programmed to be sneaky and miserly. It’s a deeply conservative attitude in the truest sense, in which people see a world in which their own group is sitting at the top and declare it to be the natural order of things. They are repeating a mistake that has been made time and time again over the years, but think that this time it’s really different. When it comes to discrimination in science, you can point to all the empirical evidence you like, and their convictions will not be shaken. They have faith.
The good news is that they are on the losing side of history, as surely as the slaveholders were in the Civil War. Not because of any natural progression towards greater freedom and equality, but because a lot of committed people are working hard to removing existing barriers, and a lot of strong women will fight through the biases to succeed in spite of them. It’s happening already.
Get used to it, boys.
#49: Elliot, I’ve dug throught the heap of… errr, “data” listed by Sean once already and came up with what I listed in #11. I am far from infallible, so it is of course quite possible that I missed something in one of those papers. If you think so, why don’t you just give us your own list?
Sorry, Julianne, but we can’t. We’ll soon be announcing a rigid new posting schedule here at Cosmic Variance. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays we will discuss women in physics. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays we’ll talk about string theory and the anthropic principle.
Sundays, of course, will be devoted to interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Sean,
I think you should discuss global warming with Lubos to increase the number of comments here …
If we were to take your “hypothesis” of inherent differences seriously why wouldn’t the logical conclusion be that the investment in teaching women or minorities math or physics was not justified.
On the contrary, the logical conclusion, according to which one seeks to educate all members of a society, would actually be to either proportionally increase spending on minorities or to ensure that current levels of funding were committed more efficiently.
Sean,
What about sports, politics and Clifford’s gardening sagas?
It’s always astonishing how willing people hold convictions concerning subjects in reality no one knows much about it (e.g. the structure of the female brain versus the male variety). Unfortunately, such convictions lead to much unnecessary and frankly moronic social strife. Such is life, I suppose.
I think the problem of women in science is very real and is far more subtle than most people like to admit. It’s not clear what the solution is. If any given college put all of its resources into getting as many women to major in Physics, I am not sure they would improve the numbers dramatically. Some of the problem is perception that physics is a man’s job, just like many people view biology as women’s field.
How many women are interested in physics on high-school or college level but don’t pursuit it because of peer-pressure or discrimination? In my experience most male physicists would actually welcome the idea of having more women join graduate school. They are not anti-women, but being geeks that they are they simply don’t know how to interact with women. Their lack of social skills can be easily misinterpreted as “difference in attitude” towards women.
So overall I think it’s very difficult to tell things apart – some reasons for low number of women scientists are rather subtle – like peer pressure, absence of female role models, etc. At the same time, until women represent a resonably equal share of physisists, they may feel discriminated against even when they are not. If I was a woman or a minority, I would have certainly overreacted a few times when I was passed over for fellowship, dealt with unfairily, did not get proper credit in publication etc. – I had to take it as “life is unfair” but I am sure my judgment would be different if I belonged to an underrepresented minority.
So bottom line – the problem is much deeper and more complicated than we like do admit. No matter how much women would like to blame their problems on people like Lubos Motl and Summers, those guys are in minority and are quickly dying off dinosaurs. But even if every physics guy adopted Sean’s attitude, the perception of discrimination would not go away until women are equally represented at every level of science. And this may take many decades to catch up.
There are some other interesting angles here – a few years ago Pat Buchanan in his crazy rant was complaining how jewish and asian professors (using Harvard as an example) are denying opportunities to anglo-saxons. Let’s say women are equally represented, but nationality-wise a disproportional number of students in science are jewish, asian (primairily chinese), russian and indian. Would this be a reason for concern? Is it a reason for concern now? I think it’s another one of those deeply rooted problems. Do we let certain professions be dominated by a small percentage of worlds population? Is it a problem that athletes with west african roots dominate sprints, while east africans dominate long-distance events? That russians dominate chess, romanians dominate gymnastics and bulgarians dominate weight-lifting? Does inequality in representation automatically imply discrimination, or are there cultural or dare I even say genetic differences here? Enough incoherent rambling…
YAWN!!!!!
Thanks, Sean. Thanks, Clifford. If we ever meet, I’ll buy you both a beer.
What a discussion.
The discussion of racial and ethnic diversity in American science is at least as problematic, as I’ve written about before.
One of the many fallacies is to talk about “men” and “women” as though they were homogeneous groups. Those who emphasize innate differences should ask themselves whether these differences are any greater than the general range of abilities among individuals. Similarly, those who emphasize discrimination must be clear about which of the many types of discrimination dominates. Is it outright sexism or something more subtle?
For instance, the research life can be unforgiving to people who want to raise families, men and women alike. Therefore the sciences lose a whole cohort of people for whom this is important. Women are disproportionately represented in this cohort, but to describe this as sexism loses important aspects of the problem.
George
“A lot of physicists grew up as socially awkward adolescents — not exactly the captain of the football team, if you know what I mean — and have found that as scientists they can suddenly be the powerful bullies in the room”.
Sean, I am a big fan of your blog but I found these remarks very distasteful and vaguely disturbing. Hitting below the belt is no wat to prove a point. A very poor post.
another comment – Sean, while you seem to agree in general that physisists women are not treated equally to men in terms of promotions (this is where you and I agree), there’s no bias (and somewhat justified, IMPO) towards applicants with PhDs from top institutions – Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Princeton, CalTech (as per our earlier discussion on getting to grad school advice). Are we really to believe that faculty search committees are sexist, but not in the least elitist?
Asher (#41) has a great point, which has been largely missed in this discussion so far (as well as the one in response to the previous blog entry), and that is this: What does it mean, specifically, to have an “innate ability” to do physics? Surely there are many interrelated skills involved, each of which might be distributed between the genders (by nature, nurture, or both) in a different way. And surely none of us would argue that there is only one blueprint for a good physicist. This is why I am suspicious of calls for studies into the possible “innate differences” between men and women in physics, because for the most part the definition of the abilities in question in such calls is very nebulous. Who decides, one wonders, which abilities are important and in what proportions?
I have to agree with (#61), I am a long time reader of the blog and typically enjoy it very much. However I was sad to see that even though the people(or person) that inspired this specific post certainly may be oblivious in some respects… making broad social generalizations about them not least of which was comparing their mindset to those supporting a type of racism is going too far. It is possible some of what Sean says applies to particular people but there seems to be no basis for any rational discussion that can come from this post and it is suprising to see this coming from a seemingly reasonable scientist.
Ahum, is there any analog of Godwin’s law for bringing the East bloc into discussions? Lubos?
Right, of course, because captains of football teams are known for their excellent treatment of the opposite sex. This is a societal problem, not just a physics one.
Rob,
it is time to talk about discrimination in football teams; As far as I know, women are not well represented in the NFL. It is time to change this and I propose to establish a commission of well respected scientists with the necessary credentials to investigate this issue.
FP: Sports philosopher Claudio Tamburrini has edited a book (“Values in Sport”) where the utilitarian Torbjorn Tannsjo suggests that the gender division in sport should be removed. This would, he argues, lead to some sports being dominated by men and other by women.
Like, for example, why is shooting divided? The answer is given on the olympics web page:
“At the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, Zhang Shan, a 24-year-old from Nanchong in Sichuan Province, represented China in the skeet shooting event, which included both men and women. Zhang caused a sensation by finishing first and becoming the first woman to win a mixed sex shooting event. The International Shooting Union barred women from shooting against men after the Barcelona Games. Women were not allowed to compete in skeet shooting at the 1996 Olympics, so Zhang was unable to defend her title. A separate women’s skeet event was added to the program for the Sydney Games of 2000. Zhang entered and placed eighth.”
Men are afraid. So what does this analogy tell us about science?
75-80% of people with Asperger’s syndrome are male. Asperger’s syndrome is often accompanied by above-average intellectual capabilites and diminished social abilities, and people with Asperger’s are often intensely interested in a narrow subject area, frequently math or computers. “During the school years, many are perceived as highly intelligent underachievers or overachievers, clearly capable of outperforming their peers in their field of interest …” Physics, clearly, would qualify as an area with which a person with Asperger’s syndrome might develop a fascination.
That’s Asperger’s syndrome. Now consider a stereotypical physicist. Physicists are viewed, correctly or not, as having above average intellectual capabilites and diminished social abilities. Regardless of the question of whether it is right or just or fair to say that physicists are nerds, it is unlikely to be controversial to say that a career as a physicist would be less distressing for a mathematically-inclinded person with Asperger’s than, for example, a career in marketing.
We should not be surprised to learn that a lot of physicists have Asperger’s syndrome, if we remind ourselves that Asperger’s syndrome is not nearly as difficult to live with as autism, and that most people with Asperger’s are highly-functioning individuals who live normal and productive lives, and are probably never diagnosed because they don’t really have a problem. Certainly we would expect to find a higher fraction of Asperger’s people in physics than in the general population.
Now consider the idea that Asperger’s syndrome and autism are at the tail end of a broad distribution of human emotional and intellectual characteristics. At one end of the distribution there are people who like arts and literature and fear and avoid math, while at the other end there are the socially awkward computer programmers and physicists, and further along, those with Asperger’s and autism.
Most of the available evidence indicates that Asperger’s syndrome is inherited.
Stating these facts is not a crime, but drawing any inference about the triangular relationship between gender, genetics and ability to study physics is a crime, because it is dangerous and irresponsible to suggest such a thing. After all, if you say that we are fairly sure that an identified inherited characteristic which is more prevalent in males than in females has a connection with the ability or inclination to do physics, then you’re a sexist, regardless of whether what you said was true. What kind of a message does it send?
We feminists must censor the information available to the public, because they would misinterpret such knowledge as a license to discriminate. The public are not mature enough to know the facts for themselves; we must vet the information available to make sure that it does not present a distorted point of view. We must write blog posts decrying anyone who suggests that males and females have biological differences as sexists. We all know that saying “Men and women are different” is the same as saying “It is acceptable to discriminate against women.” We must accuse anybody who says the former of implying the latter.
And while we’re at it, who was it that did the study saying that most people with Asperger’s are male? If Asperger’s is correlated with mathematical inclination or ability, then women and men must have it in equal proportion. Therefore, the people who did the study are sexist, and they falsified their research as part of a male conspiracy to suppress women.
Once again, a very enlightening discussion. I have three main difficulties with the very idea that there is a gender difference in cognitive abilities:
1) I am female. And smart. And have experienced discirmination my whole life from males who can’t handle it. It is ridiculously simple to distinguish between males who can welcome intelligent women and those who can’t. It seems to be connected with males that are comfortable with themselves and their own abilities and those who are not.
2) Personal experience. During my schoolyears, from kindergarten onwards, I was always – and I mean always – way, way better in math and mathematical insight than my peers. In fact, I paid for this dearly in terms of being teased and taunted in grade school, to not having dates in high school (or college). Every test I ever took, I missed a minus sign at worst, while the next best score would be 45/100. This happened time after time, year after year. Did not matter what particular math class it was.
In addition, there is an honest-to-goodness experiment in my own family. My Mother is an identical twin, and her twin has a son, just one year younger than I (he was always considered the genius of the family). While my cousin and I share half the same genes, he is surprisingly inept in cognitive mathematical/abstract abilities, but completely surpasses me in langauge abilities.
3) People who measure and worry about the average intellect, forget their statisics. It is not the average that counts, but the width of the distribution! I will go out on a limb here, and hypothesize that those of us in math/science are actually a bit above average in our abilities in those areas. Which means that measurement of the average doesn’t count! We are on the tail of the distribution! Maybe, even if (although I don’t believe it from my own experiences) the average woman is slightly below the average man in mathematical abilities, the width of the female distribution could be wider than the male distribution. That is the meaningful quanity here that should be measured. It could be that females have a wider tail in the math-smarts distribution. Perhaps that is why so many males seem to be so threatened….
Thank you for responding to me fh. You say that people on the “left” of this debate do allow for the possibility of innate differences playing a role. Well, let me pose a little test for you. Go to all the people you know with “left” opinions and ask them when we will know that we’ve succeeded in lifting barriers to women. I bet most of the time the answer you will get is ‘when physics faculty are 50% men and 50% women’. It’s just ingrained in the thinking of (many of) these people that innate ability is identical. And when you’re in a data-driven but not necessarily “scientific” field, already knowing the answer can seriously mess with interpretation of results. That is what I fear and distrust.
Sean’s post talks about the opposite type of person–one who is sure that no environmental factor plays any role. I’ve never met such a person, and I don’t think even Lubos fits this category. Of the other category–those with ‘faith’ that there are no innate differences whatsoever–I know pleanty. See how many you know, using the question I proposed.
On a lighter note, the male Hormone Factor, does contribute to “brute” force, but as intelectual adults there can be no comprimise to the obvious bias that women continue to be discriminated against in all area’s?.. where the ‘rewards’ are factor’s, then Men are most greedy, we all remember school bullies?
I think if the Male’s that are in a position to abuse their co-workers, were genetically engineered in the future, so they were made with one left female “tit”, size 34-dd say, then it would be interesting to see how they would then feel?
I’m pretty sure the Hormone balance would equilibriate for some, others would surely make the most of a “good-thing”, and then be seen as “self-feeling” egotistical, one dimensional brutes!
I make no appologies for the crudeness.
Interesting thoughts, JoAnne.
I’ve heard from several smart women that they felt pressure from their adolescent peers not to appear intelligent, and that there are unpleasant social consequences for those who do. I’ve also heard that girls in all-girls’ schools outperform girls from mixed schools, possibly due to pressure to appear stupid for the boys. This sounds much more likely to me to be a significant source of the gender discrepancy in physics than biased hiring practices in universities, or innate biological differences.
By the way, your points 1 and 2 are anecdotes. You simply can’t disprove a statistical hypothesis, such as “More men than women are good at physics” with anecdotes. If I say that most men are shorter than eight feet tall, I can’t be disproven simply by somebody who presents one single example of a nine-foot man.
Arthur Jensen has studied the distribution of IQ scores for men and women; this isn’t exactly what you were talking about, but the result was that men had a greater variance:
Sex Differences in the Distribution of Mental Ability
I’ve heard before, but I can’t remember where, that on most measures, IQ, height, weight and so on, women have narrower distributions than men.
I would also venture to suggest that few men feel particularly threatened by the appearance of women in physics. Most of them applaud it, and the others are so dismissive of the subject that they don’t think about it enough to feel threatened. I would also suspect that men don’t consider themselves to be members of a common group, or feel loyalty to other men on the basis of a shared gender.
What you say you doubt is that there is a gender difference in cognitive abilities. Would you doubt that autism/Asperger’s is more prevalent in men than women? Would you doubt that women are, on average, more successful at interpreting emotional indicators (such a facial expression) than men? Those are gender differences in cognitive abilities.
Jennifer #34: Yes, I am reading and I hope the advice can serve you well! Be careful to note how many times a woman’s comment can be ignored – I didn’t notice it myself until a few years ago! Good luck to you!
Anonymous agitator #73: Indeed, I am well aware of women who pretend to be more “stupid” than they are. Just an anecdote of course, but a good friend of mine in both high school and college did this. She was an electrical engineer major in college – with a straight A average – but felt compelled to ask for help with her homework everynight. It was a male friend that pointed this out and stated the ridiculousness as she was so smart she clearly had everything figured out before she asked for help. She had lots of dates though….
Sorry, but I have no data on autism/Asperger’s vis a vis occurances in males versus females, or the connection between intelligence period let alone mathematical ability, in order to make any kind of intelligent remark. I am simply not up on the facts and will not make a remark unless I am.
As far as interpreting emotional indicators go, both my ex-husband and his father could run circles around me or anyone else I know. In addition, I think my father (who is rather dim in this regard) can do better than my mother. Just anecdotes once again, but my experience points against what I call psycho-babble b.s. in this regard.
And, I most seriously disagree with your hypothesis that men are not threatened by good women in physics. Indeed, I think that is the full crux of the matter.