Comments | finneco: Women, men and mathematics

finneco

Women, men and mathematics

Jan 06, 2009 16:59

Oh boy.You may recall, back in 2005, some controversial statements from Harvard's President Laurence Summers on the issue of the underrepresentation of women among the faculty of hard science and mathematics departments in top tier research and higher education institutions. Most of the responses to this event were underinformed on the current ( Read more... )

Comments 17

platypus_herder January 7 2009, 12:52:16 UTC

Dodging all the psychology issues and going straight to point 4 of your list, the feminist in me rather likes
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

The future academic in me finds it rather depressing though. You have been warned.

w1ldc47 January 7 2009, 15:07:50 UTC

That article is incredibly depressing. On the other hand, it seems to have been written by someone with an immense amount of privilege. I'm not sure in what manner that would colour his opinions, but it seems certain to me that it must.

platypus_herder January 8 2009, 02:38:17 UTC

Fair points. Note that while I find it personally depressing (because it stamps on some of my career aspirations), I don't think it globally depressing (inasmuch as it's saying that a certain population are responding rationally to a market incentive).

He certainly is very priviledged, and has his biases, but I'm reminded of an Oscar Wilde epigram about the validity of an opinion having nothing whatever to do with the sincerity (or in this case objectivity) of the man who expresses it.

w1ldc47 January 7 2009, 15:20:09 UTC

I read some more stuff by this guy and I'm starting to suspect he doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does. As someone who sits on the board of trustees of a not-for-profit organization, I have to say he's kind of full of shit on that topic. I'm starting to suspect that the reason I don't think he's full of shit on other topics is just that I don't know enough about them to realize it.

Thread 13

w1ldc47 January 7 2009, 14:41:15 UTC

Did the debate mention the phenomenon of stereotype threat at all? Basically, it's this phenomenon wherein people who are trying to perform a task that their group is stereotyped as being bad at will do worse at that task if the stereotype is made salient to them. The sad fact is that it doesn't take much to make the stereotype salient, in fact the presence of one single man in a room full of women will adversely affect the women's math scores (but not English scores).

finneco January 7 2009, 15:53:47 UTC

Not specifically, no. They did pull out research that emphasised how the same actions of infants, children and adults are interpreted to have different value depending on the assumed gender. Spelke I think did the research on showing people (maybe specifically parents) a video of an infant playing and being surprised by a jack-in-the-box, and then asking them to interprete the child's expression. When the child was given the name David, respondents said that "David's face was angry", while the others thought that "Jane's face was fearful ( ... )

w1ldc47 January 8 2009, 17:10:10 UTC

Not that I normally read or refer to it, but the latest issue of the MIT Technology Review has a pertinent short article on page M17. There are probably copies hanging around campus somewhere, the geeks like to read it.

w1ldc47 January 8 2009, 23:13:22 UTC

I heard about that. I think Sinead talked about it on the most recent Science Dude. Also, there's data to show that when authors' names are withheld from reviewers, the frequency of women getting published automagically goes up to representative levels.