Sex Discrimination

[math_avenger]

Here's a fascinating debate I found via Andrew Sullivan: http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html. It's a debate between two psychologists on why there are more men in hard science than women. They both bring up interesting points, and I

Comments

[lockholm]

That's a really interesting article - thanks for the link.
It's so hard to say where the balance between nature and nurture lies. It's complicated still more by the fact that we don't measure success in science simply on ideas and output, but also on social constructs like getting tenure at an Ivy League school or winning the Nobel Prize. Those aren't really based purely on ability, though their ideals aim in that direction. I've not yet really heard of a good measure for determining how good a scientist or mathematician is on a purely objective basis - you may know it when you see it, but that's subject to all the pitfalls of other subjective judgements, biased by what society has implanted in our minds.

I don't think I could ever hold the "extreme nurture" view - but there's no questions that social bias still informs the decisions and judgements people make every day, and removing that confounding factor will help us understand more about the innate differences between men and women.

[math_avenger]

I definitely agree that the "extreme nurture" view is absurd: there's just too much evidence against it. The thing I find most detrimental to Pinker's argument is the standardized test scores and blind hiring/tenure test