File Under: Feminism
Yeah, here's another damn blogger talking about the much blogged Lawrence Summers issue. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just follow the links.
Anyway, let me start with this comparison: right now, of the top 10 chess players in the world, only one is female – that's half the percentage of women with top positions in science. Now, suppose that some big man in the chess scene (such that it is), were to say something similar to what I understand Summers said: “Women have, on average, less inherent biological capacity to be a chess champion – male and female brains are different, and most women simply cannot preform the complex spatial thinking and planning that it takes to be a chess great, and most of those that can would rather choose to stay home with the kids, instead of studying chess.”
If a chess big shot said something like this, I would be annoyed; but I would not take issue with it the same way I take issue with what Summers said. Why? Well, I would be annoyed at Chess Big Shot's misrepresentation of information: there is no evidence which clearly says that most differences between men and women - and male and female brains - are really biological and not social; nor can there be such evidence, because every person is subject to the socialization of gender more or less from birth, and the structure of the brain is not static, but is affected by one's emotions and up-bringing just as it causes them. I cannot claim to know what would happen in a more gender-neutral society, but based on evidence from the past, I have a feeling that the number of women in chess and in the 'hard' sciences would be much higher. Next, I would be annoyed by the fact that Big Shot does nothing to acknowledge the troubles of talented female chess players who want to make it big - and there are lot; for instance, I've played amature chess for a while, and a lot (though certainly not all) of male chess players have a very sexist sort of attitude of intellectual machismo.
But I wouldn't take so much issue with Big Shot's comments as I did with Summer's, because chess is objective. Disregarding all of the obnoxious guys, all of the cultural indoctrination that says girls aren't good at chess, and all of the other social pressures that keep more women from pro-chess - chess is objective. One either wins a chess game, or does not; this is very clear. This is not so for who gets academic recognition, tenure, and the like - I think not even Summers could bring himself to claim that academia is 100% objective. Favoritism, under-the-table deals, and, yes, sexism, among other things, are certainly present in the academic community. Summer's trivialization of social forces that keep women from the academic world annoys me, but his lack of acknowledge of the sexism and prejudice in the academic world, really bothers me. For instance, see his claim that if women were really discriminated against, 'market forces' would make sure that shrewd universities would hire the intelligent women who had been turned down by less clever schools, and those shrewd universities would thrive because they had all the smart women. Huh? So there's never been any prejudice in the work world, ever? I really do not think that it's conicedence that female tenure has gone down since he's been at Harvard.
