Will's small-minded exercise in sexism
In his Jan. 27 column, George Will chides Harvard President Lawrence Summers for apologizing for his suggestion at a recent conference that the low numbers of tenured female professors in science departments might be due to gender differences in cognition. Then Will equates biology professor Nancy Hopkins' reaction to Summer's musings -- she walked out of the talk -- to getting "the vapors" and "collapsing in a heap of crinolines." I suspect if a man had walked out, Will would have been displaying appropriate moral outrage.
In countries such as Japan and Iceland, girls consistently outperform boys in math. Most researchers believe that gender performance differences in the sciences are due more to culture than cognition. In the last century, a theory that the African American brain was inherently different (read: inferior) was rightly discarded and is now considered beyond the pale of reasonable discourse.
Of course, women's brains are smaller than men's, even adjusting for body mass. But we use a greater portion of ours -- as is evident in George Will's sexist rant.
Quinn Dalton
Greensboro
Comments (2)
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Any links? Ages of girls? as compared to pre-college, in college, and college graduate young women/ men? SAT type scores?
And even if it (either hypothosis) were true "on average", would it also be true of the top 10%? And on the top 1%?
Shouldn't the focus be on the specific individuals, NOT the group?
Perhaps you are also sure that abortion has absolutely no link with breast cancer?
Posted on February 3, 2005 9:45 AM
And it's a first -- a blogger complaining about a lack of links ... in a letter to the editor!!
Isn't technology something?
Posted on February 3, 2005 3:51 PM