http://www.boston.com/news/nation/ar...ides_academia/

I find it funny that something which has some intellectual and research credentials can result in people calling for his job. I think the liberals who are suggesting the Harvard President be fired are the type that would be happy to re-write history as long as it helps their cause.

There is disagreement as to whether or not he's right. But there is definitely no definitive answer he is wrong. Based on that alone they should focus on the research needed to overcome it. Instead they focus on words which have some factual backing. I think I understand the word "femi-nazi" after this incident.

There's a great need for some to think that men and women are exactly the same in all areas, or that women are superior in any area where there is not sameness. No matter how fact based, anything that violates this bit of PC must be shouted down and its supporters sent to Hell.

The research does not suggest that women are stupid or inferior. In this one area, there is apparently a difference in how the genders "see" things, and that visual ability gives men the edge.

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"Tweeter was a Boyscout before she went to Vietnam and found out the hard way... nobody gives a d@mn."

Maybe it explains why men can't find their black socks in a drawer full of white socks without their wife's assistance!!!!


Sorry guys......just couldn't resist that one.

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"This is a time for a national imperative not to fail in Iraq." Condoleeza Rice, January 11, 2007

My wife is up in arms over this one, and she has an interesting perspective. She says there obviously are differences between men and women, but is it a difference in natural ability or a difference in learning styles? If classes cater to male learning styles, women will of course perform more poorly.

Further, she says that testing men and women ignores the effect of a lifetime of social pressure that discourages women from excelling in math and science, starting with "math isn't cool" and including the nature of many science classes (experiments, such as rocketry, designed to appeal to boys more than girls) and the nature of adolescent boys and girls (boys tending to be loud, assertive and dominating; women tending to be thoughtful but quiet).

She says if you really want to discover whether there is a natural gender gap in the sciences, first you have to cancel out those other effects. That means starting in elementary school with female-friendly science curriculum.

Her example of an ideal physics class: A single lecture but two different labs, each covering the same material but tailored to different learning styles. Crudely, one lab might teach how color vision works by studying camouflage on tanks while the other does the same thing by studying patterns in clothing. Let each child choose which lab they will attend. She figures each lab would probably be 80-90 percent one gender.

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Man up.

to benefit women more than men at this point...in the average elementary school, kids sit all day and learn to regurgitate information.

But research on learning styles indicates that more boys than girls are active/spatial learners who learn experimentally by doing, and less by reading/talking about it.

There is a reason that so many BOYS are taking ritalin or something similar these days, versus GIRLS, and it's not because the girls are being discriminated against. In fact, I would suggest that as female-dominated as the first 12 years of education are, it's entirely likely that boys are more likely to experience discrimination in the classroom than girls are as boys are forced to act like girls...

I have worked in a male-dominated profession for years, and my thought is this...either you have the chops for it or you don't. It hasn't bothered me to be one of the only women in my field, and if a guy has a problem wtih it, that's his problem.

I am quite tired, frankly, of women attempting to force accomodations that aren't reasonable. FFS...I have two kids, one male and one female. And I believed, firmly, until I had kids that nuture was the sole reason for the differences between men and women. I didn't buy baby dolls and barbies for my daughter because I didn't want her to feel that being a mommy was her only option or set that up as some sort of goal for her. We bought her doctor kits and briefcases and learning toys...Guess what? She still craved those dolls and babies and cuddly stuffed animals. And we bought my son plenty of stuffed animals and other things besides cars and soldiers and little jets, but guess what he was drawn to practically from birth?

Men and women are different, but that doesn't mean we aren't equal. It means we have different strengths. That doesn't mean that women shouldn't have every opportunity to go into the hard sciences, adn that we shouldn't aggressively attack discrmination when we see it, but it does mean that the equality of women in the society cannot necessarily be measured by putting numbers on a paper and trying to fill quotas of women in certain fields, and then repressing men in order to accomplish that.

I do not support different standards for men and women in the same field, and I do not support forcing discrimination against men to ensure that women aren't discriminated against.

I think the crucial thing is here:

So what? Is life supposed to be easy and comfortable? The fact of the matter is that fewer women choose the hard sciences or construction work or law enforcement. Those that do choose these fields are going to have to, in some degree, accomodate the cultures of these fields and learn to fit.

And who needs to see people who look like them in order to know that you are doing the job you were mean to do? I never did.

Catz

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Job 13:5 (New International Version)
If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.

Men can't find their socks because they are not on the floor where he left them!

Having kids teaches you that there are natural differences between the two. I have a niece and nephew that I babysat extensively and the differences were so clear. One of the first things my niece came to realize was not wanting to get her hair wet when swimming because she didn't like how it looked. She maybe spoke about 6 words at the time, but was already fashion conscious. My nephew was a typical rough and tumble boy from birth. He was not into playing dolls with his sister and instead wanted to run outside, swim, and do more athletic activities.

Raytri, one difference is that some studies are done on the brain and various brain matter that are not impacted by societal traits such as those your wife suggested. Additionally, much of what she suggested is not true today. I think a larger impact is that women are more comfortable around women, men are more comfortable around men, blacks are more comfortable around blacks, whites are more comfortable around whites, etc. And the fact is that there are very few female scientists. So as the article points out, it requires women to work outside of their comfort zones their entire lives. So from early on I'd suspect many women are turned off at the idea of science as a career. And that impact the learning curve.

However, I find it interesting that when the Harvard President suggests it everyone focuses on him and calls for his job instead of addressing the issue at hand and if there are ways to improve on it.

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JMS gets another English lesson:

Quote:

there is no "mostly unique;" thats like saying "sometimes always," its an oxymoron - its either one or the other.

The result:

Quote:

By the mid-19th century unique had developed a wider meaning, “not typical, unusual,” and it is in this wider sense that it is compared. The comparison of so-called absolutes in senses that are not absolute is standard in all varieties of speech and writing.

Nope, never. My best friends have always been guys. Though as I get older, I have more female friends. I would prefer, many hundreds of times over, to work with a bunch of men versus a bunch of women. Men are MUCH MUCH easier to get along with (for me). I worked for a while in a female-dominated profession (social services) and it was hellish...so much f'ng drama, so many f'ing hormones.

Give me a bunch of macho guys anyday. LOL.

But then, I'm not an uptight feminazi either. I don't mind if the guys I'm around act like....guys.

I guess that separates me from the bulk of women these days who are trying to turn guys into bunch of quiche-eating, tree hugging, sandal wearing, friend hugging, hair-product wearing queer eye for the straight guy girl wannabes.

Catz

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Job 13:5 (New International Version)
If only you would be altogether silent! For you, that would be wisdom.

Yep. I have two daughters and my brother has two boys. Our house is overrun with dolls, stuffed animals and other "let's play house" stuff -- and not because either my wife or I wanted it that way. My brother's house is full of trucks, jetplanes and things with claws that eat each other.

But what's also interesting is that, now that she's almost five, my oldest is picking up on gender cues. She's already declared that pink and purple are "girl" colors while blue and brown are "boy" colors. When we play paper dolls (no jokes, please....) she won't let me put long hair on a boy doll because only girls have long hair, and she sometimes objects to me putting a football helmet on a girl doll.

On the other hand, my daughter's favorite game is "haunted house" (think lots of monsters and ghosts), and she thinks dinosaurs, toads and insects are really cool. She'll catch a bug and try to show it to one of her playmates, a boy, and he'll run away because it's "icky."

And she likes watching me play Halo.

Agreed; my main point when talking with her is that we had to look at the studies. Brain studies aren't the be-all, end-all, though, either; a child's brain is very plastic, and the way connections are built probably have a lot to do with nurture.

I agree, and so does my wife. She had two main concerns: that we aren't doing enough to overcome that, and by saying "it's nature", we provide an excuse to accept the situation as it is, even if "nature" only accounts for a small portion of the observed gap.

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Man up.

My wife isn't interested in that sort of guy either (or so she tells me. Hmmm....), but she still thinks Summers' comments do more harm than good by providing an excuse not to care about the situation.

Please understand, when she was a senior in high school her *guidance counselor* discouraged her from taking science and math classes (despite excellent grades) and tried to steer her toward Home Ec. She feels she has experienced much of the "girls aren't as smart" or "girls don't need science and math" discrimination.

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Man up.