Comments on: Women and science

By: Mukhtar

Mukhtar — Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:15:37 +0000

I don’t believe a single one of you have ever been to school, let alone inside one of them.

By: GrandMuffti

GrandMuffti — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 19:15:34 +0000

Muffti wants to know, ‘what’s wrong with being sexy’?

(10 points for getting the Spinal Tap reference)

By: Yisrael

Yisrael — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 14:01:42 +0000

Nontheless, my sexist views would never lead me to presume anything about any particular individual. There are much better ways to evaluate a person’s aptitude than merely noting their sex.

By: Yisrael

Yisrael — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 13:59:50 +0000

The data Summers pointed at could account for smarter women who nonetheless do not fill top math jobs. If men have a larger standard deviation in math performance, then the smartest in mathematics will be mostly men even if women are generaly smarter than men. That is because top math jobs don’t go to smart people, but to people who are a few standard deviations from average in mathematics. When you are dealing with such small numbers and such high aptitude, it would not be suprising if very small differences between men and women have a large impact on sex disparity in such a population. I am generally sexist in that I believe that women are generally both harder working and smarter than men, AND that the smartest mathematicians are generally men.

By: josh

josh — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 13:24:52 +0000

Just an observation:

In Israel, when high-tech was booming (status and $$$, sory NIS, NIS, NIS) in the late 90s, girls and boys went to university to learn it. Since there’s no doubt that here in Israel, girls generally are smarter (I’m only using higher marks as a gauge here, NOTHING else) and that there are more girls on campuses than guys (55:45), and compu sci faculties drew a lot of females as well (not a majority, but not a marginal amount either). Later in the workplace, many of these women realized that they are not happy in a geek’s world. Some love it, some stay for the money, and some can’t stand it and quit for other jobs. Many have decided to ease back on the stress into dead-end IT jobs because of the flexibilty and the stable hours (little overtime and opportunity to leave early to be with the kids).

By: Dina

Dina — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 05:08:46 +0000

I didn’t finish that…
I just mean that sure, more men excel at that and more men are interested, but not because it’s “a man’s thing” but because it’s more appealing to those who are more masculine. More men than women are masculine, hence the reason those traits are thought of as “masculine.”

By: Dina

Dina — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 05:06:44 +0000

I don’t know…you think that maybe it’s not a female-male thing but a feminine-masculine thing? It just happens to be that most women are feminine and more men are masculine, but it’s not that it’s a strictly defined

final reason for the shortage of women in math and the physical sciences is a lack of female interest in the core content of these fields–many of which tend to emphasize abstract and mechanical themes. Studies matching equally gifted men and women, all of whom have the ability to make it in the physical sciences, have shown that the men are about eight times as likely as the women to enter these fields. The talented women repeatedly look around for something else, preferably involving disciplines affecting human beings (like, say, biology).

By: T_M

T_M — Mon, 21 Feb 2005 02:28:32 +0000

Oooh, the NY Times does not approve of Mr. Summers' comments.