“This was not a permissible hypothesis”.
That was social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s recent explanation of the outrage that followed Lawrence Summers’ speech at a conference on the under-representation of women in science and engineering, in which he suggested that women are on average intrinsically less capable of high-level mathematical and scientific thinking.
Haidt’s depiction of the way in which scientific thinking can be distorted by “sacred values”, and his portrayal of Lawrence Summers as the victim of censorious political correctness, evoke two familiar protagonists in the sex differences debate. There’s the hero, who doesn’t let political values get in the way of the search for scientific truth. And then, there’s the villain of the piece.
That bogeywoman – the truth-fearing feminist – haunted me during a photo shoot I endured shortly after my book, Delusions of Gender, was published last year.
“Just relax,” the photographer pleaded.
We were in the garden, and since the photo and accompanying article were to appear in the Family section of the newspaper, it was apparently necessary to provide readers with visual evidence of my own. I’d been promised that my husband and children would be in the background, blurred. (This, you understand, was to protect their privacy rather than my limelight.) But I was still tense, because in my mind was a vivid image of how this photo could turn out.
Picture it. In the foreground, the blithely smiling author of the controversial new book that claims to tear apart the myth that science has shown that boys will be boys. Behind her, out of sight, her two sons fight furiously with sticks.
In the interminable sex differences debate it always seems to be those who are critical of scientific claims of essential differences who are accused of allowing political desires to blinker them to the facts of the case. A century ago a medical professional commented in the New York Times that “the dear women are ‘obsessed’ with their fitness for all things masculine which blinds them to a sane view of their biological limitations.” Today’s admonishments, sometimes only a little less condescending, suggest a way of thinking about the relationship between politics and science that is inspired by stereotypes: the agenda-driven feminist who requires everyone to ignore what does not fit her ideology; and the detached spokesperson of science.
And so, in the aftermath of the Summers controversy Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker suggested that the “taboo” of innate sex differences drove a “refusal to glance at the scientific literature”. In a more recent commentary, entitled “Daring to discuss women in science”, New York Times columnist John Tierney quipped that the evidence presented in his article put him at “risk of being shipped off” to a gender equity workshop (a hellish fate, indeed), and asked whether it would be “safe” in such a workshop “for someone to mention the new evidence supporting Dr. Summers’s controversial hypothesis about differences in the sexes’ aptitude for math and science”.
A similar theme emerged when The Sexual Paradox author Susan Pinker was asked to comment on my book, which argues that we don’t yet know whether, on average, males and females are born differently predisposed to understanding the world versus understanding people. Pinker responded that the results of scientific investigations of sex differences “describe what is, not what we might choose if we were designing a perfect world. These are compelling studies that add to our understanding of human development. Why would we ignore them?” And while a review of my book by The Essential Difference author and Cambridge psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen generously acknowledged its scholarship, the instantly recognizable stereotype was nonetheless lurking in all its unalluring glory: I was “strident”; in pursuit of a “barely veiled agenda”; and guilty of the “mistaken blurring of science with politics.”
Again and again, the target is a familiar one and should be recognized for what it is: a straw-feminist.
Summers’ remarks deserved to draw fire. This is not because the ideas were politically impermissible: indeed, the notion that women are inherently less likely to be exceptional because they show less variability in psychological traits was presented in a best-selling book by Steven Pinker; Summers’s suggestion that males are biologically predisposed to be more interested in pursuing a scientific career forms part of an actively investigated hypothesis about sex differences. Rather, his comments merited indignation because scientifically they were not well-considered, sometimes nothing short of offensively so.
There is not blanket denial of the pattern of sex differences in high-level mathematical achievement referred to by Tierney – what is legitimately disputed is the chalking-up of this difference to ‘inherent’ potential, and the extent to which they can explain women’s under-representation in mathematics and science.
Nor does my book (which has been unappealingly described as “relentlessly methodological” in its “striving for scientific correctness”) “ignore” the supposedly compelling evidence for the neurological and hormonal origins of essential differences in male and female minds. Rather, again and again I argue that – because of under-acknowledgment of social factors, spurious results, poor methodologies, and untested assumptions – the evidence scientists and commentators provide as support for essentialist claims is simply not as strong as they seem to think.
It’s 
portraying those who challenge scientific claims about essentially different male and female minds as more interested in politics than science. Let’s say good-bye to that straw-feminist. And, while she’s leaving, let’s also close the door behind her antithesis, the value-free mouthpiece of scientific facts. These characterizations aren’t just inaccurate, they’re also unproductive. Progress will be faster if we move beyond stereotypes and start thinking about the relationship between science and politics in this debate in a more sophisticated way.
One such approach is offered by philosopher of science Heather Douglas in her challenge of the ideal of value-free science. Douglas is clear that political values should never, ever play a direct role in scientific reasoning. Obviously, that the results of a particular study support one’s political values should not be taken to increase the evidential support; wishful thinking doesn’t allow us to ignore evidence that goes against our desires.
However, Douglas argues that social values can safely play an indirect role in scientific reasoning, by “shifting the level of what counts as sufficient warrant for an empirical claim.” So, we might demand a higher standard of evidence for the claim that a pill will keep a fatal disease at bay than for the claim it will make our hair glossy. The higher the social costs of potential error, the better the standard of evidence we require.
Uncomfortable though this idea may make those involved in this debate, this perspective helps us to see the stereotypes for the illusions they are, and to better understand the true source of a clash. Science does not yield certainty: methodologies, statistical methods, background assumptions, and interpretation all build layer upon layer of potential error into the scientific ‘facts’ that are ultimately produced. This leaves us with scope for two kinds of disagreement, and it’s probably helpful to know which we are dealing with.
Sometimes, the clash might be over the strength of the evidence – the actual warrant for a scientific claim. Steven Pinker soothed irrationally outraged readers with the information that variations in sex hormones, “especially before birth, can exaggerate or minimize the typical male and female patterns in cognition and personality”, before complaining that a mentality of taboo “needlessly puts a laudable cause [the modern women’s movement] on a collision course with the findings of science”. Yet the empirical case that prenatal hormones help wire sex differences in math, science, and other sex-typical talents and interests is, as Brain Storm author Rebecca Jordan-Young put it, more of “a hodge-podge pile than a solid structure”, leaving us with little more than scientific “rubble” to be cleared. Egalitarian aspirations don’t collide with rubble – they can sail right over it.
But we can also, according to Douglas, legitimately disagree over whether empirical warrant is sufficient. As Anne Fausto-Sterling argued in Myths of Gender, “[h]ow much and how strong the proof one demands before accepting a conclusion is a matter of judgment, a judgment that is embedded in the fabric of one’s individual belief system.” Deciding the ‘best’ judgment is not just a scientific issue but also a political one – how do you weigh the social costs of getting it wrong?
Considering a legitimate, indirect role for political values in the debate might help move it along – and encourage those who think they are keeping the science separate from politics to think again. Do Summers’ defenders find unusually insightful his observation that his twin daughters referred to their toy trucks as Daddy and Baby, and think that it really does tell us “something that [we] probably have to recognize” about women’s intrinsic scientific interests? Or are their political values such that even anecdotes have sufficient warrant in this particular debate?
What about claims of sex differences in the brain, sometimes speculatively linked to aptitude in science and maths? Small sample sizes, noisy data, publication bias, and teething problems with statistical analysis techniques leave this literature littered with spurious findings of sex differences. So where does the disagreement lie between the neuroscientist or commentator who reports a sex difference in the brain, and the critic of that empirical claim? Does the former have a far more optimistic view of the study’s reliability? Or is she less concerned about the social fall-out should her claim about the difference between the male and the female brain turn out to be wrong?
And do commentators who think the evidence points to ‘innate’ male superiority, on average, in mathematics see the complex empirical situation – the cross-cultural differences in means, variability and exceptional mathematical success, the social influences we know of and those we don’t, the patterns of change in the past and the unknown shifts of the future – differently to those who are less sure? Or, in the absence of certainty, is it political values that push the two sides to different judgments? In other words, is it only the science we should be debating? Or does disagreement also stem from social and ethical values: whether it is worse to waste resources pointlessly riling against implacable nature or, as Stephen J. Gould put it, to commit the injustice of “a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within”.
In the end, the photographer captured one of my sons throwing and catching a ball, while the other cuddled his pet chicken. No parent can fail to wonder how the little people they create come to be who they are, and the scientific explanations we are offered are not psychologically inert. The work of Haidt’s colleagues in social psychology is gathering support for AJ Herschel’s suggestion that “[a] theory about man enters his consciousness, determines his self-understanding, and modifies his very existence.” We can never be certain that we’ve got those scientific stories right, but we have a responsibility to do the best we can.
And the straw-feminist is getting in the way. When criticisms are dismissed as ‘political’ – to be contrasted with one’s own, value-free scientific judgment – we learn nothing new about the quality of the scientific evidence, the hidden work of political values in the scientific debate, or where difference of opinion truly lies. Throwing out that prickly, imaginary lady will give us a clearer picture of the landscape of barriers to disagreement. Then, we can make better moves to navigate them.
Photo credits:
1. Flickr / eflon
2. Flickr / theirhistory
3. Flickr / Mr. Greenjeans
4. Flickr / Spacing Magazine
Guest Blogger Profile: CORDELIA FINE is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for Agency, Values & Ethics at Macquarie University, and an Honorary Research Fellow in Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Her latest book is Delusions of Gender.
The Let’s say good-bye to the straw-feminist by PLOS Blogs Network, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
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Great post, Cordelia, thank you.
One thing that many of those defending Larry Summers’ comments forget is that he didn’t make them in a vacuum. He made them at a conference on women in the sciences where for the previous two days speakers had been reviewing the abundant evidence that a variety of factors that had nothing to do with innate gender differences held back women. So for him to march at that point and obliviously say “Hey, maybe we should think about whether women just aren’t as good at math” was horrendously oblivious. Why wouldn’t the meeting’s attendees react strongly?
An excellent, insightful, and edifying piece. Thanks.
I want to add my thanks. We’ve long admired your work at Neuroanthropology, and you continue to write clearly in an area that so badly needs clear voices to keep describing what the Emperor is actually wearing.
This debate is one of those places where, ironically, the post-modern critics of science as being shot through with ideological assumptions, biased readings of inconclusive data along hackneyed lines, is so spot on. Some of the same people (Pinker, for example) who would most disparage a humanities-based approach to science studies just keep proving the absolute necessity of critique and, what you’ve done so well in your book, encyclopedic review and analysis of the actual data.
Really happy to see your post here.
Nice post!
(An addendum to John Rennie‘s remarks: Scientists should have the freedom to make unpopular statements. Upper-level management — i.e., professional glad-handers — should know how to avoid them.)
(That is to say, Summers’ ill-informed remarks would have been poor form coming from a scientist; from the political public face of a university, they were a pratfall of epic proportions.)
There’s nothing quite so amusing as the spectacle of men who benefit from the status quo putting on martyr’s vestments when they defend it.
I stopped reading after the first paragraph.
“…in which he suggested that women are on average intrinsically less capable of high-level mathematical and scientific thinking.”
No. He said no such thing.
As Steven Pinker has written:
“First, let’s be clear what the hypothesis is–every one of Summers’ critics has misunderstood it. The hypothesis is, first, that the statistical distributions of men’s and women’s quantitative and spatial abilities are not identical–that the average for men may be a bit higher than the average for women, and that the variance for men might be a bit higher than the variance for women (both implying that there would be a slightly higher proportion of men at the high end of the scale). It does not mean that all men are better at quantitative abilities than all women! That’s why it would be immoral and illogical to discriminate against individual women even if it were shown that some of the statistical differences were innate.
Second, the hypothesis is that differences in abilities might be one out of several factors that explain differences in the statistical representation of men and women in various professions. It does not mean that it is the only factor. Still, if it is one factor, we cannot reflexively assume that different statistical representation of men and women in science and engineering is itself proof of discrimination. Incidentally, another sign that we are dealing with a taboo is that when it comes to this issue, ordinarily intelligent scientists suddenly lose their ability to think quantitatively and warp statistical hypotheses into crude dichotomies.”
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Jason, perhaps you should have read the entire essay before commenting.
Jason, you wrote:
I stopped reading after the first paragraph.
“…in which he suggested that women are on average intrinsically less capable of high-level mathematical and scientific thinking.”
No. He said no such thing.
And then you wrote:
the average for men may be a bit higher than the average for women
So, to say the average for women is lower than for men is a misrepresentation, when what was really said is that the average for men is higher than for women? Did you read what you wrote before posting?
So instead of suggesting that “women are on average intrinsically less capable of high-level mathematical and scientific thinking”, he hypothesised that “the average for men may be a bit higher than the average for women”. I’m struggling to spot the difference here. Must be my muddled lady-brain.
As an addendum to John Rennie’s comment above; “One thing that many of those defending Larry Summers’ comments forget is that he didn’t make them in a vacuum.” Another thing to remember is that some of us listening to, and deeply angered by, those comments from afar did also did so in full knowledge of our own experiences, and we were not a vacuum either. Having gone through the experience of being laid off by a major corporation from a professional science position when 7 months pregnant for example. (Males with heart health issues were better accommodated with leaves of absences, IMHO). Yes, sometimes gender differences, and political reactions to those differences, do matter in science careers. But not, as I see it, significantly because of any small statistical discrepancies in intrinsic math or science skills.
I agree, this is an excellent post. I look forward to reading the book.
Trying to distill the whole post, Ms Fine’s main point seems to be:
Trying to distill the whole post, Ms Fine’s main point seems to be:
Trying to distill the whole post, Ms Fine’s main point seems to be:
“Rather, again and again I argue that – because of under-acknowledgment of social factors, spurious results, poor methodologies, and untested assumptions – the evidence scientists and commentators provide as support for essentialist claims is simply not as strong as they seem to think.”
And that since the results are so inconclusive, we should be very worried about the “fall-out” or real harm that would manifest, I assume, as male superiority and female inferiority complexes. A valid concern.
But to anyone who rejects “women are on average intrinsically less capable of high-level mathematical and scientific thinking” on empirical rather than emotional grounds, please tell me, what evidence would convince you that the statement is true?
Andrew, I agree with you, IF you are raising the point that it may be impossible to measure “intrinsic capabilities” separate from the social and political environment. Nevertheless, studies that have tried to measure such a difference generally don’t find evidence for one (except in cases of poor methodology, as described above). This would seem to argue against the existence of a difference. Why are you so determined that there must be one there?
gerty-z, I don’t think it’s impossible to measure intrinsic capabilities… in fact, this is the kind of thing that science is good at (looking into noise to uncover underlying principles). It is earlygoing and difficult work, which is why this is still a controversial issue. But eventually as the science gets better a consensus will emerge that will be increasingly difficult to argue against on skeptical grounds. And yes, it may turn out that current research is misleading and there are zero differences between male and female but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Ms Fine’s book, she says, does not ignore “the supposedly compelling evidence for the neurological and hormonal origins of essential differences in male and female minds.” It seems to me she’s just saying, “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and let’s make sure we’re doing science correctly.” Which is good, of course, and a part of that “correct” process.
What would you say if the evidence got much better over the next 10 years for a difference in intrinsic capability? If there is no evidence that could change your mind then you might be the embodiment of the straw-feminist. If you can think of evidence that would change your mind then I am guilty of the OP sin of fighting a straw-feminist and I apologize!
— And I’m sorry for my repeat posts, couldn’t figure out \blockquote=”"\
I’m not sure about earlygoing: psychologists have been making claims about essential gender differences for well over a century. In 1910 Helen Thompson Woolley reviewed research into psychological differences between gender groups, and suggested:
“There is perhaps no field aspiring to be scientific where flagrant personal bias, logic martyred in the cause of supporting a prejudice, unfounded assertions, and even sentimental rot and drivel, have run riot to such an extent as here.”
You know what would work a little better for me in science terms? If you’re pondering possible differences in men and women, how about beginning from an assumption that we’re all the same and then spend your time looking for possible causes of variation. This as opposed to assuming we’re different and spending time looking for confirmation?
Good example? Last week Ed Yong (who’s link I followed to find this post) linked to Kate Clancy’s cool post about how gender assumptions about anemia led to… about 2000 years of misdiagnosis: it turns out that at least 85% of the time women have anemia for the same reasons men do — gastro-intestinal bleeding. The assumption had always been that women have periods, menstrual flow resembles blood (it’s actually highly dilute), blood has iron in it, so why look any further?
Nor, lest straw-feminist bashers leap forward, was Clancy’s observation limited to health consequences for men. Turns out that women’s blood-iron levels remain constant into adulthood while men’s iron levels spike tremendously during puberty. The assumption that men are “normal” and women are “naturally anemic” has almost certainly led to misunderstanding of human-male-specific blood disorders (e.g. hemochromatosis.)
Again, are men and women identical in the aggregate? No, otherwise Clancy would have no blood-iron differences to point to. But, again, in terms of general scientific productivity what methodology tends to generate more interesting results: confirming assumptions or challenging them?
Not to use a shopworn example but we’ve got the computing and observational power today to totally master the cycles and epicycles of Ptolemaic astronomy. And thus confirm the extremely natural and obvious assumption that Mars and Venus orbit the earth. We kind of challenged that assumption back in 1543 and so we’re able to use our computing power on everything else. Kind of dumb that half a millennium later scientists still think it’s ok to assume men are from Mars and women from Venus.
figleaf
And just in case my previous comment sounded too even handed, I agree with you and disagree with the “men and women aren’t just different species, they’re from completely different planets” mindset.
I also agree with you and disagree with your critics: identifying consistent bias when findings are within margins of error, for instance, is no more “political” than the bias itself. (Especially when, as I indicated in my first comment, confirmation bias is inherent in hypothesis formation and testing of sex differences but not astronomy.)
Words like “You are woman, I am man / You are smaller, so I can be taller than”
might (or might not) be lovely for romantic Louis Armstrong song lyrics. Not sure I know that many scientists, men or women, who say what science needs is a firmer foundation in romantic notions.
(Doh! On a whim I just Googled to see how tall Louis Armstrong was: five feet six inches, which would make him somewhat shorter than my mom, my sister, and my wife. He’d be taller than my daughter but since she’s only eleven and still growing I don’t expect that’ll hold up either.)
figleaf
Andrew, the issue is around the idea of intrinsic or essential differences. Studies looking for gender differences are quasi-experimental, and so incapable of establishing causality. The results of such studies are necessarily confounded by a range of factors other than biological sex. To conclude that they demonstrate an intrinsic difference is to infer causality: it’s an act of interpretation, and as such is influenced by a range of socio-cultural and political factors. Those who decry politics getting in the way of accepting scientific results are usually those who’s politics lead to them accepting the unfounded inference. There are plenty of examples of this in psychology, particularly around race differences also. There’s an analysis in my forthcoming book:
http://www.amazon.com/Psychology-Social-Context-Issues-Debates/dp/1405168234/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297601711&sr=8-1
Dai Jones, “Those who decry politics getting in the way of accepting scientific results are usually those who’s politics lead to them accepting the unfounded inference.”
This is probably often the case, the male chauvinists would use conditional research to reinforce their prejudices. But it seems like you’re saying that because science is hard, and the results may have negative social consequences, therefore let’s not go down this investigative road at all. Surely as time goes on and we look at the issue from many angles, we may be justified in saying the hypothesis is becoming more and more likely to be true.
It’s very sad if it turns out that men are born with better processing for math and science, but it may be true.
It may indeed be true, though I suspect Lise Eliot in Pink Brain Blue Brain is right and that any essential differences that may be present are very small, but are reinforced through development. However, the basic problem is a logical one: the scientific method, as applied in psychology, only establishes a definitive basis to ascribe causality if the independent variable is manipulated in a tightly controlled manner; and in the case of gender difference studies the IV isn’t manipulated. It’s not so much that it’s hard to manipulate the IV, it’s that it’s impossible.
Actually, there is a way of designing a scientific study, in principle, that could establish causality. You’d need two identical eggs, freshly fertilized, which are genetically manipulated so that one has the male chromosome and one the female. Then raise the offspring produced by the eggs in identical environments, isolated from any human or outside environmental contact. Have a standardised computer programme to give them some basic instruction in mathematical or spatial ability, in this case, and then at some chosen point administer some standard test of performance. Do this multiple times to reduce random effects, and if you find that there’s a male superiority then you can ascribe causality. It’s not particularly ethical though.
There is a problem in the use of difference testing, and reliance on the use of the p<.05 criterion, to make decisions here. The use of p values to make dichotomous decisions is problematic in itself, because they tell us little about the size of the effect between populations relative to the variation within populations, since they're confounded by sample size. Effect sizes are a more meaningful metric in this case, but all too rarely reported. Meta-analyses show that effect sizes in gender difference studies are typically very small. A better approach, reflecting what you say in your post, might be to use inference to best explanation as a basis for decision making, where we might accept that the most likely explanation for the observed results is genetic rather than social. Unfortunately, what counts as best explanation is likely to differ for different people, so it doesn't save us from the subjectivity problem.
Dai Jones, what about testing across dozens of cultures instead? Giving them “basic instruction in mathematical or spatial ability… and then at some chosen point administer some standard test of performance.”
That way cultural influences would wash out to some extent and we could get a better look at male/female differences than when we’re looking inside one skewed culture.
That ignores the possibility that all/most cultures could be skewed in one direction due to other factors besides the ones under consideration.
You seem to be more interested in lowering the standards of proof rather than in seeking out the truth.
As Kali says, that gender roles are consistent across cultures doesn’t mean that such roles are biologically determined. Despite that, there are some interesting cross-cultural results. A study in the UK found that women expressed a preference for colours towards the red end of the colour spectrum, and men expressed a preference for colours towards the blue end (on average: plenty of men liked red, and women blue). This was used as evidence to support the evolutionary hypothesis that red is a woman’s colour because they had to be good at picking out berries in the trees. In its modern expression, that’s why we dress girls in pink and boys in blue: it’s in the genes. There are a range of problems with this, not least that plenty of berries aren’t red, so gatherers would need to be sensitive to a range of colours, whereas hunters would need most to be sensitive to the trail of blood left by wounded animals, which is a uniform colour. The fact that in Victorian times it was normal to dress boys in pink – seen as a ‘strong’ colour – and girls in blue suggests that this is either a very strange kind of genetic determinism, or that colour preference is socially, not genetically, determined. The researchers also gave participants a Bem Sex Role Inventory questionnaire to complete, which basically measures the extent to which people buy into stereotypical representations of gender. Those who were found to most adopt stereotypical behaviours were also more likely to express stereotypical colour preferences, supporting the notion that gender differences are socially constructed: the researchers largely ignored this explanation. To get back on point though, the researchers also tested students from a Chinese background, and showed a greatly reduced difference in the distribution of preferences, with most men preferring a kind of red. A fuller discussion is given on the excellent Bad Science blog:
http://www.badscience.net/2007/08/pink-pink-pink-pink-pink-moan/
Yes, you interpreted my disagreement accurately. But, yes I misunderstood your “supporting the notion” to mean it’s evidence against a biological link… I guess I agree it supports both (it’s late not 100% on this lol) http://www.rationallyspeakingpodcast.org/show/rs30-cordelia-fine-on-delusions-of-gender.html
Dai Jones, well that berry hypothesis is ridiculous. And I think I disagree with “Those who were found to most adopt stereotypical behaviours were also more likely to express stereotypical colour preferences, supporting the notion that gender differences are socially constructed”… I can see the possibility of a biological correlation in there. It’s possible that girls inherently prefer pink and dolls.
Kali, I think that’s wrong… sampling many cultures would actually be better evidence. Let’s say we discovered that in the US toddler girls, teenage girls, and adult women outperform toddler boys, teenage boys, and adult men on math problems. Okay, interesting, further research is required. Now let’s run the same experiment on 10 very different cultures and get the same results. Now *that’s* interesting.
Sorry Andrew, I wasn’t keeping up with the discussion. Glad you agree the berry hypothesis is ridiculous, but sadly there are more ridiculous hypotheses in the “science” of essential gender differences. Don’t get me started on claims that women are biologically determined to be monogamous while men are naturally – and so rightly – polygamous; or that because dragonflies engage in “sexual violence” then it must be only natural for human males to do so also. I’d refer you to the Wooley quote from 1910 I cited above: nothing’s changed.
Presumably you disagree with concluding – based on the observed correlation – that colour preference reflects adoption of social stereotypes, rather than disagreeing with the correlation itself: the correlation was the observed result of the study, and not really susceptible to disagreement. Any such result needs to be interpreted – and that was my point above. The interpretation isn’t an objective act. I interpret the result in one way, suggesting conformity to stereotype; you suggest an alternative interpretation. Both are possible, and both are logically sound: we have no way of knowing which is the correct interpretation. I’m quite open in admitting that I prefer my interpretation because it fits my politics and hence my general view of human nature. You have your own reasons for preferring your interpretation, which is perfectly fine. The important thing is that neither of us is more ‘objective’ or ‘scientific’ than the other.
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Value-free science seems doomed to be dragged through the mud of cultural assumptions every time. Even as a teenager I realized that claiming that women had better manual dexterity than men didn’t automatically fit them for, say, embroidery rather than brain surgery.
Great comment.
Thanks for this great post. I was just having a conversation this week about what to call the fallacy that feminists are trying to shut down science because of “political correctness.” The person making the argument usually claims to be speaking truth to power, which is maddening considering that’s usually a term reserved for people taking risks more severe than arguing with feminists on the internet. They are using a straw-feminist argument, but I wonder if we need an even more specific term.
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But eventually as the science gets better a consensus will emerge that will be increasingly difficult to argue against on skeptical grounds.
This sentence is fascinating, because it predicts future scientific results on the basis of what I presume are personal beliefs, not the science itself.
On the greater male variability hypothesis: Note that the Benbow-Stanley study of early 1980s found 13 boys to every girl in the exceptionally mathematically gifted group. The 2005 repetition of the study found 2.8 boys for every girl in the exceptionally mathematically gifted group. Such a drop in the excess male variability seems not to support an innate difference hypothesis.
Yet I have seen the initial Benbow-Stanley study used as evidence of innate gender differences in the extreme tails of some theoretical distribution of mathematical talent. The change from 13 boys to 2.8 boys per every girl in that group tells us that environmental variables must play a major role here. Add to that the possibility that “nature” and ” nurture” might interact in unexpected ways, and who knows what future research will look like.
I’m predicting that a consensus will emerge. It will be a difference toward men or a difference toward women or zero difference.
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Maybe saying goodbye to said “Straw Feminists” should be anticipated by works not titled “Delusions of Gender”, “Myths of Gender”, “The Myths of Stuff we do not like too much” etc
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I think a consensus has already emmerged. The question is: is it the result of prejudice, bias and stigma or ‘hard science’?
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I’m continually amazed that the word “feminist” is still associated with bra burning, military boot wearing, hairy-legged man haters. (Was there a movie with this character or did we all have some collective weird dream???) Being a “feminist” should be the obvious default for the average person (pick the best person for the job, just cause they’re pretty doesn’t mean they’re dumb, men are just as good at child rearing and housework as women, etc.) and “mysoginist” should be the qualifier.
Unfortunately I’ve been conditioned myself to avoid the label “feminist” because of this silliness. During a cutsey “most likely to. . . .” team building exercise at my predominantly male workplace, I was initially described as “most likely to hold a bakesale for feminism.” I balked and they changed it, but later I thought, that would have been great! I love baking! I am a feminist! Duh!
(Full disclosure: My legs are often hairy.)
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Below is an email I wrote to Oxford University Gender communication professor Deborah Cameron author of the great important book,The Myth Of Mars and Venus Do Men and women Really Speak Different Languages?.
Dear Deborah,
I recently read your great important book, The Myth Of Mars & Venus. I read a bad review of the book, The Female Brain on Amazon.com US by psychologist David H.Perterzell and he called it junk science.
I also thought you would want to know that John Gray got his “Ph.D” from Columbia Pacific University which was closed down in March 2001 by the California Attorney General’s Office because he called it a diploma mill and a phony operation offering totally worthless degrees!
Also there is a Christian gender and psychology scholar and author psychology professor Dr. Mary Stewart Van Leewuen who teaches the psychology and Philosophy of Gender at the Christian College Eastern College here in Pa. She has several online presentations that were done at different colleges from 2005- the present debunking the Mars & Venus myth.
One is called , Opposite Sexes Or Neighboring Sexes and sometimes adds, Beyond The Mars/Venus Rhetoric in which she explains that all of the large amount of research evidence from the social and behavorial sciences shows that the sexes are very close neighbors and that there are only small average differences between them many of which have gotten even smaller over the last several decades which she says happened after 1973 when gender roles were less rigid and that genetic differences can’t shrink like this and in such a short period of time, and that most large differences that are found are between individual people and that for almost every trait and behavior there is a large overlap between them and she said so it is naive at best and deceptive at worst to make claims about natural sex differences. etc.
She says he claims Men are From Mars & Women are From Venus with no emperical warrant and that his claim gets virtually no support from the large amount of psychological and behavioral sciences and that in keeping in line with the Christian Ethic and with what a bumper sticker she saw said and evidence from the behavioral and social sciences is , Men Are From,Earth ,Women Are From Earth Get Used To It. Comedian George Carlin said this too.
She also said that such dichotomous views of the sexes are apparently popular because people like simple answers to complex issues including relationships between men and women. She should have said especially relationships between them.
Sociologist Dr.Michael Kimmel writes and talks about this also including in his Media Education Foundation educational video. And he explains that all of the evidence from the psychological and behavioral sciences indicates that women and men are far more alike than different.
Yet Dr.Mary Stewart Van Leewuen says that there are no consistent large psychological sex differences found.
I have an excellent book from 1979 written by 2 parent child development psychologists Dr. Wendy Schemp Matthews and award winning psychologist from Columbia University, Dr.Jeane Brooks-Gunn, called He & She How Children Develop Their Sex Role Idenity.
They thoroughly demonstrate with tons of great studies and experiments by parent child psychologists that girl and boy babies are actually born more alike than different with very few differences but they are still perceived and treated systematically very different from the moment of birth on by parents and other adult care givers. They go up to the teen years.
I once spoke with Dr.Brooks-Gunn in 1994 and I asked her how she could explain all of these great studies that show that girl and boy babies are actually born more alike with few differences but are still perceived and treated so differently anyway, and she said that’s due to socialization and she said there is no question, that socialization plays a very big part.
I know that many scientists know that the brain is plastic and can be shaped and changed by different life experiences and different enviornments too and Dr.Mary Stewart Van Leewuen told this to me too when I spoke to her 10 years ago.
Also there are 2 great online rebuttals of the Mars & Venus myth by Susan Hamson called, The Rebuttal From Uranus and Out Of The Cave: Exploring Gray’s Anatomy by Kathleen Trigiani.
Also have you read the excellent book by social psychologist Dr.Gary Wood at The University of Birmingham called, Sex Lies & Stereotypes:Challenging Views Of Women, Men & Relationships? He clearly demonstrates with all of the research studies from psychology what Dr.Mary Stewart Van Leewuen does, and he debunks The Mars & Venus myth and shows that the sexes are biologically and psychologically more alike than different and how gender roles and differences are mostly socially created.
Anyway, if you could write back when you have a chance I would really appreciate it.
Thank You
And Bork and Andrew’s comments demonstrate how commonly most people have been taught all of this gender myth,and gender stereotyping stuff,and they *want* to believe it even with so much great research studies and evidence that debunks it! It’s more comforting and not threatening to belive it!