Some Reflections on the Dearth of
Women in Science
Ben A. Barres
(Prodded on by Larry Summers, Steven
Pinker, and Harvey Mansfield)
Talk Outline
1.The problem
2.A little about me
3.My commentary
4.Steve Pinker’s hypothesis that men and women
have evolved innately different cognitive circuits,
accounting for the dearth of women in science
5. Harvey Mansfield and Manliness
6.The great harm done by stereotypes
7.Why enhancing diversity is important
8. Some thoughts on what can be done
IF YOU DISAGREE WITH ME, PLEASE LET ME KNOW
1. My e-mail address is barres@stanford.edu
2. My talk is being videotaped and will be
posted on the Harvard Faculty and
Development and Diversity web site
http://www.faculty.harvard.edu/05/index.html
and the Harvard Women’s Center web site.
http://hcwc.fas.harvard.edu/
3. My slides are available to anyone who wants
them, as is my commentary.
Percentage of Science and Engineering
PhDs Awarded to Women
The Question: Why So Few Women in
Science and Engineering?
Discipline
Chemistry
Math
Computer Sci.
Astronomy
Physics
Chem. Eng.
Civil Eng.
Electrical Eng.
Mechanical Eng.
Economics
Political Science
Sociology
Psychology
Biol. Sciences
Assistant
Professor (%)
21
19
11
22
11
21
22
11
16
19
36
52
45
30
Associate
Professor (%)
Full
Professor (%)
20
13
14
16
10
19
11
10
9
16
28
42
40
25
7
4
8
9
4
4
3
7
3
7
14
14
14
15
All
Ranks (%)
12
8
11
12
7
10
10
6
6
11
23
36
33
20
Underrepresentation of women at the top 50 science and engineering schools
http://www.now.org/issues/diverse/diversity_report.pdf
President Larry Summers
NBER Talk (January 2005)
Suggested 3 reasons in order of importance for
underrepresentation of women in science:
1) Child care issues
2) Innate brain differences
3) Discrimination
The More Geniuses, More Idiots Effect
Though men and women have the same average
IQ scores, men have the very best and worst scores.
Why Women Lack Great Originality
A Biological Limitation in the Maternal Source—Historically
Uninventive in Dealing With Their Own Domestic Problems
By Dr. Simon Baruch
New York Times, July 14, 1915
These lines are written in no spirit of controversy but simply to
point out the irrevocable law of nature…and to arouse men to
abandon their indifference or ridicule toward the blatant
claims of the feminists.
Is Woman Biologically Barred from Success?
By Rheta Childe Dorr New York Times, Sept. 19, 1915
(quotation next slide)
Stephen Jay Gould
The Mismeasure of Man (1981)
The long dismal history of racist and sexist
pseudoscientists claiming that biological limitations
justify social conditions.
“Few tragedies can be more extensive than
the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than
the denial of opportunity to strive or even to
hope, by a limit imposed from without, but
falsely Identified as lying within.”
My Lab:
How Does the Developing Brain
Sculpt it’s Neural Circuits?
ASTROCYTE
Christopherson K, Ullian E, .., Barres BA (2005)
Thrombospondins are astrocyte-secreted proteins that
promote CNS synaptogenesis. Cell 120, 421-33
The Calcium Channel Subunit a2d1 is the Neuronal Thrombospondin
Receptor Responsible for Synaptogenesis (2008) Çagla Eroglu, ..., Ben
A. Barres. Cell, submitted.
Cagla Eroglu
starts Assistant Professorship this June
Department of Cell Biology, Duke University
The Classical Complement Cascade Mediates CNS Synapse Elimination
(Stevens B, Allen NJ, …, Barres BA, Cell 131, 1164-78, 2007)
Beth Stevens
Will start position this June as Assistant Professor, Neurobiology Program,
Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School
My Transsexuality
Barbara
Ben
What is Gender Identity?
1.
Gender Identity is a person’s innate sense of being male or female.
2. DSM includes a diagnosis of gender identity disorder or
transsexualism in which one’s mental sense of gender identity may
differ from his/her anatomic or genetic sex.
I am not disordered. I am me.
3. The desire for transsexuals to change sex is irresistably strong. Many
will even cut off their own genitals or commit suicide.
4. Transsexuals are the victims of severe job discrimination and
violence. Society frowns harshly on anyone who dares to step out of
their “normal” gender roles.
5. Gender identity helps to explain why, when women think they are
less feminine if they are good at math, that they underachieve.
Personal Encounters with Discrimination
1. As a woman:
High school guidance councilor
MIT
Finding a research lab at MIT
During medical training
Postdoc fellowship competition
As a professor
2. Overt discrimination as a transsexual:
Health insurance
3. Awareness of discrimination since sex change:
Awareness of the many closeted LGBT academics
Awareness of how women and men are treated differently
Gender Identity and Stereotype Threat
Stereotype threat is the fear that one's behavior will confirm
an existing stereotype of a group with which one identifies.
This fear causes an impairment of performance.
Spencer S, Steele C, Quinn D
(1999) StereotypeThreat and
Women’s Math Performance.
J.Exp. Social Psych.35, 4–28
Claude Steele
Exposure to Scientific Theories Affects Women's Math
Performance (2006) Dar-Nimrod and Heine. Science 314, 435
The authors conclude: “These findings raise discomforting
questions regarding the effects that scientific theories can have
on those who learn about them. Professor Summers’ comments
may have inadvertantly exacerbated the gender gap in science
through stereotype threat.”
The Aftermath of the Summers Talk
Press coverage was vicious (“the story that will not die”).
Soon thereafter the Harvard Corporation, lead by Hanna
Gray, decided to give Prof. Summers a large pay raise.
(African-American lawyer) Conrad Harper resigned from
the Corporation in disgust.
There was silence from the top scientific leadership
(NIH, NAS, HHMI).
The Aftermath
From: David X.
Date: January 29, 2008
To: <nhopkins@mit.edu>
Subject: MIT as it used to be
Ms. Hopkins,
Are you still there? It is hard to believe that MIT is still
employing someone who publicly denounced the scientific
method. When I was a student there, the scientific method was
central to a scientific career. How low the Institute has
fallen! (Are you recovering from your vapors?)
…
Sincerely,
David X
Course V, 1972
Taboo or Untrue?
Steven Pinker argued that people were so angry
because they feel the idea that women are
innately inferior is so dangerous that it is sinful even
to think about it and it should be taboo.
Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz
sympathizes so strongly with this view that he and
Prof. Pinker taught a course this past year called
“Morality and Taboo".
Professor Summers is Invited to be a Guest in the
Morality and Taboo Course
“I think it was, in retrospect, an act of spectacular
imprudence,” he told the class.
He regretted that girls around the world came to think that the
president of Harvard believed they couldn’t be scientists.
“There are enormous benefits to being a leader of a major
institution, but there are also costs and limitations,”
“I thought I could have it both ways, and I was wrong.”
-- Larry Summers’s Evolution ; As reported by David Leonhardt
In the New York Times, June 10, 2007
Other Concurrent Events That Snapped Me Out of
My Denial About the Existence of Persistent
Gender-Based Bias in Academia
1. Steven Pinker put forth an identical point of view to Summers in
his book The Blank Slate about the innate limitations of women.
2. So did Sir Peter Lawrence in his essay “Men, Women, and
Ghosts” (PLoS Biology 2006).
3. So did Harvey Mansfield argued in his book Manliness (2006)
4. Women were effectively being excluded from elite scientific
competitions (NIH Pioneer Award, HHMI Investigatorships) by
the nearly all male selection committees involved.
The Blank Slate (2002) By Steven Pinker
The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Men are innately better at:
More aggressive
More ambitious
Take more risks
Better at spatial+math skills
Higher tolerance for pain
Women are innately better at:
Verbal abilities
Feel emotions more strongly
More empathy
Smile and laugh more
Prefer to take care of children
Men are inherently “risk taking achievers who can willingly
endure discomfort in pursuit of success,” while
“Women are more likely to choose administrative support
jobs that offer low pay in air conditioned offices”
He thus frowns on any special efforts to
increase women faculty into science.
My Commentary:
“Does Gender Matter?” (2006) Nature 442, 133-6
“ I am suspicious when those who are at an advantage proclaim that a
disadvantaged group of people is innately less able.”
1. There is no compelling evidence for relevant innate gender differences in
cognition.
2. There is overwhelming evidence for severe gender prejudice.
3. Both men and women often deny gender-based bias . We all have a strong desire
to believe that the world is fair.
4. When faculty tell their students that they are innately inferior based on race or
gender they are crossing a line that should not be crossed –the line that divides
responsible free speech from verbal violence.
5. In a culture where women’s abilities are not respected, women cannot
effectively learn, advance, lead or participate in society in a fulfilling way.
The Response to My Commentary
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
It was covered by most major newspapers around the world.
Hundreds of TV shows and radio stations asked to interview me.
I received 8 book offers.
I received hundreds of invitation to speak on this subject.
I received over 3,000 e-mails from around the world. Less than ten
were at all negative.
6. About one third of them were from men. Most e-mails, male and
female, told me of examples of gender-based prejudice in their own
lives. Many men and women asked me what they could do to help
make things better for women.
My Favorite E-mail
Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006
From: Julie
To: barres@stanford.edu
Subject: thank you
Dear Ben,
Just wanted to say thanks so much for coming forward with your
experiences…I was a Harvard student. I remember strongly a
meeting I had with the poet Adrienne Rich. I came away from the
meeting feeling shocked– I realized it was the first time I’d felt truly
taken seriously as a person.
Julie
Steven Pinker and Harvey Mansfield Respond by
Visciously Slurring my Transgender Identity
Two Harvard professors …responded angrily… with
Harvey Mansfield calling Barres “a political fruitcake”
and Steven Pinker saying that Barres has
“reduced science to Oprah”.
Marcella Bombardieri,
Boston Globe
July 13, 2006
Response by Steven Pinker to my Commentary
Correspondence (Nature 442, 510)
1. Barres’s review of scientific studies is one sided and anecdotal.
My commentary was rigorously peer reviewed (unlike his book).
2. Pinker called “a simple lie” Barres’s suggestion that those who write
about gender differences are suggesting that a whole group of people
is innately wired to fail.
Pinker et al all argue strongly for female innate limitations.
3. Barres should learn not to take hypotheses so personally.
This is about social justice for women.
4. Men are better at some things and women are better at others.
Pinker should learn that hypotheses require supporting data.
5. More mud slinging at me, calling my commentary a “polemic that
contains numerous falsehoods and scurrilous statements”.
POLEMIC:
is a text on a topic written specifically to dispute
or refute a position or theory that is widely viewed
to be beyond reproach
SCURRILOUS:
grossly or obscenely abusive,
contains slander
Correspondence (Nature 442, 510)
The gender debate: science promises an honest
investigation of the world
By Steven Pinker
(Last Paragraph)
As for encouraging women in science: in my experience,
students of both sexes are attracted to science because it
promises an honest investigation into how the world works, an
alternative to the subjectivity, simplistic dichotomies and
moralistic name-calling that characterizes politics and personal
quarrels. Let’s hope Barres’s Commentary does not discourage
them.
It is Steven Pinker Who Doesn’t Get the
Concept of a University of Free Inquiry
“Look, the truth cannot be offensive…People who storm
out of a meeting …without providing arguments or evidence,
don’t get the concept of a university or free inquiry.”
--- Steven Pinker (Harvard Crimson Interview)
An environment supportive of free speech is not possible
when people with different views are being visciously
personally attacked.
Evolutionary Psychology
The goal of research in evolutionary psychology is to
discover and understand the design of the human mind.
Some EP Principles:
1. Our neural circuits were designed by natural selection
to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our
species' evolutionary history.
2. Different neural circuits are specialized for solving
different adaptive problems.
3. Our modern skulls house a stone age mind.
There are many serious problems with this approach:
1. EP hypotheses are unfalsifiable and untestable (“just so stories”).
2. EP hypotheses involve circular reasoning: They start out with
sexist Darwinian biases, like males are more
competitive, and then the results end at the same starting point,
concluding that male neural circuits have evolved for competition
Darwin's Belief in Male Superiority
“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the
two sexes is shown by man's attaining to a higher
eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman whether requiring deep thought, reason, or
imagination, or merely the use of the senses and
hands.”
-- -Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871
Advantages of Marriage: “constant companion….object to be
loved and played with—better than a dog anyway, someone
to take care of house.”
Disadvantages of Marriage: “perhaps my wife won’t like
London. Then the sentence is banishment and degradation
with indolent idle fool.”
-- Autobiography of Darwin
The Feminist Perspective About Evolution
The Evolution of Woman: An Inquiry Into the Dogma of Her
Inferiority By Eliza Burt Gamble (1894)
Although Darwin interpreted his data to indicate that men
were superior to women, she saw female superiority.
The Woman That Never Evolved. By Sarah Blaffer Hrdy (1981)
She argued that Darwin’s notion of a passive female role in
sexual selection stemmed from Victorian social conventions.
The Politics of Women’s Biology. By Ruth Hubbard (1990).
So long as biology as an enterprise is almost exclusively a
male occupation it will be a biased science, masquerading as
objective, and will make unfounded claims about women's
biology that will justify the inferior status of women.
Most Critiques of Evolutionary Psychology as
Science or Paradigm Have Been Devastating
Meet the Flintstones (2002). By Simon Blackburn, Prof. of Philosophy, U.
Cambridge
What Comes Naturally (2002). The New Yorker. By Louis Menand.
Darwinian Fundamentalism (1997) New York Rev. Books.
By Stephan Jay Gould.
Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology, and Human Nature (1984)
By Richard Lewontin, Steven Rose, and Leon Kamin
Evolutionary Psychology: The Emperor’s New Paradigm. Trends Cog. Sci.
2005 By David J. Buller (Prof. of Philsophy, N. Illinois U.)
Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for
Human Nature, MIT Press. 2005. By David J. Buller
Have Men and Women Evolved Different
Cognitive Neural Circuits?
“The problem is that beyond the repeated assertion
that there may be an anatomico-physiological basis
for differences in status, wealth, and power,
biological determinists have never found any
credible concrete basis for such differences. For all I
know, we are being visited daily by extraterrestrial
creatures. There is certainly nothing in the laws of
physics to prevent it. But I really do require more
than out-of-focus snapshots to make me take the
possibility seriously. “
--Prof. Richard C. Lewontin (1985, NYRB)
Harvard University
The Pinker-Spelke Debate:
Why So Few Women in Science and Engineering?
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/debate05/debate05_index.html
Pinker: Innate Differences >> Bias/Social Factors
1. Gender differences exist in variability of math scores,
risk taking, preferences, etc
2. Most gender stereotypes are accurate
3. Innate biological factors (hormones, genes) responsible
Nature
Nurture
Spelke: Bias/Social Factors >> Innate Differences
1. There are no overall cognitive differences in innate
aptitude for science and math (Differences are not
deficiencies.)
2. Sex differences are not present in infants and emerge
in childhood.
3. Evidence for strong social forces that affect math
test scores and preferences/choices
The More Geniuses, More Idiots Effect:
Are Geniuses Most of the Innovators?
Lewis Terman, psychologist and eugenics advocate who
developed the Stanford-Binet IQ Test.
Followed 1528 gifted (IQ > 135) high school students for 30+ yr
Most became successful professionals but few very innovative.
Shockley and Pauling passed over for the study (had IQ of 120)
(Described in Terman’s Kids and Broken Genius both by Joel N. Shurkin)
Extreme Mathematical Achievement of Women is Higher
in Countries Where Woman’sSocial Status is Higher
Andrew M. Penner (Am. J. Sociology, 2008)
Strong social Influences lower women’s math performance:
1. Stereotype threat
2. Popularity concerns
3. Boys take more math courses in response to parental
suggestion and greater mathematical confidence
“If boys thought girls wouldn’t like them if they
were good at math, there would be few boys who
are good at math.”
-- Paul Erdos (1913-1996)
The SAT Math Test Gap is Rapidly Closing
Male to female ratio of Hopkins talent search participants with
scores over 700 :
Year
1983
1991
1997
2005
Ratio
13 to 1
6 to 1
4 to 1
3 to 1
Sex Differences in Intrinsic Aptitude for Mathematics and Science?
A critical review. Elizabeth S. Spelke, American Psychologist, Dec 2005
Women Outperform Men in Gender-Blind
Science Problem Solving
(Manuscript under review)
By Jeppesen, Lakhani, Lohse, Panetta
Innocentive.com. Solve some of the toughest
problems facing the world today. Win cash
awards of up to $1,000,000 for your creative
solutions to Challenges in:
Business and Entrepreneurship
Chemistry
Engineering and Design
Life Sciences
Math and Computer Science
Physical Sciences
Challenges are posted by corporations,
government
agencies,
and
nonprofit
organizations who are looking for help.
Karim Lakhani
Harvard Business School
Found women 3.5 X
more likely to solve
a problem than men.
Other Concerns about the Blank Slate:
The Interpretation of Differences as Male Superiority
Carol Gilligan found gender differences in moral reasoning:
women are more concerned about the welfare of groups
whereas men are more concerned about individual rights.
Pinker argues if Gilligan was correct that this would invalidate
women from becoming lawyers and Supreme Court Justices.
Why is the male perspective the only one that counts to him
in defining justice?
“Education is a method whereby one acquires a
higher grade of prejudices.” -- Laurence J. Peter
Other Concerns about The Blank Slate:
Are Women Less Likely to Take Intellectual Risks?
Pinker cited :
Gender Differences in Risk Taking: A Meta-Analysis
By Byrnes, Miller, and Schafer (Psych. Bull. 3, 367-83, 1999)
However:
1. The intellectual risk taking test was a math test.
2. A strongly significant risk taking difference was only observed
at age 10 to 13 and was going away by age 18 to 21.
(no data for ages older than 21)
My Questions for Steven Pinker
1. Given all the evidence for bias and social forces, and the rapidly
improving performance of women on math tests, how can you
be so sure that the underrepresentation of women in science
reflects innate differences?
2. How can a talented women that wants to be a scientist be fairly
judged by merit when there is a strong stereotype that women in
general are less good at science?
3.Why do you ignore data that doesn’t agree with your ideas? Could it be
your search for truth is not as objective as you think?
4. Since you view women as having different but equal abilities, how
would you like to become a woman with only the abilities you attribute
to women?
Confounding Prejudice with Truth
“The history of opinion regarding the cerebral differences
forms a painful page in scientific annals. It is full of
prejudices, assumptions, fallacies, overhasty generalizations.
Men of science seem to have lost the scientific spirit when
they approached the study of its seat. Many a reputation
has been lost in these soft and sinuous convolutions.”
--Havelock Ellis (1934)
“The
greatest enemy of truth is not error but prejudice.”
-- Ashley Montagu
Harvey Mansfield and Manliness (2006)
Manliness: is confidence in the face of risk
According to Mansfield, men are innately:
More aggressive, assertive, philosophical courage
able to lead and command, competitive, ambitious.
Any woman who shows these qualities he calls manly.
Most stereotypes are justified and have an innate basis.
Men disdain woman’s work and also women.
According to Mansfield, women:
Show a secret liking for housework, enjoy changing diapers,
fear spiders.
“ Is it possible to teach a woman manliness and thus to
become more assertive? Or is that like teaching a cat
to bark? “
--Harvey Mansfield
Are Women Less Willing to Risk Life or Limb?
The Heroism of Women and Men
By Selwyn and Eagly, Am. Psych. 59, 163-78, 2004
Who is more likely to risk life or limb?
1. Gentiles saving Jews during the Holocaust
2. Kidney donation
3. Peace corp volunteers
4. Doctors of the World
5. Winners of Carnegie Medal for Heroism
(involves physical strength)
Women
Women
Women
Women
Men
MANSFIELD’S VIEWS ON HOMOSEXUALITY
Mansfield said that he thought “gay and transgender people are on
society’s margin and should remain there. Substitutes for the
traditional family are dysfunctional, you wouldn’t want children to
grow up in them.” (Harvard Crimson, Oct 19, 2005 by Samuel
Jacobs)
Mansfield has actively worked against gay rights. He has testified as
a paid expert witness on a Colorado constitutional amendment
prohibiting cities from enacting gay rights laws.
Gay sex is shameful, a homosexual is not generally as happy a
person. Homosexuality should be tolerated but disapproved of, as if
it is made respectable it will eventually undermine civilization.
Homosexualiity should be restricted by the mechanism of shaming
them. He also said homosexuality, rightly, causes most regular
people to feel repulsed (Boston Globe Dec 7, 1993)
My E-mail to Harvey Mansfield
Q: How's the hate mail? (NY Post Interview with Harvey Mansfield, 2006)
A: I got a note from a professor at Stanford saying, "Harvard fired Larry
Summers. Why don't they fire you?"
Dear Dr. Mansfield,
…Please let me clarify. I believe in free speech…but I also believe
that tolerance and freedom from sexual harassment are important
values as well. What does tolerance mean to you? Is it all always
about your rights and your welfare? You don't have a right to tell
young women in the classroom that they are innately less good and
should content themselves to wash more dishes (as you said in yet
another interview the other day). It's not only incorrect, its deeply
harmful.
And please don't worry about being fired. If history is any
indication, you are in line for a big pay raise this year.
Ben Barres, Professor of Neurobiology, Stanford University
My Questions for Harvey Mansfield
1. Does not your work on manliness tell us a lot more about you and
your anxieties than it tells us about the actual subject?
2. Why do you think it is fair that you can demand tolerance and rights
to free speech for yourself from women, while you would gladly
squelch their ability to participate fully and equally in the life of the
university?
3. Given that you so strongly oppose affirmative action, now that girls
are 60% of the top applicants to universities, do you feel it is
appropriate that universities are now conducting affirmative action
for boys?
4. Why are manly men so afraid to compete with women on a level
playing field?
The Natural Superiority of Women (1952)
“Every human being, regardless of group membership,
has the right to fulfill his potentialities to the optimum.
Anyone who stands in the way of anothers development, commits
the greatest of all offenses against humanity.”
--Ashley Montagu
Dr. Ashley Montagu was a
British anthropologist and
humanist. He was amongst the
first to question the concept of
race as a biological entity. He
taught at Harvard in the 1940)
The Harmfulness of Gender Stereotypes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Sexism drives women students from the classroom.
Dims ambitions (Anna Fels, Harvard Business Rev, 2004)
Lowers expectations
Lessens performance (stereotype threat)
Lowers self confidence and self esteem
Prevents fulfilling lives by limiting career success
Makes leadership difficult if not impossible
Harm to Men: less time for family, seen as emotionally stunted
brutes, macho taller guys get leadership posts
Harm to Society: The harm that is done to people’s hearts and souls
when social justice is denied , maintenance of conformity,
lowered innovation and productivity
Gender Stereotypes Cause Overt Discrimination
1. Many gender blinding studies reviewed in Why So Slow? by V.
Valian., e.g. for job applications. (also see National Acad. of
Sciences report, 2007, on women in science)
2. Postdoc fellowship competition effect of 2.5-fold
Wennerås, C. & Wold, A. Nature 387, 341–343 (1997).
3. Women musicians auditioning for symphony orchestras
increased 5-fold with blind auditions (as reviewed in Bink, M.
Galdwell).
4. Double-blind review increases representation of female authors
(2008) Trends in Ecol.and Evol.Biol.23: 4-6, Budden et al.
Unconscious Gender Biases Are Prevalent in Both
Men and Women and Predict Behavior
Professor Mahzarin Banaji, Harvard University
Novel Methods to Measure Unconscious Bias.
The Implicit Association Test and
Implications for Social Justice
1. We all have unconscious biases
about gender and race.
2. Women are nearly as biased as
men about women’s competence.
3. The IAT is a powerful predictor of
how people behave.
4. Important implications for
assessment of merit.
Is it Tenable Any Longer to Argue that Women Are
Innately Less Good at Science?
No demonstrated genetic or neurobiological cognitive difference
Extreme mathematical achievement in women directly correlates
with cultural gender status and the test score gap is rapidly
shrinking
Genius test scores do not strongly predict innovativeness, and
people with IQ’s of 120 win Nobels
Scientifically proven gender bias and discrimination of stunningly
high degree.
Women vastly underrepresented in humanites as well as science.
Women out perform men in real life science problem solving
Simplest conclusion is that the dearth of women scientists is
caused largely by bias and social factors.
The Battle for True Equality has Hardly Begun:
Women Should Not Have to Become Men to Succeed
But Summers was not fired. He was given a pay raise.
By Hanna Gray, senior member of the Harvard Corporation, and
last June he was awarded an honorary degree by Harvard.
To be successful, women have long had to take on the attitudes
and behaviors of men in order to advance.
The battle to be a women leader and still be a woman is only just
beginning. Being confident, ambitious, or competitive does not
make a woman less of a woman.
It is not shameful to be a woman, and it is not shameful to look
out for the welfare of the half of students who are women.
Women just want the same thing that men do:
A meritocracy—that’s all !
Nancy Hopkins is a Great American Hero
One of the first women tenured full professors at
MIT.
A member of the National Academy of Science.
One of the few accomplished senior women
scientists to devote much effort to activism to help other women
scientists
Responsible for much of the increase in women faculty at MIT over
the past 15 years
Accomplished landmark study at MIT in 1999 demonstrating that
women faculty at MIT systematically received less salary, lab space,
and other resources than comparable male faculty.
Brought Larry Summers’ comments denigrating women to public
attention
The Importance of Diversity
“Educatability is the outstanding characteristic of the human
species, and the variability both in physical and mental traits is so
great that no two persons will ever be alike. It is in the
combination of these traits that the great riches of humans lies.
The strength of America is rooted in its diversity, and it is because
you are different than me that you are precious to me.”
--Ashley Montagu, The Natural Superiority of Women
Diversity is critical for all universities
because it enhances the perspectives by
which we analyze ideas enhancing the
search for truth and the rate of innovation.
The Importance of a Diverse Work Place
1.
Drawing from a larger talent pool is only logical
2. Lowered stereotype threat enables all to perform optimally.
3. Companies with more women board directors experience
significantly higher financial performance (by 50%).
4. Same is true for companies with more racial/ethnic employees.
(Herring study as reported by S. Vedantam, Wash. Post).
5. Diverse groups contain mixed perspectives and think
in new ways (Shankar Vedantam)
6. We cannot build a first rate scientific enterprise on a
foundation of second class citizens (Martin Luther King).
“The woman’s cause is man’s. They rise or fall together.”
-- Tennyson
What Happens to Women in Largely Male Environments
Largely male environments are lethal to the careers of young
women scientists. In such environments, women “choose” to
leave science.
When faculty and leadership is diverse, and there is a
balance, the atmosphere changes for the better for everyone,
male and female.
As I visit universities, I am stunned to find that women PhD
students are already strongly doubting an academic career in
their first years.
University departments with a high percentage of women
faculty have been shown to have a much higher percentage of
women graduates who are successful and stay in the pipeline.
What Can Be Done?
Women: You must ask for what you need!
CHILD CARE SUPPORT
Individual Action: Some Examples
1. Writing the Nature commentary
2. Writing to intolerant faculty
3. Selection process reform for elite scientific awards (HHMI)
4. I encourage talented women and minority applicants to
apply to these awards
5. Referring students to young women and minority faculty
6. Mention the experiments of women scientists when I teach
7. As a course director, make sure faculty lecturers are diverse
8. Journal editorial board diversity
9. Speaker diversity
10. I talk to my students about all of these issues
11. I write notes to university leadership when I am concerned
about diversity issues (e.g., Tonegawa/Karpova)
If Schools Care About the Female Brain Drain They Must Act
Climate surveys.
Train women to achieve success in a prejudiced world.
Selection committees for awards, jobs, resources must be diverse.
More fairness in distribution of resources.
Increase faculty diversity.
Change in search policies needed: nearly all male depts don’t hire
women very often.
7. US News and World Report should include diversity in its rating.
8. Leadership diversity and accountability.
9. Top leadership must be highly diverse.
10. Child care support: Free day care for faculty (and help for students)
11. Rethinking work-life balance
12. Teach students how to assess and fight bigotry with their own
words, arguments, and deeds (MR22: Justice, Prof. Sandel)
13. A new student alliance of diverse men and women working
together for social justice.
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Ultimately Each of us is Responsible
For Ensuring Social Justice
“It is only when we do role reversal, and we see
through the eyes of others unlike us, that we can no
longer deny their reality, and we become human.”
-- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks; Dignity of Difference
(2004)
True education is "being turned round," so that
you do not see things the way your (unjust)
upbringing taught you.
--The Republic (Plato)
The Greatest Taboo
Steven Pinker says it is taboo to
suggest that women are innately
inferior. But I believe the greatest
taboo, by far, is to think that women
are not innately inferior. If we all
truly believed this, then we would
have to finally ask ourselves why so
few women (and minorities) are
advancing, and realize that the
answer lies within all of our hearts.