The quotes in this article don't capture what got people so upset. The Crimson listed the 3 hypotheses that Summers raised, of which the second ruffled many feathers:
"... his second point, saying that there is “relatively clear evidence” that there may be a greater variance between men and women in aptitude areas such as mathematical and scientific ability, which may account for more men rising to top positions in these fields."
This was considered heresy by journalists. As I pediatric neurologist and neuroscientist I reached out to one of the journalists to provide the expertise from our field that 2/3 of our patients with intellectual disability were male, and part of this was due to many X-linked genetic forms of intellectual disability. These conditions affect females less than males because females have 2 copies of the X chromosome and thus a better chance of having a conventional copy of a gene (111 such conditions are listed at https://omim.org/phenotypicSeries/PS309530 and https://omim.org/phenotypicSeries/PS309510).
To account for this predominance of intellectual disability among males one would need to conclude either that males on average had lower intelligence than females, or that males had a similar average intelligence to females but had a greater variance in ability (as Summers enunciated in the second hypotheses). The journalist was completely uninterested in the facts and their implications; journalists at the time were determined to harm Summers regardless of the data.
Summers was not only successful in provoking thought on this issue but was also successful in provoking experimentation. I carried out an experiment to explore Summers' theme of finding ways to enhance the participation of females in STEM subjects. Using the GameMaker object oriented programming environment for kids, we taught our boys (11 and 5 years old) and girl (8) how to program. On the hypothesis the girls wanted a more social experience, we also included several of her female friends. All 3 kids began with similar skill. The boys became very interested and now work in programming. The girl lost interest, saying that programming wasn't people-oriented enough. This was even though I devoted extra energy to programming with her, including designing a talking calculator that entered numbers to the voice of a friend and output answers to the voice of our daughter.
One might guess that her lack of persistence in programming was due to one of Summers' other two hypotheses, #1 that females were less likely to choose interests demanding intense commitment, or #3 that females are constrained by social norms. But these don't fit because my daughter is a Captain in the US Army, in airborne field artillery, commanding a battery with a hundred soldiers, 99% of whom are male.
Interestingly, Summers was instrumental in my daughter choosing this career path. As a result of Summers in 2001 initiating the movement to return ROTC to elite colleges, my daughter got to meet inspiring leaders in the military and chose to do ROTC. When others in the military ask her why she majored in neuroscience in college, she replies that neuroscience is the operating manual for people.
So the answer may be none of Summers' three hypotheses. It may be that women prefer people-oriented endeavors, a conclusion that came to light as a result of Summers' challenge to explore the issue.
From my perspective Summers was instrumental in encouraging females to excel in fields that had been male-dominated. Sheryl Sandberg, one of the most successful women in high tech, for whom Summers was a mentor, would probably say the same about Summers.
This article was helpful in clearing the air about Summers and women in the workforce. But I would go father and point out that some of us see Summers is a hero on this issue for encouraging thought and experimentation, and for directly encouraging women.
"There’s growing evidence that girls and women aren’t pursuing STEM careers because they’d simply prefer not to. That is, that sex differences in the STEM workforce may largely be a product of sex differences in interests and priorities.
This is a controversial claim, but there’s abundant research to support it. First, if discrimination were preventing women from entering STEM fields, then women in countries with less gender equity, such as in the Middle East and South Asia, would surely be less likely to pursue STEM careers than women in countries with greater gender equity, such as in Scandinavia. After all, there must be more barriers for women who want to be scientists in Algeria than in Finland. In fact, we see the opposite: Women make up over 40% of the STEM graduates in Algeria and only 20% in Finland. This pattern can be seen around the world.
The likely story here is that gender equity matters less than money. Countries with less gender equity tend to be poor, and careers in STEM are one of the clearest routes to financial success anywhere. Women with strong quantitative skills in poor countries have good reason to enter the sciences to make a living. Women in relatively rich countries can afford to pursue less lucrative careers without risking a life of poverty.
Why are women consistently more likely to become sociologists than chemical engineers? Some suggest that women simply prefer fields with more women, but this explanation doesn’t seem sufficient. Male PhDs in psychology outnumbered women three to one in 1970, yet women still entered the discipline en masse, and now earn around 75% of all psychology PhDs, according to the National Science Foundation.
Scores of surveys over the last 50 years show that women tend to be more interested in careers that involve working with other people while men prefer jobs that involve manipulating objects, whether it is a hammer or a computer."
Back then, people would say, "Haha, academics are just crazy!" But the fact that history repeated itself with James Damore at Google years later should have been proof enough that no, it's not just crazy college kids doing crazy college things, but actually, this malignant ideology of lies and deceit is on a successful long march through all institutions, including the most powerful corporations in the world.
The quotes in this article don't capture what got people so upset. The Crimson listed the 3 hypotheses that Summers raised, of which the second ruffled many feathers:
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2005/6/9/the-worlds-that-started-the-war/
"... his second point, saying that there is “relatively clear evidence” that there may be a greater variance between men and women in aptitude areas such as mathematical and scientific ability, which may account for more men rising to top positions in these fields."
This was considered heresy by journalists. As I pediatric neurologist and neuroscientist I reached out to one of the journalists to provide the expertise from our field that 2/3 of our patients with intellectual disability were male, and part of this was due to many X-linked genetic forms of intellectual disability. These conditions affect females less than males because females have 2 copies of the X chromosome and thus a better chance of having a conventional copy of a gene (111 such conditions are listed at https://omim.org/phenotypicSeries/PS309530 and https://omim.org/phenotypicSeries/PS309510).
To account for this predominance of intellectual disability among males one would need to conclude either that males on average had lower intelligence than females, or that males had a similar average intelligence to females but had a greater variance in ability (as Summers enunciated in the second hypotheses). The journalist was completely uninterested in the facts and their implications; journalists at the time were determined to harm Summers regardless of the data.
Summers was not only successful in provoking thought on this issue but was also successful in provoking experimentation. I carried out an experiment to explore Summers' theme of finding ways to enhance the participation of females in STEM subjects. Using the GameMaker object oriented programming environment for kids, we taught our boys (11 and 5 years old) and girl (8) how to program. On the hypothesis the girls wanted a more social experience, we also included several of her female friends. All 3 kids began with similar skill. The boys became very interested and now work in programming. The girl lost interest, saying that programming wasn't people-oriented enough. This was even though I devoted extra energy to programming with her, including designing a talking calculator that entered numbers to the voice of a friend and output answers to the voice of our daughter.
One might guess that her lack of persistence in programming was due to one of Summers' other two hypotheses, #1 that females were less likely to choose interests demanding intense commitment, or #3 that females are constrained by social norms. But these don't fit because my daughter is a Captain in the US Army, in airborne field artillery, commanding a battery with a hundred soldiers, 99% of whom are male.
Interestingly, Summers was instrumental in my daughter choosing this career path. As a result of Summers in 2001 initiating the movement to return ROTC to elite colleges, my daughter got to meet inspiring leaders in the military and chose to do ROTC. When others in the military ask her why she majored in neuroscience in college, she replies that neuroscience is the operating manual for people.
So the answer may be none of Summers' three hypotheses. It may be that women prefer people-oriented endeavors, a conclusion that came to light as a result of Summers' challenge to explore the issue.
From my perspective Summers was instrumental in encouraging females to excel in fields that had been male-dominated. Sheryl Sandberg, one of the most successful women in high tech, for whom Summers was a mentor, would probably say the same about Summers.
This article was helpful in clearing the air about Summers and women in the workforce. But I would go father and point out that some of us see Summers is a hero on this issue for encouraging thought and experimentation, and for directly encouraging women.
The 8 March WSJ has an excellent article (https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/workplace/why-are-girls-less-likely-to-become-scientists-93307cd3) reaching the same conclusions about preferences of women. The whole article is worth reading, but the following is the key point:
"There’s growing evidence that girls and women aren’t pursuing STEM careers because they’d simply prefer not to. That is, that sex differences in the STEM workforce may largely be a product of sex differences in interests and priorities.
This is a controversial claim, but there’s abundant research to support it. First, if discrimination were preventing women from entering STEM fields, then women in countries with less gender equity, such as in the Middle East and South Asia, would surely be less likely to pursue STEM careers than women in countries with greater gender equity, such as in Scandinavia. After all, there must be more barriers for women who want to be scientists in Algeria than in Finland. In fact, we see the opposite: Women make up over 40% of the STEM graduates in Algeria and only 20% in Finland. This pattern can be seen around the world.
The likely story here is that gender equity matters less than money. Countries with less gender equity tend to be poor, and careers in STEM are one of the clearest routes to financial success anywhere. Women with strong quantitative skills in poor countries have good reason to enter the sciences to make a living. Women in relatively rich countries can afford to pursue less lucrative careers without risking a life of poverty.
Why are women consistently more likely to become sociologists than chemical engineers? Some suggest that women simply prefer fields with more women, but this explanation doesn’t seem sufficient. Male PhDs in psychology outnumbered women three to one in 1970, yet women still entered the discipline en masse, and now earn around 75% of all psychology PhDs, according to the National Science Foundation.
Scores of surveys over the last 50 years show that women tend to be more interested in careers that involve working with other people while men prefer jobs that involve manipulating objects, whether it is a hammer or a computer."
Thank you. Important! Another account:
https://thoughtsofstone.com/the-day-the-logic-died/
Back then, people would say, "Haha, academics are just crazy!" But the fact that history repeated itself with James Damore at Google years later should have been proof enough that no, it's not just crazy college kids doing crazy college things, but actually, this malignant ideology of lies and deceit is on a successful long march through all institutions, including the most powerful corporations in the world.