Harvard Official Defended After His PR 'Gender Blunder'

by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
February 24, 2005

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(AgapePress) - An informal remark about gender differences, offered by the head of an Ivy League university in a discussion about women's under-representation in the science and engineering fields, has touched off a firestorm of criticism and controversy. However, one critic of the radical feminist agenda feels women need to appreciate the truth of the comment.

At a January 14 National Bureau of Economic Research conference, Harvard University president Lawrence Summers offered some unofficial reflections on the topic the attendees had gathered to discuss -- namely, "Diversifying the Science and Engineering Workforce." With that objective in mind, at one point in his address he mused to the small group of researchers in the audience that basic, innate differences between men and women might offer one possible explanation for the fact that more men than women tend to excel in math and science-related disciplines.

Summers' comments drew the ire of many feminists, academic women in science and engineering, and other critics -- including members of a Harvard committee on women's issues, who sent him a letter complaining that his remarks "impede our current efforts to recruit top women scholars." In response, Summers wrote back, affirming he does not believe "that women lack the ability to succeed at the highest levels of math and science," and apologizing for any adverse impact his remarks may have generated.

Nevertheless, the university president has been under fire ever since the incident, with some members of the Harvard faculty, the wider academic community, and the public calling his leadership into question and even demanding his dismissal. But according to Susan Venker, author of the book 7 Myths of Working Mothers: Why Children and (Most) Careers Just Don't Mix (Spence Publishing, 2004), there was nothing outlandish about what Summers said.

On the contrary, Venker feels Larry Summers was right and that many of his critics just absolutely refuse to face the truth. "There simply are basic, innate differences between men and women, and [some people] just simply don't want to accept this," she says. "There is this huge group out there that will not accept this as fact. They want to believe that those differences are socially constructed when, in fact, we know otherwise."

In fact, the author contends that the radical feminist element, which insists on the specious notion that men and women are equal in nearly every aspect of human endeavor, has been confronted with proof of these innate gender differences again and again. The scientific evidence is readily available, she says, "but facts aren't too important to this particular group."

Venker empathizes with Summers somewhat, since she says his remark has disrupted the feminists' pet theory of gender equality, just as her book on the detriments of daycare has shaken the feminist notion that mothers can adequately raise their children without ever leaving the workforce. She sees a certain logic in the hypothesis that the under-representation of women in engineering and science fields could have to do with a female propensity to choose nurturing of children over self-advancement outside the home.

Certain statistical phenomena bear this up, Venker asserts, such as "the fact that more men choose certain professions that force them to have to work longer work weeks, for example." She points out that this is one of the possible reasons that President Summers posited for why women often choose not to go into many of these high-commitment professions.

According to the author of 7 Myths, jobs in these intensive science and technology fields often "demand so much time that women aren't willing to give, because they then couldn't be with their children, which obviously makes perfect sense." And that's okay, she says.

It's not a bad thing if highly intelligent and capable women choose to prioritize building good homes and raising healthy, well-adjusted children," Venker says. On the contrary, she asserts, "That's something to celebrate. That's a good thing."

Several scientific studies document evidence of innate differences between men and women. On a recent National Public Radio program, psychological researcher Drew Westen noted that psychologists have long known females generally score higher than males on tests of language, while males tend to do better than females on tests of mathematical ability. The differences are not terribly large, he observed, but notable variance is to be found in the extremes.

Westen pointed out that boys are much more likely than girls to develop learning disabilities involving reading and understanding language, as a rule. On the other hand, he noted, "A major study about 20 years ago of kids with exceptional mathematical abilities found that boys outnumber girls 13 to 1." The similar one-sidedness apparent in tenured science and engineering posts at major U.S. academic institutions is among the very inequities Larry Summers was attempting to address when his well-meaning reflections put him in the hot seat.

Like Summers, Westen did acknowledge that biology does not nearly explain away all the inequity of gender representation in the math and science fields. Both men admit that socialization appears to be a genuine influence that bears analysis. For instance, the psychologist cited the research finding that, from the time kids are born, parents talk to little girls more than to little boys. At the same time, mothers and fathers encourage boys to play with mechanical objects more often than they encourage little girls to do so. Many researchers believe such gender socialization discrepancies can have an effect throughout life.

Also, Westen cited a study involving male and female college students with comparably strong records of success and interest in math. The researchers found that those women in the study who were told to expect a gender difference in their performance levels did not do as well as those who were not told that gender would be a factor. In other words, the women tended to achieve at the performance levels they were instructed to anticipate.

Still, biologically predetermined gender differences are clearly indicated by current research, and according to Westen, evidence has emerged linking sex differences and intellectual abilities to both hormones and brain structure. For instance, he noted that the level of a fetus's exposure to testosterone -- a male hormone -- has been found to predict the speed with which children could rotate mental images in their minds at age 7. Meanwhile, the researcher added, brain scanning studies show that women's and men's brains differ in the way they process language, with males usually processing language only on the left side of the brain, while women tend to use both sides of the brain in linguistic tasks.

In light of such evidence, Westen pondered rhetorically whether Harvard's president actually misspoke when he suggested innate gender differences were worth considering. The psychology expert expressed the hope that the incident which landed Summers in the midst of this firestorm would not prevent the university administrator or anyone else from raising similarly challenging, albeit disquieting, questions.