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Evolution, not sexism, puts us at a disadvantage in the sciences

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Men are far more competitive, ambitious, status-conscious and single-minded; and they'd rather work with abstract ideas or objects than with humans. Women are more focused on family and other relationships; they have wider interests and prefer not to work in people-free zones.

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is biological is very problematic.

Again with this:

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Third, sex differences exhibit greater male than female variance. Females are much of a muchness, clustering round the mean. But among males, the difference between the most and the least, the best and the worst, can be vast.

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Cronin takes these observed phenomena at face value and goes on to say that:

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These differences are not recent or artificial or arbitrary. They have deep evolutionary reasons, which are well understood. Sexual reproduction as we know it began with one sex specialising slightly more in competing for mates and the other slightly more in caring for offspring. This divergence became self-reinforcing, widening over evolutionary time....

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Why did this "specialization" occur? Why is this just put down as something "natural"? For example, the horses at my parent's farm partake in a large degree of communal child-caring despite the obvious need for the colt to access his/her mother for milk. It often occures with lions that cubs will nurse from a number of lactating females even, and as humans we learn from adults of both sexes. The idea that we "specialize" in mothering our own offspring with no community support is taken as "natural". Many social scientists date this only to Victorian times. Yet Cronin apparently has no qualms about reducing millions of years of history, much of it not recorded into a sweeping, paragraph long generalization.

Cronin says, in a rather snotty tone:

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If feminists want to change the world, they need first to understand it. And, when it comes to sex differences, Darwinian science provides the authoritative understanding.

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However, by asserting that this authoritative understanding she outlined above is the single correct interpretation of observable facts, she's trying to stop short the epistomological evolution that takes place within the natural sciences, whereby theory is refined as facts fail to fit in with established paradigms.. Indeed, scientists like Natalie Angier, among many others, are already challenging the simplistic gendered interpretation of "evolutionary psychology" that Cronin reproduces in this article as if it were completely uncontestable.

Finally, Cronin asks,

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Indeed, should discrimination occupy so much of the feminist agenda? ... It is scandalous that educated women should be so profoundly ignorant of scientific and statistical thinking; even more scandalous that, rather than learn, they slam the door and sneak to the media; and more scandalous still that they do this in the name of feminism.

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To which I answer, "Whatever I percieve to be holding me back, to be making my accomplishments and choices viewed as less worthwhile than those framed in a masculine paradigm, whatever outside constraints and interpretations slot me into a second class status... all of these will be on my agenda!"

Rather than the faux scandals Cronin emunerates above (indeed, is Cronin suggesting scientists should be willfully ignorant of social phenomena like the media? she obviously isn't!), it is the rigid, anti-intellectual and, yes, sexist attitudes of people like Cronin and Summers that are holding back women in academia. Until they learn to see human beings as individuals first and statistics second, until they learn to question their own epistomological assumptions and the sexism contained within them, they will be on my agenda and that's just too f-in' bad.

(OK. Rant over. Except to say that evolutionary psychology was a CGPA-booster for me, but calling it a "science" is total crap. It's just a poor strategy for trying to escape the epistomological work that we have to do in any other social 'science' or humanities discipline.)

[ 20 March 2005: Message edited by: dokidoki ]

Just btw, I just finished reading a report that seems to be speculating that women are genetically more complex than men -- others who know about the X/Y debate may clarify, and who knows?, y'know, but I toss that in to complicate things.

I think it's pretty easy to take Cronin's illogical assumptions apart -- for instance, she's just bullying when she talks about Darwinism, implying that her interpretation of Darwinism is what Darwinism is, and anyone who disagrees with her can't be a Darwinist, or is flying in the face of Darwinian science.

And as dokidoki says, the rest of the article is running on a multiplicity of similarly flabby overgeneralizations, none of which, even if true, would add up to much on its own.

I also wonder whether she has read the whole of Summers' speech, which was finally published last month, which publication was the reason the whole debate heated up again. It is SUCH a bad speech! Really, it was just loose talk, free association. Cronin says he "dared" and "probed" -- give me a break.

yet the issues about men testing heavily, statistically, among the very very bad math students and also the very very top ones, is true;
this differs from the female pattern at the extremes

as an economist, Summers threw out talk about variations in the mean and so on that is not intuitive, but is statistically true;
history is not destiny, but standardized tests - and all scientific academe is based on them - suggests strongly women will come to dominate the verbal professions (law, communications, etc), while men will remain preponderant in the math-based job world

Griffe expands on this:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/women_and_minorities_in_science.htm

....
The fundamental question is whether this candidate, in the past four plus years has done the quality work expected in academic research. If the answer is yes, the candidate will be advanced to tenure and promotion.

Characteristically, about half the candidates make it. The elite group of academic scientists who obtain tenure represents the cream of American science. We ask at which point this market will saturate with women?

To obtain the number of available slots in our rank order game, we must count the tenured faculty who work in math-intensive disciplines in American research universities. We can make a ballpark estimate of their number by looking at a product of their labors: new PhDs. For the last few years our universities have been turning out 12,000 to 13,000 PhD scientists a year in the math-intensive fields.

Most are produced by senior faculty. Assuming an average of one new PhD per year per tenured faculty member, we estimate the number of slots to be 12,000 or so. The calculation proves only mildly sensitive to slot size, making the ballpark estimate sufficient.

In the math-intensive areas, what is the fraction of tenured research-university faculty that we can reasonably expect to be female? Equation (6) again provides the answer. For a gap, D = 0.31, slot sizes, NS, between 8,000 and 17,000 (bracketing our ballpark estimate) and pool sizes, NM and NF, taken as the populations in the 25 to 65 age bracket, we predict that women will saturate this academic market at between 22 and 23 percent. With fewer slots available, women do not fare quite as well.

[ 20 March 2005: Message edited by: Geneva ]

Incidently, the work on chromosonal differences published in New Scientist on March 16 has sparked a great deal of comment. The best summary I have found is on the BBC science pages:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4355355.stm

Hopefully, this will inspire other scientists to attempt to repeat the studies and see if they are, in classic scientific theory, falsifiable.

[ 20 March 2005: Message edited by: Bobolink ]

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I tend to look at the ideas here as more inclined to questioning the dynamics of geometry. Male and female, as a dynamical expression, not only in the cosmos(Friedmann equations) but in how this may be deeply inserted in our psychological processes.

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One may tend back to philosphical questions about these differences, but they are innnate features in all of us? Jung's determinations, in the animus or anima, and the response's too, the male and female that seeks balance in it's life?

The distinction may be domineering at one point or another, but there is this balance contained, much as we would define the relationship of Maxwell in electric/magnetic fields? That one would ask where good common sense should rule?

The humanities in science should then beg the question, that neither of these things should ever be considered separate, or not equal, for they would be interchangeable and contained deeply in our extensions and consolidations of expressive thought?

That these distinctions are never really separate issues contained in the brain's alternating features of the brain's capacity to Babble, left/right? Topologically it would be difficult to distinction of the inner from the outer, but this is not to say that this can't be done in perspective.

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....or even contemplate John Baez's Fool's Gold PHI and the golden ration begininng from some sort of mandalic interpretation, coming from a psychological model based on Liminocentric structures?

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The mind, all the time engaged in heavy thought can easly recognize, when it has all come together in model apprehension. It's own image, for complete acceptance, we then undertand well the forays the mind has ventured through to come to such forms of consolidate thought and image reproduction?

[ 20 March 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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Men are always telling me not to generalize about them.

But a startling new study shows that science is backing me up here.

Research published last week in the journal Nature reveals that women are genetically more complex than scientists ever imagined, while men remain the simple creatures they appear.

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Originally posted by dokidoki:
The claim that this:

To which I answer, "Whatever I percieve to be holding me back, to be making my accomplishments and choices viewed as less worthwhile than those framed in a masculine paradigm, whatever outside constraints and interpretations slot me into a second class status... all of these will be on my agenda!"

Rather than the faux scandals Cronin emunerates above (indeed, is Cronin suggesting scientists should be willfully ignorant of social phenomena like the media? she obviously isn't!), it is the rigid, anti-intellectual and, yes, sexist attitudes of people like Cronin and Summers that are holding back women in academia. Until they learn to see human beings as individuals first and statistics second, until they learn to question their own epistomological assumptions and the sexism contained within them, they will be on my agenda and that's just too f-in' bad.

(OK. Rant over. Except to say that evolutionary psychology was a CGPA-booster for me, but calling it a "science" is total crap. It's just a poor strategy for trying to escape the epistomological work that we have to do in any other social 'science' or humanities discipline.)

[ 20 March 2005: Message edited by: dokidoki ]

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Specialization in math and symbolic enkryption doesn't seem indicative of an evolutionary effect but a social-intellectual differential condition. Sexism is *not* excluded as one of those conditions. Saying that women are genetically more complex says nothing about their neurology, but then I haven't read that article.

It is still more important to enhance cognitive development from social environmental science, because even if there is an evolutionary digression in gender neurology, the cognitive requirements are the same. Then we should consider also the affects of sexualized/genderized advertizing.

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Originally posted by LeftRight:
Specialization in math and symbolic enkryption doesn't seem indicative of an evolutionary effect but a social-intellectual differential condition. Sexism is *not* excluded as one of those conditions. Saying that women are genetically more complex says nothing about their neurology, but then I haven't read that article.

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Originally posted by dokidoki:

I thought it was clear I was referring to Cronin's article (and indirectly Summer's speech) exclusively.

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the differences between males and females, biologically, and behaviourally, and socialy is important in regards to when males and females "bloom" in terms of language and math.

Females have an early advantage when it come to subjects like language arts, and in social skills in general. The ways the average young female behaves are favoured by educators. Classrooms are geared for preferred behaviours that females demonstrate so well.

Also, in the primary grades, where more than 80% of teachers are female, women set rules up based on how they would like to be treated if they were playing. Boys are disciplined more than girls, suspended more often, medicated more, fail subjects more often, repeat grades more often. Girls are rewarded more because they display the favoured behaviours, cooperate more, and have better verbal skills and express themselves in non-violent ways. Girls are nicer to teach, and teachers prefer to teach females and reward females. Boys are dumb troublemakers that don't cooperate, and some boys appear not to respect female teachers' authority.

It is not until well into the high school years that males begin to close the gaps in terms of Language and social skills. Unfortunaly the boys, society, and educators continue to view boys as poor communicators and as doing poorly in L.A., therefore boys don't view their language skills as strong.

In terms of math or science, females tend to bloom later in their school experience than boys. Unfortunately, society, educators and girls themselves, tend to attribute results in primary grades in math and science as proof that girls can't do math as well as boys. As a result females are discouraged and a lot don't reach their potential, and succumb to a self-full-filling prophecy fed by society's preconcieved ideas.

Both sexes can become very adept at any subject or in any field requiring language or math. Unfortunely, the minor differences in both sexes are rarely accomadated for.
Educators are starting to realise that boys and girls don't learn on parallel chronological lines.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the defficenies of boys have been focused on more, to develop language and reading skills of boys, and some educators worry that the girls will suffer from the focus on boys. It is important that parents, and educators advocate for both boys and girls, and develop ways to accomadate for the minor differences.

There are just plain busy elsewhere? It's the primal words spoken of beating drums and far off places?

Maybe, the educational system is not intune with the developing scenarios of male/female attributes??

I was reading the other day a opening in regards to Plato's academy for learning. Although this was in context of early historical developement, I couldn't help be drawn to the the views that were developed alongside of, perspective. I will have to go back and look at this.

One thing that attracted my interest was the role music would play in developing rythmns of youth that were conducive to awareness and steady developement? Now I don't like to be called ole fashion, but the rhythms in youth were attractive to me because they might have taught the basis of movement in life, much like, and in concert with, the expansion and contraction scenarios of thinking and develeopement. Now remember focus on the rhythm

Of course I always come back to the regress of reasons to explain this intuitive leap that developed trends found in new realities emerging. Arche means elements, and any reductionistic system asks us to delve into the reasons why, even though on large scale media observation, the Summers might have had issue with deeper implications to consider?

Not fully understanding the emotive developement and differences between both, mental enhancement through age aggression to advance thinking, these rhythmns would have helped to place, societal thinking abobve the aggressions of war, our own human struggle to rise above those things that would hold us to the earth?

Summary of thinking here and again thanks to the environment of Babble, for helping to nurture prospective views about things.

[ 22 March 2005: Message edited by: forum observer ]

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Originally posted by TemporalHominid:
as an Educator I look at this from an Education viewpoint

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Is your 15 year old girl scared of math? It could be because she has been fed the same line year after year (verbally or non-verbally by adults) in primary school that girls are not as good at math as boys. These preconcieved ideas of adults are reinforced by the curriculum and at what age concepts are introduced.
The girl has to fit the system. If the female student can't keep up, the system places her in a math strand (or scince strand) that can be well below her potential, at the exact time when she is biologically prepared to tackle an advanced strand of math.

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