[newsgroups changed from soc.culture.jewish to soc.men, soc.women and
sci.geo.geology]

Apparently George wants to post his response to me in a group that I have
informed him that I do not read. Since this topic has nothing to do with
s.c.j I have dropped it. I included s.g.g because I wanted to insure that
Jo would see it. I'm sorry if it is inappropriate for that group.

"George" wrote in message
news:4FxHd.15126$EG1.2077@attbi_s53...
>
> "Jayne Kulikauskas" wrote in message
> news:357ibpF4jdqciU1@individual.net...
> >
> > "George" wrote in message
> > news:dunHd.11491$P04.6995@attbi_s03...
> >>
> >> "Jayne Kulikauskas" wrote in message
> >> news:355v2vF4jre7mU1@individual.net...
> >> >
> >> > "George" wrote in message
> >
> > []
> >> >> Wow, I don't know where that came from. Perpetual victim?
> >> >> Let me remind you that I'm a man who is
> >> >> on the side of women's rights, and don't consider
> >> >> you personally to be a "perpetual victim".
> >> >
> >> > Your posts are all about how women are victims. You can't even stay
on
> >> > topic because you are dragging in one irrelevant story of
victimization
> >> > after another. I don't want rights based on pity.
> >>
> >> Oh please. Spare me the sob story.
> >
> > That's what I am trying to tell you. Spare me the sob story. Nancy
Hopkins
> > walked out of perfectly appropriate and scientifically sound talk, made
> > various denigrating remarks to the media about the speaker and you call
her
> > a victim. Your reason for this boils down to saying that women are
always
> > the victims. Spare me this absurd and untrue sob story.
>
> Sorry. I beg to differ. Your reasoning boils down to accepting that
women have
> to be treated as if they are somehow inferior.

My reasoning is that science is about the pursuit of the truth. When there
is an observation that can be explained by innate differences then one
explores that possibility. One does not throw it out without considering it
simply because one doesn't like the idea.

> Obviously you accept this
> tenent, otherwise ou wouldn't be in such opposition with what I've posted
in
> this thread.

Obviously you have a preference for straw man arguments. Not only do you
misrepresent my views, you post this where I am unlikely to see it and
correct it.

> Do you also wear chains and whips, or are you the "M" part of your
> S&M tag team?

Do S&M people really wear whips? I thought that they just used them. I
concede to your expertise.

> >>Noone is talking about giving anyone rights
> >> based on feeling sorry for anyone. I'm merely
> >>recognizing what you obvuously
> >> fail to do. Men who abuse women don't look at
> >>them as victims. And being a
> >> victim is not the same as having a
> >> handicap. I don't feel sorry for women,
> >> though I do empathize with them. Human rights
> >> are universal, and should apply
> >> to all people. It is based on respect, not pity.
> >>
> >> > I want only the rights
> >> > that naturally attend the responsibilities I fulfill. I want only
those
> >> > rights that do not come at the expense of others.
> >>
> >> Who's rights are being abused by women having
> >> the right to be treated equally
> >> when it comes to opportunity?
> >
> > Whenever quota systems are imposed, it removes people's right to be
judged
> > by their ability.
>
> Who said anything about quotas? Oh right, you and Ian (I thiknk it was
him)
> did. I never brought it up.

In practice, the movement to give women equal opportunity has often involved
quotas.

> >> >> Having said that, if you've ever had a
> >> >> man tell you that you couldn't do something
> >> >>that you damn well knew that
> >> >> you could, then you ARE are victim,
> >> >> whether you want to admit it or not.
> >> >> IN addition, many women are
> >> >> victimized similarly as well, and even
> >> >> brutally victimized every day.
> >> >
> >> > Guess what. Many men are brutally victimized every day too. Bad
things
> >> > happen to men *and* women and your one-sided approach does not help
> >> >anybody.
> >>
> >> If you are trying to tell me that men are just as abused
> >> by women as women are abused by men, then
> >> you've been smoking that Canadian grass too long.
> >
> > No, I've been reading the research on the subject. For example, many
> > studies indicate that women and men are about equally likely to be the
> > victim of domestic violence. For a site that collects such research
try:
> >
> > http://www.menweb.org/batresrh.htm
>
> Oh gee, that certainly is an objective web site, now isn't it? I am
starting to
> doubt whether you are truly a woman, and not some old geezer posting from
> soc.men.

So you do realize that I am posting from soc.men. Why have you been posting
your responses to me to other groups?

> > Note the article about the Statistics Canada data which shows "44% of DV
> > victims are men. In current relationships men as more likely to be
victims
> > of domestic violence."
>
> Who ever said Canadians were anything other than whimps? I certainly
didn't. I
> guess those Canadian women must be real bullies, eh? Must come from all
that
> igloo living, and chewing on walrus fat. lol

This is an excellent example of an ad hominem. Note how George does not
address the point that men are equally victims of domestic violence but
attempts to divert the discussion by mocking my country.

> > Also note the British Home Office research study
> > which concludes that men are "as likely to be victims of domestic
violence
> > as women."
> >
> > Your completely mistaken ideas on this subject are common and largely
due to
> > the bias in media reporting on such things. To better understand why
you
> > are so wrong, look at this article on how the media misrepresents gender
> > issues.
>
> No I'm not. You are a complete fraud on this issue.

It is considered good form to indicate when one removes a section from a
quote. You removed a link to a site and passage from it. This is not a
good way to refute it.

> But don't take my word for it. Here are the word of someone who knows
what the
> hell she is talking about, because she both is a scientist and a teacher,
and a
> very well respected member of the scientific community. She has been
monitoring
> these posts in another newsgroup, and decided to put in her two cents
worth:
>
> "As a woman apparently lacking the genetic abilities under discussion, I
> would advise the men in this discussion to take the time to find out
> what Mr. Harvard President Sir actually said, (at least as reported in
> the news media):
>
> Please read:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/education/19harvard.html
> No transcript of his exact words are available.

I thought this account seemed like an even-handed one:
http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24410~2659688,00.html

He discussed several factors that could help explain the
underrepresentation of women. The first factor, he said, according to
several participants, was that top positions on university math and
engineering faculties require extraordinary commitments of time and energy,
with many professors working 80-hour weeks in the same punishing schedules
pursued by top lawyers, bankers and executives. Few married women with
children are willing to accept such sacrifices, he said.

Hopkins said yesterday, "I didn't disagree, but didn't like the way he
presented that point, because I like to work 80 hours a week, and I know a
lot of women who work that hard."

In citing a second factor, Summers cited research showing that more high
school boys than girls tend to score at very high and very low levels on
standardized math tests, and that it was important to consider the
possibility that such differences may stem from biological differences
between the es.

> He is quoted for three ways which women may be unfit for these
professions:

He described 3 possible factors that could account for women's
underrepresentation in these professions. He never said anything about
women being unfit.

> 1) Reluctance of married women with children to work long (some articles
> say 80-hour) workweeks in pursuit of their vocation;
>
> 2) That innate -related/genetic differences make women less capable
> of math or science; or
>
> 3)That they are still discriminated against because of their gender.
>
>
> To refute these remarks:
>
> 1) Is undoubtably true of both women and men with families, who value
> their spouses, children and own productive lives both at and away from
> their vocation. Both math and science can be harsh masters and
> mistresses. While hard work is necessary for success in any endeavor,
> this stereotype of the brilliant mathematician/scientist with no time
> for anything but work is false--One need go no further than Einstein and
> his violin, or Richard Feynmann and his theater and drums to note that
> a) home life suffers greviously in the case of many so called
> 'brilliant' people; b) recreation is necessary to all humans to keep
> from going crazy. No one can be a genius 24/7 for 70 years on end and c)
> if there are children, someone must mind them, whether parent or nanny,
> or the kids turn out badly.
>
> 2) This is an easy remark to make, but a hard one to substantiate. Also,
> math and science, though both use numbers, are not equal. My best
> friend in grade school excelled in math, but had no use for science. I
> excelled in science, but math has always been a harder row to hoe. It's
> not 'socialization pressure', nor genetics which cause women to back off
> from math or science--it's the textbooks, the pedagogy, and the teachers
> along the way.

Could you give some references to support this claim please? (Preferably
web-based since I don't want to drive to the university library in all this
snow.)

> George's comment - (I later pointed out to her that the textbooks,
pedagogy, and
> the teachers are all part of the soclialization pressure, to which she
agreed).
>
> Children of either gender will be drawn to study what interests them.
> You can make a million gender-neutral textbooks about girls building
> rocketships and calculating trajectories, or figuring baseball
> statistics, and you're just not gonna 'win the audience' except of a
> very few. Face it, most math texts don't explain "why" something is, or
> how it go to be that way--they just throw a lot of squiggles at you and
> say, if you do thus and so to the squiggles, you win. Math and science
> texts (especially physics) are full of discrete examples whose contexts
> boys are already familiar with--throwing balls, building things from
> wood, making electrical circuits and so forth.

And why aren't girls familiar with these contexts? Because they are usually
not interested in these things. Doesn't this suggest some innate
differences to you.

>Math books are written by
> men (for the most part) for boys, using examples out of their own
> boyhood. These fellows' idea of humanizing a text is throwing in clipart
> of old famous white dead mathematicians in wigs. I can recall several
> word problems in probability I couldn't do-- I could do the math all
> right, but didn't understand how one played some game (I think it was
> figuring canasta hands) and without known the distribution of the hands,
> I was clueless. But hey, I'm a woman. I *asked* somebody to help me! *|;-)

This has not been my personal experience of math texts. Do you have some
references that indicate your experience is the norm?

> I'd love to see a generation of boys raised on math books with examples
> of calculating how to make a creme rinse from its basic components, how,
> given X amount of prepared food, to redivide it evenly when unexpected
> dinner guests arrive,or how to even out 'playtime' with an even set of
> dolls, and an odd set of girls.

Apparently you think that they would do badly. Why would you love to see
boys doing badly? I would love to see education that allows both es to
do their best.

> How about the spatial calculus involved
> when figuring out how much material in 30 inch wide yards has to be
> purchased to most efficiently yield the irregular pieces needed to sew a
> Halloween costume. Hey, it's math, right? There are plenty of 'spatially
> literate' men who haven't a clue how to take a Dutch cut out of a sheet
> of rectangular paper, much less to cut and sew a shirt while wasting
> only minimal cloth.

Neither do I have a clue about this. I do not think that I ever encountered
a math problem as much outside my experience as your sewing examples.

> Part of the answer to 'girls don't understand math and science' is yes
> they do, but the questions they find interesting are different, and
> often defined by men as uninteresting. Girls and women are not
> stupid--they're less likely than men to get fixated, and beat their
> heads to a bloody pulp on a lost cause. They just go around the problem,
> which often means abandoning both math and science.

Western education systems has been greatly influenced by women in general
and feminists in particular for the past couple decades. I find it
implausible that men are defining the questions in math and science.

> 3) The glass ceiling still exists, for one reason: Ambitious men are
> defined as go-getters and successes. Ambitious women who do not become
> pseudo-men are defined by society as bitches (or worse). If one wants to
> be a whirlwind of successful genius, people's feelings are deemed
> irrelevant--it's a pursuit of a dream or an idea to the kill. That is
> seen as acceptable in men, but not in women. One need go no further than
> a person whom even Mr. Summers would call a female genius--Marie
> Sklodowska Curie--who was nearly denied her second Nobel in 1911 because
> of a morals charge. (Marie Curie--A Life, by Susan Quinn) Imagine a
> widowed male genius being in the same predicament because of an affair.
> Preposterous!

Not in 1911. People took ual morals, even men's, pretty seriously back
then.

> Yes, there are women who love math, and love science and excel at both
> (or if they don't excel, they can quite capably do what has to be done
> to get to the point they need to be.) Or maybe they just redefine the
> problem, and discover new things instead.
>
> In any event, Mr Harvard President Sir has apparently decided to eat his
> words, buttered and with honey on them, via his retraction:
>
> http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/womeninscience.html

This is clearly not a retraction. It is a statement that his comments were
misunderstood. He says in this statement exactly what he was saying all
along.

> Now--whose made the more logical argument here...the several handfuls of
> male (and one female) posters gesticulating at each other, or me, who is
of the
> gender incapable of math, science, or analysis?
>
> I rest my case.
> Jo"

Your argument is a refutation of Lawrence Summers' alleged claim that women
are unfit for math and science professions. However, he did not claim that.
You apparently created a misrepresentation of his view in order to refute
it. In other words, you have committed the straw man fallacy. Since your
entire argument is a logical fallacy, it is not logical at all.

I would also like to note that it seems inaccurate to characterize my posts
on this subject as "gesticulating at each other".

> >
> > I did a Masters degree part-time during the 90s so I am quite familiar
with
> > conditions in academia. I am involved at my church and in environmental
> > activism. My best friend is a woman who got her engineering degree from
MIT
> > and has worked in that field for the last 25 years. As well as what I
have
> > personally observed and heard about, I have read many books and articles
on
> > this subject, so I have some idea of how my experiences of gender issues
fit
> > into general social trends.
>
> What was it you accused me of a few threads back? Confirmation bias? So
it's
> ok for you to do it, but if I do the same (use my experience as example),
> somehow it becomes irrelevant, right? Yeah, I see how your logic works.

You have taken this comment out of context. This was my response to your
taunt along the lines of "Don't get out much, do you?" I was not offering
my experience as evidence (unlike your frequent use of anecdotal evidence)
but responding to your allegation that my opinions are of little value
because I have little real world experience.

Many people, including myself, consider taking comments out of context to
change their meaning to be a form of intellectual dishonesty. I also think
it was dishonourable to misrepresent my views in a venue where I was
unlikely to see it. Your behaviour has been such that I do not respect you
enough to further engage in discussion with you.

Jayne

From:	Mr. F. Le Mur
Subject:	Re: Harvard Pres: Women Lack Ability In Math, Sciences
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:20:02 GMT

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 21:24:08 -0500, "Jayne Kulikauskas"
wrote:

>[newsgroups changed from soc.culture.jewish to soc.men, soc.women and
>sci.geo.geology]

>"George" wrote in message
>news:4FxHd.15126$EG1.2077@attbi_s53...
....
>> Sorry. I beg to differ. Your reasoning boils down to accepting that
>women have
>> to be treated as if they are somehow inferior.
>
>My reasoning is that science is about the pursuit of the truth. When there
>is an observation that can be explained by innate differences then one
>explores that possibility. One does not throw it out without considering it
>simply because one doesn't like the idea.
>

"George" is emotional and illogical, while "Jayne" is the opposite;
almost ironic, considering the thread.

From:	George
Subject:	Re: Harvard Pres: Women Lack Ability In Math, Sciences
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 05:47:36 GMT

"Jayne Kulikauskas" wrote in message
news:358j13F4jhos7U1@individual.net...
> [newsgroups changed from soc.culture.jewish to soc.men, soc.women and
> sci.geo.geology]
>
> Apparently George wants to post his response to me in a group that I have
> informed him that I do not read. Since this topic has nothing to do with
> s.c.j I have dropped it. I included s.g.g because I wanted to insure that
> Jo would see it. I'm sorry if it is inappropriate for that group.

I posted it here because I wanted other scientists to have their say, should
they decide to do so. If that is a problem for you, that's your problem, not
mine. And top posting is rude, but then you knew that already.

> "George" wrote in message
> news:4FxHd.15126$EG1.2077@attbi_s53...
>>
>> "Jayne Kulikauskas" wrote in message
>> news:357ibpF4jdqciU1@individual.net...
>> >
>> > "George" wrote in message
>> > news:dunHd.11491$P04.6995@attbi_s03...
>> >>
>> >> "Jayne Kulikauskas" wrote in message
>> >> news:355v2vF4jre7mU1@individual.net...
>> >> >
>> >> > "George" wrote in message
>> >
>> > []
>> >> >> Wow, I don't know where that came from. Perpetual victim?
>> >> >> Let me remind you that I'm a man who is
>> >> >> on the side of women's rights, and don't consider
>> >> >> you personally to be a "perpetual victim".
>> >> >
>> >> > Your posts are all about how women are victims. You can't even stay
> on
>> >> > topic because you are dragging in one irrelevant story of
> victimization
>> >> > after another. I don't want rights based on pity.
>> >>
>> >> Oh please. Spare me the sob story.
>> >
>> > That's what I am trying to tell you. Spare me the sob story. Nancy
> Hopkins
>> > walked out of perfectly appropriate and scientifically sound talk, made
>> > various denigrating remarks to the media about the speaker and you call
> her
>> > a victim. Your reason for this boils down to saying that women are
> always
>> > the victims. Spare me this absurd and untrue sob story.
>>
>> Sorry. I beg to differ. Your reasoning boils down to accepting that
> women have
>> to be treated as if they are somehow inferior.
>
> My reasoning is that science is about the pursuit of the truth. When there
> is an observation that can be explained by innate differences then one
> explores that possibility. One does not throw it out without considering it
> simply because one doesn't like the idea.

It has nothing to do with liking or disliking the idea. It is simply irrelvant
to the fact that women have a right to learn science if they choose to do so.
They also have a right to learn it in an environment that is best suited to
their learning needs. Additionally, the concept that women are not as good as
men in math and science (despite what current test reports are showing) has
nothing to do with the reality that many women are in fact, doing science and
math, and doing it well, and that more could enter these fields were it not for
the discouraging manner in which it is taught to them. People like you would
like nothing more than to find that there is some physical difference between
the es that causes this disparity in order to justify limiting opportunities
for women and controlling the education process for your own purposes. Who
cares whether men can do it better? That doesn't mean that women can't do it.
They ARE doing it. I find it quite amazing that this attitude comes from a
woman.

>> Who said anything about quotas? Oh right, you and Ian (I thiknk it was
> him)
>> did. I never brought it up.
>
> In practice, the movement to give women equal opportunity has often involved
> quotas.

And I've presented my views on that matter. And I must say that quotas have
nothing to do with whether or not women have the innate ability to do science
and math, or whether sociocultural biases impede their ability to learn these
subjects or perform the work once they are in the work force. Obviously these
biases do exist, depsite your repeated efforts at denial.

>> > http://www.menweb.org/batresrh.htm
>>
>> Oh gee, that certainly is an objective web site, now isn't it? I am
> starting to
>> doubt whether you are truly a woman, and not some old geezer posting from
>> soc.men.
>
> So you do realize that I am posting from soc.men. Why have you been posting
> your responses to me to other groups?

I know exactly from what group you are posting. Because I want other scientists
to read your comments, and to have the opportunity to comment on them. If that
frightens you, oh well.

>> > Note the article about the Statistics Canada data which shows "44% of DV
>> > victims are men. In current relationships men as more likely to be
> victims
>> > of domestic violence."
>>
>> Who ever said Canadians were anything other than whimps? I certainly
> didn't. I
>> guess those Canadian women must be real bullies, eh? Must come from all
> that
>> igloo living, and chewing on walrus fat. lol
>
> This is an excellent example of an ad hominem. Note how George does not
> address the point that men are equally victims of domestic violence but
> attempts to divert the discussion by mocking my country.

Hey, you changed the subject by turning it around and making it a issue about
men when it isn't. So one good turn deserves another, dude, er, girl, whatever.
I'm still not convinced that you are, in fact, a woman. But that's ok. Don't
bother sending a postcard.

>> > Your completely mistaken ideas on this subject are common and largely
> due to
>> > the bias in media reporting on such things. To better understand why
> you
>> > are so wrong, look at this article on how the media misrepresents gender
>> > issues.
>>
>> No I'm not. You are a complete fraud on this issue.
>
> It is considered good form to indicate when one removes a section from a
> quote. You removed a link to a site and passage from it. This is not a
> good way to refute it.

I didn't bother refuting it because it is irrelevant to the topic of discussion.
And you should mind your manners and learn to snip unnecessary items from your
posts so that this doesn't turn into a 1200 line rantfest.

> > But don't take my word for it. Here are the word of someone who knows
> what the
>> hell she is talking about, because she both is a scientist and a teacher,
> and a
>> very well respected member of the scientific community. She has been
> monitoring
>> these posts in another newsgroup, and decided to put in her two cents
> worth:
>>
>> "As a woman apparently lacking the genetic abilities under discussion, I
>> would advise the men in this discussion to take the time to find out
>> what Mr. Harvard President Sir actually said, (at least as reported in
>> the news media):
>>
>> Please read:
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/education/19harvard.html
>> No transcript of his exact words are available.
>
> I thought this account seemed like an even-handed one:
> http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24410~2659688,00.html
>
> He discussed several factors that could help explain the
> underrepresentation of women. The first factor, he said, according to
> several participants, was that top positions on university math and
> engineering faculties require extraordinary commitments of time and energy,
> with many professors working 80-hour weeks in the same punishing schedules
> pursued by top lawyers, bankers and executives. Few married women with
> children are willing to accept such sacrifices, he said.
>
> Hopkins said yesterday, "I didn't disagree, but didn't like the way he
> presented that point, because I like to work 80 hours a week, and I know a
> lot of women who work that hard."
>
> In citing a second factor, Summers cited research showing that more high
> school boys than girls tend to score at very high and very low levels on
> standardized math tests, and that it was important to consider the
> possibility that such differences may stem from biological differences
> between the es.
>
>> He is quoted for three ways which women may be unfit for these
> professions:
>
> He described 3 possible factors that could account for women's
> underrepresentation in these professions. He never said anything about
> women being unfit.
>
>> 1) Reluctance of married women with children to work long (some articles
>> say 80-hour) workweeks in pursuit of their vocation;
>>
>> 2) That innate -related/genetic differences make women less capable
>> of math or science; or
>>
>> 3)That they are still discriminated against because of their gender.
>>
>>
>> To refute these remarks:
>>
>> 1) Is undoubtably true of both women and men with families, who value
>> their spouses, children and own productive lives both at and away from
>> their vocation. Both math and science can be harsh masters and
>> mistresses. While hard work is necessary for success in any endeavor,
>> this stereotype of the brilliant mathematician/scientist with no time
>> for anything but work is false--One need go no further than Einstein and
>> his violin, or Richard Feynmann and his theater and drums to note that
>> a) home life suffers greviously in the case of many so called
>> 'brilliant' people; b) recreation is necessary to all humans to keep
>> from going crazy. No one can be a genius 24/7 for 70 years on end and c)
>> if there are children, someone must mind them, whether parent or nanny,
>> or the kids turn out badly.
>>
>> 2) This is an easy remark to make, but a hard one to substantiate. Also,
>> math and science, though both use numbers, are not equal. My best
>> friend in grade school excelled in math, but had no use for science. I
>> excelled in science, but math has always been a harder row to hoe. It's
>> not 'socialization pressure', nor genetics which cause women to back off
>> from math or science--it's the textbooks, the pedagogy, and the teachers
>> along the way.
>
> Could you give some references to support this claim please? (Preferably
> web-based since I don't want to drive to the university library in all this
> snow.)
>
>> George's comment - (I later pointed out to her that the textbooks,
> pedagogy, and
>> the teachers are all part of the soclialization pressure, to which she
> agreed).
>>
>> Children of either gender will be drawn to study what interests them.
>> You can make a million gender-neutral textbooks about girls building
>> rocketships and calculating trajectories, or figuring baseball
>> statistics, and you're just not gonna 'win the audience' except of a
>> very few. Face it, most math texts don't explain "why" something is, or
>> how it go to be that way--they just throw a lot of squiggles at you and
>> say, if you do thus and so to the squiggles, you win. Math and science
>> texts (especially physics) are full of discrete examples whose contexts
>> boys are already familiar with--throwing balls, building things from
>> wood, making electrical circuits and so forth.
>
> And why aren't girls familiar with these contexts? Because they are usually
> not interested in these things. Doesn't this suggest some innate
> differences to you.

No, I don't think it does. It suggests that they are raised differently than
boys. Do you think that boys have an innate ability to work on circuit boards
that women don't have? Circuit boards have only been around since 1936.

>>Math books are written by
>> men (for the most part) for boys, using examples out of their own
>> boyhood. These fellows' idea of humanizing a text is throwing in clipart
>> of old famous white dead mathematicians in wigs. I can recall several
>> word problems in probability I couldn't do-- I could do the math all
>> right, but didn't understand how one played some game (I think it was
>> figuring canasta hands) and without known the distribution of the hands,
>> I was clueless. But hey, I'm a woman. I *asked* somebody to help me! *|;-)
>
> This has not been my personal experience of math texts.

But then, as you've stated in an earlier post, you haven't looked at textbooks
for, what was it, 20 years?

> Do you have some
> references that indicate your experience is the norm?

She teaches.

>> I'd love to see a generation of boys raised on math books with examples
>> of calculating how to make a creme rinse from its basic components, how,
>> given X amount of prepared food, to redivide it evenly when unexpected
>> dinner guests arrive,or how to even out 'playtime' with an even set of
>> dolls, and an odd set of girls.
>
> Apparently you think that they would do badly. Why would you love to see
> boys doing badly? I would love to see education that allows both es to
> do their best.

It is likely that adolescent boys would be embarrassed by it. Peer pressure is a
powerful thing. The point she is making is that girls have to deal with these
kinds of male-dominated issues all the time, yet boys are required to experience
it. The classroom really is set up for boy, not girls.

>> How about the spatial calculus involved
>> when figuring out how much material in 30 inch wide yards has to be
>> purchased to most efficiently yield the irregular pieces needed to sew a
>> Halloween costume. Hey, it's math, right? There are plenty of 'spatially
>> literate' men who haven't a clue how to take a Dutch cut out of a sheet
>> of rectangular paper, much less to cut and sew a shirt while wasting
>> only minimal cloth.
>
> Neither do I have a clue about this. I do not think that I ever encountered
> a math problem as much outside my experience as your sewing examples.

And that is her point. It isn't taught this way. But it is certainly taught
with a male orientation, which is no doubt frustrating for many young girls and
women.

>> Part of the answer to 'girls don't understand math and science' is yes
>> they do, but the questions they find interesting are different, and
>> often defined by men as uninteresting. Girls and women are not
>> stupid--they're less likely than men to get fixated, and beat their
>> heads to a bloody pulp on a lost cause. They just go around the problem,
>> which often means abandoning both math and science.
>
> Western education systems has been greatly influenced by women in general
> and feminists in particular for the past couple decades. I find it
> implausible that men are defining the questions in math and science.

Your ability to preceive it to be the case is not necessary for it to be true.

>> 3) The glass ceiling still exists, for one reason: Ambitious men are
>> defined as go-getters and successes. Ambitious women who do not become
>> pseudo-men are defined by society as bitches (or worse). If one wants to
>> be a whirlwind of successful genius, people's feelings are deemed
>> irrelevant--it's a pursuit of a dream or an idea to the kill. That is
>> seen as acceptable in men, but not in women. One need go no further than
>> a person whom even Mr. Summers would call a female genius--Marie
>> Sklodowska Curie--who was nearly denied her second Nobel in 1911 because
>> of a morals charge. (Marie Curie--A Life, by Susan Quinn) Imagine a
>> widowed male genius being in the same predicament because of an affair.
>> Preposterous!
>
> Not in 1911. People took ual morals, even men's, pretty seriously back
> then.

No, in 1911, such a prestigious man in the same position as M. Curie would have
been allowed to sweep it under the rug. In other words, it would not have been
made an issue. It would have simply gone away. Even in JFK's presidency, the
extent of his womanizing wasn't known until many years after he was
assassinated.

>> Yes, there are women who love math, and love science and excel at both
>> (or if they don't excel, they can quite capably do what has to be done
>> to get to the point they need to be.) Or maybe they just redefine the
>> problem, and discover new things instead.
>>
>> In any event, Mr Harvard President Sir has apparently decided to eat his
>> words, buttered and with honey on them, via his retraction:
>>
>> http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/womeninscience.html
>
> This is clearly not a retraction. It is a statement that his comments were
> misunderstood. He says in this statement exactly what he was saying all
> along.

Note that he says in his statement that he was making informal remarks, while
you've stated that he was presenting hard evidence to support the contention
that women have physical differences that prevent them from doing science and
math as well as men. And he clearly did make an apology (such as it was), which
is tantamount to a retraction.

>> Now--whose made the more logical argument here...the several handfuls of
>> male (and one female) posters gesticulating at each other, or me, who is
> of the
>> gender incapable of math, science, or analysis?
>>
>> I rest my case.
>> Jo"
>
> Your argument is a refutation of Lawrence Summers' alleged claim that women
> are unfit for math and science professions. However, he did not claim that.

Still in denial, I see. His words: That innate -related/genetic differences
make women less capable of math or science".

> You apparently created a misrepresentation of his view in order to refute
> it. In other words, you have committed the straw man fallacy. Since your
> entire argument is a logical fallacy, it is not logical at all.

Wow, why am I not surprised that after all these posts, all of these arguments,
rebutal and counter rebutal, that you still prefer to believe that Summers
didn't say what he clearly did say?

> I would also like to note that it seems inaccurate to characterize my posts
> on this subject as "gesticulating at each other".

Well, some would call it flatulating at one another. Others would use harsher
words. She used gesticulating because that is her view of the thread. If you
differ, that's your right. It's called freedom of speech.

>> >
>> > I did a Masters degree part-time during the 90s so I am quite familiar
> with
>> > conditions in academia. I am involved at my church and in environmental
>> > activism. My best friend is a woman who got her engineering degree from
> MIT
>> > and has worked in that field for the last 25 years. As well as what I
> have
>> > personally observed and heard about, I have read many books and articles
> on
>> > this subject, so I have some idea of how my experiences of gender issues
> fit
>> > into general social trends.
>>
>> What was it you accused me of a few threads back? Confirmation bias? So
> it's
>> ok for you to do it, but if I do the same (use my experience as example),
>> somehow it becomes irrelevant, right? Yeah, I see how your logic works.
>
> You have taken this comment out of context. This was my response to your
> taunt along the lines of "Don't get out much, do you?" I was not offering
> my experience as evidence (unlike your frequent use of anecdotal evidence)
> but responding to your allegation that my opinions are of little value
> because I have little real world experience.

But you have offered your experience on more than one occasion, just as you
have, above. You have done nothing different than what I did. I merely
elaborated more.

> Many people, including myself, consider taking comments out of context to
> change their meaning to be a form of intellectual dishonesty.

I've taken nothing out of context.

> I also think
> it was dishonourable to misrepresent my views in a venue where I was
> unlikely to see it. Your behaviour has been such that I do not respect you
> enough to further engage in discussion with you.

Oh quit your whining. I told you that I had done so, and had good reason to do
it. Are you now afraid of what other scientists are going to say about your
comments? If so, then perhaps you should have thought of that before you posted
them on five other newsgroups.

From:	Jo Schaper
Subject:	Re: Harvard Pres: Women Lack Ability In Math, Sciences
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 03:02:11 -0600

Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:

>
>>"George" wrote in message

> > But don't take my word for it. Here are the word of someone who knows
> what the
>
>>hell she is talking about, because she both is a scientist and a teacher,
>
> and a
>
>>very well respected member of the scientific community. She has been
>
> monitoring
>
>>these posts in another newsgroup, and decided to put in her two cents
>
> worth:
>
>>"As a woman apparently lacking the genetic abilities under discussion, I
>>would advise the men in this discussion to take the time to find out
>>what Mr. Harvard President Sir actually said, (at least as reported in
>>the news media):
>>
>>Please read:
>>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/education/19harvard.html
>>No transcript of his exact words are available.
>
>
> I thought this account seemed like an even-handed one:
> http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24410~2659688,00.html

Your story also came from a NY Times reporter. This thread came into
s.g.g. already in progress so I had to go find what people were talking
about, since it had already escalated almost into chaos. The one I cited
was also the most even-handed one I could find.

>
> He discussed several factors that could help explain the
> underrepresentation of women. The first factor, he said, according to
> several participants, was that top positions on university math and
> engineering faculties require extraordinary commitments of time and energy,
> with many professors working 80-hour weeks in the same punishing schedules
> pursued by top lawyers, bankers and executives. Few married women with
> children are willing to accept such sacrifices, he said.
>
> Hopkins said yesterday, "I didn't disagree, but didn't like the way he
> presented that point, because I like to work 80 hours a week, and I know a
> lot of women who work that hard."
>
> In citing a second factor, Summers cited research showing that more high
> school boys than girls tend to score at very high and very low levels on
> standardized math tests, and that it was important to consider the
> possibility that such differences may stem from biological differences
> between the es.

I was deliberately ignoring the remarks of the female attendees, because
they expressed their disapproval, but didn't add anything
particularily to what Mr. Summers is alleged to have said.

>
>>He is quoted for three ways which women may be unfit for these
>
> professions:
>
> He described 3 possible factors that could account for women's
> underrepresentation in these professions. He never said anything about
> women being unfit.
>
>
>>1) Reluctance of married women with children to work long (some articles
>>say 80-hour) workweeks in pursuit of their vocation;
>>
>>2) That innate -related/genetic differences make women less capable
>>of math or science; or
>>
>>3)That they are still discriminated against because of their gender.
>>
>>
>>To refute these remarks:
>>
>>1) Is undoubtably true of both women and men with families, who value
>>their spouses, children and own productive lives both at and away from
>>their vocation. Both math and science can be harsh masters and
>>mistresses. While hard work is necessary for success in any endeavor,
>>this stereotype of the brilliant mathematician/scientist with no time
>>for anything but work is false--One need go no further than Einstein and
>>his violin, or Richard Feynmann and his theater and drums to note that
>>a) home life suffers greviously in the case of many so called
>>'brilliant' people; b) recreation is necessary to all humans to keep
>>from going crazy. No one can be a genius 24/7 for 70 years on end and c)
>>if there are children, someone must mind them, whether parent or nanny,
>>or the kids turn out badly.
>>
>>2) This is an easy remark to make, but a hard one to substantiate. Also,
>> math and science, though both use numbers, are not equal. My best
>>friend in grade school excelled in math, but had no use for science. I
>>excelled in science, but math has always been a harder row to hoe. It's
>>not 'socialization pressure', nor genetics which cause women to back off
>>from math or science--it's the textbooks, the pedagogy, and the teachers
>>along the way.
>
>
> Could you give some references to support this claim please? (Preferably
> web-based since I don't want to drive to the university library in all this
> snow.)
>

Which claim? That my best friend excelled in math, and I in science?
About the textbooks, the teaching methods and the teachers? I made no
claims in my essay that this was scientific, statistically normed
research. This has been my experience, in my first 16 year trip through
the US education system, and then another 4 year stint to complete a
second degree 25 years later. I have always held non-traditional jobs,
and have been notoriously immune to socialization pressure since about
the age of 10. I do what I want to do, and gender stereotypes can go
hang for all I care. I've had one professor who told the class the first
day that the women could leave because he didn't believe women should be
college-educated. I stayed. I've had female professors who have made it
doubly hard on the women, because they know it's a rough world out
there. I worked side by side with blue-collar printers for 20 years, and
have hung out with geologists of all stripes for about the same time.

My statement is my opinion, based on my experience. I endured the math
textbooks for two go rounds. And was very disappointed in the late '90s
to see that the celebrated 'gender-neutral' texts were still the same
old story, with fingernail polish applied over a few of the word
problems.

>>George's comment - (I later pointed out to her that the textbooks,
>
> pedagogy, and
>
>>the teachers are all part of the soclialization pressure, to which she
>
> agreed).
>
>>Children of either gender will be drawn to study what interests them.
>>You can make a million gender-neutral textbooks about girls building
>>rocketships and calculating trajectories, or figuring baseball
>>statistics, and you're just not gonna 'win the audience' except of a
>>very few. Face it, most math texts don't explain "why" something is, or
>>how it go to be that way--they just throw a lot of squiggles at you and
>>say, if you do thus and so to the squiggles, you win. Math and science
>>texts (especially physics) are full of discrete examples whose contexts
>>boys are already familiar with--throwing balls, building things from
>>wood, making electrical circuits and so forth.
>
>
> And why aren't girls familiar with these contexts? Because they are usually
> not interested in these things. Doesn't this suggest some innate
> differences to you.

No. As a matter of fact, I shot off baking-soda rockets, worked in my
dad's basement shop running the power tools and building boxes and
boats, played sandlot ball, and put together impossible contraptions
with an Erector Set. I even built plastic models of the U-505 and the
Starship Enterprise. I did not care one whit about baseball statistics,
(nor movie stars) but saw my brother read the Sporting News and memorize
stats at the same time I was memorizing things like the color, luster,
hardness and fracture of minerals, or worked with my chemistry set, and
grew copper sulfate crystals on my windowsill. I also cooked in my
Easy-Bake Oven, played with Barbies and the girls on the street, largely
because pre-adolescent boys were cruel, and would hurt you if they
could. My earliest experience with 'socialization' was being taken by
the teacher from the blocks and trucks to the play kitchen (repeatedly)
in kindergarten.There was a boy there who liked the kitchen because he
liked food, and he got shuffled to the trucks and blocks. (He's probably
a famous chef now.) I retaliated by 'opting out'--getting crayons and
paper and drawing so I didn't have to go to the kitchen. Had enough
kitchen chores (like table-setting and dishes) to do when I was home,
anyway--but my brothers too, did dishes. This was before feminism. And a
good thing, as none of them have ever married, so they have to do housework.

Most girls I knew (in the late 60s-early 70s) 'were' interested that I
did such different things, but they had mothers who were more interested
in them becoming 'ladies' than real people. The mothers were also afraid
of power saws and chemistry sets, and their girls were forbidden to
partake. Heaven knows what the twenty-something and early
thirty-something females now are into. Those I had as students weren't
domestically trained. I think they must be into media hype, because all
I ever heard about were shopping, Hollywood celebrities, clothes and
money. But those (plus sports) were all I heard from the male students.
Precious few of them (either gender), seemed really into a hobby, or
their studies.
>
>>Math books are written by
>>men (for the most part) for boys, using examples out of their own
>>boyhood. These fellows' idea of humanizing a text is throwing in clipart
>>of old famous white dead mathematicians in wigs. I can recall several
>>word problems in probability I couldn't do-- I could do the math all
>>right, but didn't understand how one played some game (I think it was
>>figuring canasta hands) and without known the distribution of the hands,
>>I was clueless. But hey, I'm a woman. I *asked* somebody to help me! *|;-)
>
>
> This has not been my personal experience of math texts. Do you have some
> references that indicate your experience is the norm?

I don't claim my experience is the norm, and I never stated that I was
either omniscient or infallible. However, before I made that statement,
I dug up all my recent math texts (community college intermediate
algebra through stats and Calc II). I also made a cursory examination of
the other math texts I have in my library. Not a single one has a female
author. The trig and calc books even have some of same problems (with
the same numbers)(!) as my husband's college trig and calc books from
the early 1980s. They aren't even by the same authors. The only material
difference is that his books have trig and log tables and problems in
degrees, and mine don't, but have calculator and electronic graphing
exercises, and trig problems in radians. I suspect some of the calc
problems may have been written by Newton himself. *|;-)

Oh, and his books do not have the dead mathematicians. But they do have
explanations of procedures in plain English paragraphs, explaining not
only what to do, and how to do it, but also the historical significance
of the usage of the procedure in a practical application. I often went
back to his text for that reason alone. Mine just have diagrams and
bullet points and equation problems, except for the word problems,
which, as I stated are at least 80% drawn from experiences most common
to boys or men.

Here's an example: the row the boat across the river problem, in which
you are to row your boat at W speed perpendicular to the shore when the
current is moving at X speed and you are attempting to intersect a
landing on the other shore at point Y, Z feet downstream. What speed do
you need to row your boat?
Now, this sounds like a straightforward rate problem. However, if you
have ever canoed in a current, it is the stupidest problem on the
planet, because a) the current in a river is not uniform, but has a
channel and eddies, b) only an idiot would try to row *directly* across
a current, c) you cannot accurately measure the speed of your rowing
across such a small distance, and d) your speed will be variable,
anyway. So what is the point? Now, that may be the difference between a
thinking or a non-thinking brain, or some may say a male and female one.

Why not make a realistic problem, not one where your answer will be
false because it is based on untrue assumptions? But,aha, you aren't
supposed to get a realistic answer, you are supposed to get the right
one, calculated by ignoring the way the river, the boat, and the person
actually work. If I had never canoed, I'd say, gee, it's a vector
problem, and put the right numbers in the right squiggles and the
teacher would be happy. But the boat would still end up somewhere else.

>
>
>>I'd love to see a generation of boys raised on math books with examples
>>of calculating how to make a creme rinse from its basic components, how,
>>given X amount of prepared food, to redivide it evenly when unexpected
>>dinner guests arrive,or how to even out 'playtime' with an even set of
>>dolls, and an odd set of girls.
>
>
> Apparently you think that they would do badly. Why would you love to see
> boys doing badly? I would love to see education that allows both es to
> do their best.

No, they would not do badly if they look at the problems the same way
the male authors are expecting females to look at current problems in
jet-plane impact energy releases, flying cannonballs, air-traffic
control patterns, load-bearing capacities, antenna-erecting and
miscellaneous other construction projects. That is--ignore the subject
and concentrate on the numbers. Perhaps that is the problem. Since it is
obvious most math problem solutions have little relation to real world
solutions you are liable to encounter yourself, it is more difficult to
concentrate on their solution. Of course, the only thing more gender
neutral and mind numbing that this are pages and pages of
differentiations and integrations with no context whatsoever.
>
>
>>How about the spatial calculus involved
>>when figuring out how much material in 30 inch wide yards has to be
>>purchased to most efficiently yield the irregular pieces needed to sew a
>>Halloween costume. Hey, it's math, right? There are plenty of 'spatially
>>literate' men who haven't a clue how to take a Dutch cut out of a sheet
>>of rectangular paper, much less to cut and sew a shirt while wasting
>>only minimal cloth.
>
>
> Neither do I have a clue about this. I do not think that I ever encountered
> a math problem as much outside my experience as your sewing examples.

Well, someone's got to figure out how much material it takes to
economically make a dress pattern. Dutch cuts are common in printing; it
just means getting another piece out of an 'odd' scrap of leftover,
thereby maximizing your use of 17x22 or 24x36 parent sheet of paper.
This is actually easy, but you have to visualize what you are doing
before you start cutting the stock. Just the same as Michelangelo had to
cut away everything which wasn't David. I think spatial thinking is a
teachable (and learnable) skill. Neither the young men nor women were
very good at it until I showed them with real world examples. And 3-D
thinking is essential in geology, because you are working with 3-D
concepts. Actually, you gotta throw time in there as well, making it 4-D
at least. Just about any manual skill (especially in arts/crafts)
requires some 3-D thinking ability. But it does not necessarily require
math or science to comprehend it.

>
>
>>Part of the answer to 'girls don't understand math and science' is yes
>>they do, but the questions they find interesting are different, and
>>often defined by men as uninteresting. Girls and women are not
>>stupid--they're less likely than men to get fixated, and beat their
>>heads to a bloody pulp on a lost cause. They just go around the problem,
>>which often means abandoning both math and science.
>
>
> Western education systems has been greatly influenced by women in general
> and feminists in particular for the past couple decades. I find it
> implausible that men are defining the questions in math and science.

In my experience, this statement is simply flat wrong. Of course, we
really don't have many feminists (whatever they are) around here,
either. Women may be a lot of the elementary grade teachers, but most
administration, school boards, college trustees, principals, educational
consultants, math and science teachers and professors and therefore
textbook writers are still overwhelmingly male in my part of the world.

>
>
>>3) The glass ceiling still exists, for one reason: Ambitious men are
>>defined as go-getters and successes. Ambitious women who do not become
>>pseudo-men are defined by society as bitches (or worse). If one wants to
>>be a whirlwind of successful genius, people's feelings are deemed
>>irrelevant--it's a pursuit of a dream or an idea to the kill. That is
>>seen as acceptable in men, but not in women. One need go no further than
>>a person whom even Mr. Summers would call a female genius--Marie
>>Sklodowska Curie--who was nearly denied her second Nobel in 1911 because
>>of a morals charge. (Marie Curie--A Life, by Susan Quinn) Imagine a
>>widowed male genius being in the same predicament because of an affair.
>>Preposterous!
>
>
> Not in 1911. People took ual morals, even men's, pretty seriously back
> then.

Perhaps you need to reread some of your history books, if you do not
believe in a double standard for gender behavior, both then and now.
(Hollywood excepted--those folks have no standards, regardless of their
gender.) Men have always gotten away with much more than women, and had
people think not much less of them for it--as the saying goes--wink,
wink, nudge, nudge. People may have publicly been Victorian, but there
was just as much scandal then as there is now, or will be in the future.
People's behavior doesn't change--just society's assessment of it. True,
people in 1911 had to have a better public persona than they do now,
when scandal entertains the masses on TV. But women had to have a much
better pattern of public behavior than men to stay in societal good
graces. Even today.

Or just look in the morning news. Heck, a big honcho for a securities
firm here just 'voluntarily retired' for nearly the same crime and at
the same level of culpability as Martha Stewart. He's remaining a
partner in the firm, and she's in jail. Now, I'm not even close to being
a Martha fan, but there is no doubt she obtained her fame and fortune
whilst being 'uppity', and that's her major crime. Otherwise sauce for
the goose would be sauce for the gander.

>
>
>>Yes, there are women who love math, and love science and excel at both
>>(or if they don't excel, they can quite capably do what has to be done
>>to get to the point they need to be.) Or maybe they just redefine the
>>problem, and discover new things instead.
>>
>>In any event, Mr Harvard President Sir has apparently decided to eat his
>>words, buttered and with honey on them, via his retraction:
>>
>>http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/womeninscience.html
>
>
> This is clearly not a retraction. It is a statement that his comments were
> misunderstood. He says in this statement exactly what he was saying all
> along.

I disagree. Along with other hats, I've done some work in public
relations (I have one of those dire liberal arts degrees, too.)
'Misunderstood' is a waffle-word for retraction, when saying
'retraction' would cause the person to lose face. This is the Harvard
Office of the President trying to 'spin' what he said into something
acceptable.

>
> Your argument is a refutation of Lawrence Summers' alleged claim that women
> are unfit for math and science professions. However, he did not claim that.
> You apparently created a misrepresentation of his view in order to refute
> it. In other words, you have committed the straw man fallacy. Since your
> entire argument is a logical fallacy, it is not logical at all.

Oh, please... I don't believe that for a minute. Part of the difficulty
with the entire issue (from a journalism perspective) is without a
transcript of his remarks, NONE of us know what the man actually said,
just what is reported that he said. All those reports are colored with
biases. Now, you've said, 'well, he didn't say that'. But you have no
proof either, as there is no transcript. I gathered as much gist, as
well as I could, from as many sources as I could muster, going back to
the earliest web reports, and only those from reputable newspapers
(Boston Globe, New York Times included). My response was to the thread
as it appeared (truncated) on s.g.g. and all the people signing their
names with masculine first names, who were ranting uncontrollably about
women being genetically unfit for math or science. That's it. I'm not on
some social crusade, one way or the other.

> I would also like to note that it seems inaccurate to characterize my posts
> on this subject as "gesticulating at each other".

None of your posts before this one were propagated to s.g.g. Therefore
you could not have possibly been included in my original conclusion.

best wishes
Jo

From:	Jayne Kulikauskas
Subject:	Re: Harvard Pres: Women Lack Ability In Math, Sciences
Date:	Thu, 20 Jan 2005 10:41:17 -0500

"Jo Schaper" wrote in message
news:10uusuonifutb6c@corp.supernews.com...
> Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:

Jo as quoted by George wrote:
> >>"As a woman apparently lacking the genetic abilities under discussion, I
> >>would advise the men in this discussion to take the time to find out
> >>what Mr. Harvard President Sir actually said, (at least as reported in
> >>the news media):
> >>
> >>Please read:
> >>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/education/19harvard.html
> >>No transcript of his exact words are available.
>
> > I thought this account seemed like an even-handed one:
> > http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24410~2659688,00.html
>
> Your story also came from a NY Times reporter. This thread came into
> s.g.g. already in progress so I had to go find what people were talking
> about, since it had already escalated almost into chaos. The one I cited
> was also the most even-handed one I could find.

Since the article you linked to required a subscription, I didn't read it.
Could you please quote the part that gave you the impression that Summers
said that women were unfit to do science?

> > He discussed several factors that could help explain the
> > underrepresentation of women. The first factor, he said, according to
> > several participants, was that top positions on university math and
> > engineering faculties require extraordinary commitments of time and
energy,
> > with many professors working 80-hour weeks in the same punishing
schedules
> > pursued by top lawyers, bankers and executives. Few married women with
> > children are willing to accept such sacrifices, he said.
> >
> > Hopkins said yesterday, "I didn't disagree, but didn't like the way he
> > presented that point, because I like to work 80 hours a week, and I know
a
> > lot of women who work that hard."
> >
> > In citing a second factor, Summers cited research showing that more high
> > school boys than girls tend to score at very high and very low levels on
> > standardized math tests, and that it was important to consider the
> > possibility that such differences may stem from biological differences
> > between the es.
>
> I was deliberately ignoring the remarks of the female attendees, because
> they expressed their disapproval, but didn't add anything
> particularily to what Mr. Summers is alleged to have said.

I agree that Hopkins' comment is irrelevant, but I did not want the quote to
appear with ellisions.

> >>He is quoted for three ways which women may be unfit for these
> >
> > professions:
> >
> > He described 3 possible factors that could account for women's
> > underrepresentation in these professions. He never said anything about
> > women being unfit.
> >
> >
> >>1) Reluctance of married women with children to work long (some articles
> >>say 80-hour) workweeks in pursuit of their vocation;
> >>
> >>2) That innate -related/genetic differences make women less capable
> >>of math or science; or
> >>
> >>3)That they are still discriminated against because of their gender.
> >>
> >>
> >>To refute these remarks:
> >>
> >>1) Is undoubtably true of both women and men with families, who value
> >>their spouses, children and own productive lives both at and away from
> >>their vocation. Both math and science can be harsh masters and
> >>mistresses. While hard work is necessary for success in any endeavor,
> >>this stereotype of the brilliant mathematician/scientist with no time
> >>for anything but work is false--One need go no further than Einstein and
> >>his violin, or Richard Feynmann and his theater and drums to note that
> >>a) home life suffers greviously in the case of many so called
> >>'brilliant' people; b) recreation is necessary to all humans to keep
> >>from going crazy. No one can be a genius 24/7 for 70 years on end and c)
> >>if there are children, someone must mind them, whether parent or nanny,
> >>or the kids turn out badly.
> >>
> >>2) This is an easy remark to make, but a hard one to substantiate. Also,
> >> math and science, though both use numbers, are not equal. My best
> >>friend in grade school excelled in math, but had no use for science. I
> >>excelled in science, but math has always been a harder row to hoe. It's
> >>not 'socialization pressure', nor genetics which cause women to back off
> >>from math or science--it's the textbooks, the pedagogy, and the teachers
> >>along the way.
> >
> >
> > Could you give some references to support this claim please?
> > (Preferably web-based since I don't want to
> > drive to the university library in all this
> > snow.)
> >
>
> Which claim? That my best friend excelled in math, and I in science?
> About the textbooks, the teaching methods and the teachers? I made no
> claims in my essay that this was scientific, statistically normed
> research.

Thank you for clarifying. I received that impression when you said, "It's
not 'socialization pressure', nor genetics which cause women to back off
from math or science--it's the textbooks, the pedagogy, and the teachers
along the way." It sounded to me like you were referring to established
facts rather than your opinion.

> This has been my experience, in my first 16 year trip through
> the US education system, and then another 4 year stint to complete a
> second degree 25 years later. I have always held non-traditional jobs,
> and have been notoriously immune to socialization pressure since about
> the age of 10. I do what I want to do, and gender stereotypes can go
> hang for all I care. I've had one professor who told the class the first
> day that the women could leave because he didn't believe women should be
> college-educated. I stayed. I've had female professors who have made it
> doubly hard on the women, because they know it's a rough world out
> there. I worked side by side with blue-collar printers for 20 years, and
> have hung out with geologists of all stripes for about the same time.

I have spent a comparable amount of time in the Canadian education system.
I have never had a professor that seemed to treat women differently from
men, even when I was in classes in which I was the only woman.

> My statement is my opinion, based on my experience. I endured the math
> textbooks for two go rounds. And was very disappointed in the late '90s
> to see that the celebrated 'gender-neutral' texts were still the same
> old story, with fingernail polish applied over a few of the word
> problems.

I never noticed any of these issues in math textbooks and did quite well in
the subject.

[snip comment by George]

> >>Children of either gender will be drawn to study what interests them.
> >>You can make a million gender-neutral textbooks about girls building
> >>rocketships and calculating trajectories, or figuring baseball
> >>statistics, and you're just not gonna 'win the audience' except of a
> >>very few. Face it, most math texts don't explain "why" something is, or
> >>how it go to be that way--they just throw a lot of squiggles at you and
> >>say, if you do thus and so to the squiggles, you win. Math and science
> >>texts (especially physics) are full of discrete examples whose contexts
> >>boys are already familiar with--throwing balls, building things from
> >>wood, making electrical circuits and so forth.
> >
> >
> > And why aren't girls familiar with these contexts? Because
> > they are usually
> > not interested in these things. Doesn't this suggest some innate
> > differences to you.
>
> No. As a matter of fact, I shot off baking-soda rockets, worked in my
> dad's basement shop running the power tools and building boxes and
> boats, played sandlot ball, and put together impossible contraptions
> with an Erector Set. I even built plastic models of the U-505 and the
> Starship Enterprise. I did not care one whit about baseball statistics,
> (nor movie stars) but saw my brother read the Sporting News and memorize
> stats at the same time I was memorizing things like the color, luster,
> hardness and fracture of minerals, or worked with my chemistry set, and
> grew copper sulfate crystals on my windowsill. I also cooked in my
> Easy-Bake Oven, played with Barbies and the girls on the street, largely
> because pre-adolescent boys were cruel, and would hurt you if they
> could. My earliest experience with 'socialization' was being taken by
> the teacher from the blocks and trucks to the play kitchen (repeatedly)
> in kindergarten.There was a boy there who liked the kitchen because he
> liked food, and he got shuffled to the trucks and blocks. (He's probably
> a famous chef now.) I retaliated by 'opting out'--getting crayons and
> paper and drawing so I didn't have to go to the kitchen. Had enough
> kitchen chores (like table-setting and dishes) to do when I was home,
> anyway--but my brothers too, did dishes. This was before feminism. And a
> good thing, as none of them have ever married, so they have to do
> housework.

My favorite activity in kindergarten was blocks too, but I do not recall
ever being discouraged from this. When older, I preferred playing with boys
than girls at recess since the boy's games were more interesting.
Nevertheless, I was aware that I was not like most girls. There is an
important distinction between what individuals do and what is typical.

> Most girls I knew (in the late 60s-early 70s) 'were' interested that I
> did such different things, but they had mothers who were more interested
> in them becoming 'ladies' than real people. The mothers were also afraid
> of power saws and chemistry sets, and their girls were forbidden to
> partake. Heaven knows what the twenty-something and early
> thirty-something females now are into. Those I had as students weren't
> domestically trained. I think they must be into media hype, because all
> I ever heard about were shopping, Hollywood celebrities, clothes and
> money. But those (plus sports) were all I heard from the male students.
> Precious few of them (either gender), seemed really into a hobby, or
> their studies.

I am around the same age as you and yet my experiences were quite different.
As a girl, there was never a question in my mind that I was good at math and
science and that these were career options for me. My family was
encouraging and approving when I announced that I wanted to be a marine
biologist. My marks in all my subjects went down towards the end of high
school, as I became more involved in non-academic life like running for
student council, the school musical, various clubs and partying in general.
I ended up not going into science, but not from any sense that I couldn't do
it.

> >>Math books are written by
> >>men (for the most part) for boys, using examples out of their own
> >>boyhood. These fellows' idea of humanizing a text is throwing in clipart
> >>of old famous white dead mathematicians in wigs. I can recall several
> >>word problems in probability I couldn't do-- I could do the math all
> >>right, but didn't understand how one played some game (I think it was
> >>figuring canasta hands) and without known the distribution of the hands,
> >>I was clueless. But hey, I'm a woman. I *asked* somebody to help me!
*|;-)
> >
> >
> > This has not been my personal experience of math texts. Do you have
> > some
> > references that indicate your experience is the norm?
>
> I don't claim my experience is the norm, and I never stated that I was
> either omniscient or infallible. However, before I made that statement,
> I dug up all my recent math texts (community college intermediate
> algebra through stats and Calc II). I also made a cursory examination of
> the other math texts I have in my library. Not a single one has a female
> author. The trig and calc books even have some of same problems (with
> the same numbers)(!) as my husband's college trig and calc books from
> the early 1980s. They aren't even by the same authors. The only material
> difference is that his books have trig and log tables and problems in
> degrees, and mine don't, but have calculator and electronic graphing
> exercises, and trig problems in radians. I suspect some of the calc
> problems may have been written by Newton himself. *|;-)
>
> Oh, and his books do not have the dead mathematicians. But they do have
> explanations of procedures in plain English paragraphs, explaining not
> only what to do, and how to do it, but also the historical significance
> of the usage of the procedure in a practical application. I often went
> back to his text for that reason alone. Mine just have diagrams and
> bullet points and equation problems, except for the word problems,
> which, as I stated are at least 80% drawn from experiences most common
> to boys or men.

I homeschool my children and when selecting math textbooks for them I make
a point of finding materials that suit their learning styles. I have never
personally noticed a corelation with gender, but this is too small a sample
for that to be significant. I have read articles that indicate there are
typical differences in the ways that boys learn and that girls learn. The
books I am using now with my 9 year old boy and 7 year old girl have word
problems from experiences of both genders.

> Here's an example: the row the boat across the river problem, in which
> you are to row your boat at W speed perpendicular to the shore when the
> current is moving at X speed and you are attempting to intersect a
> landing on the other shore at point Y, Z feet downstream. What speed do
> you need to row your boat?
> Now, this sounds like a straightforward rate problem. However, if you
> have ever canoed in a current, it is the stupidest problem on the
> planet, because a) the current in a river is not uniform, but has a
> channel and eddies, b) only an idiot would try to row *directly* across
> a current, c) you cannot accurately measure the speed of your rowing
> across such a small distance, and d) your speed will be variable,
> anyway. So what is the point? Now, that may be the difference between a
> thinking or a non-thinking brain, or some may say a male and female one.
>
> Why not make a realistic problem, not one where your answer will be
> false because it is based on untrue assumptions? But,aha, you aren't
> supposed to get a realistic answer, you are supposed to get the right
> one, calculated by ignoring the way the river, the boat, and the person
> actually work. If I had never canoed, I'd say, gee, it's a vector
> problem, and put the right numbers in the right squiggles and the
> teacher would be happy. But the boat would still end up somewhere else.

This sort of thing never bothered me. I knew that these problems weren't
meant to be realistic and how I was supposed to do it. I often was amused
by their silliness, but it didn't interfere with my ability to do them.

> >>I'd love to see a generation of boys raised on math books with examples
> >>of calculating how to make a creme rinse from its basic components, how,
> >>given X amount of prepared food, to redivide it evenly when unexpected
> >>dinner guests arrive,or how to even out 'playtime' with an even set of
> >>dolls, and an odd set of girls.
> >
> >
> > Apparently you think that they would do badly. Why would
> > you love to see boys doing badly? I would
> > love to see education that allows both es to
> > do their best.
>
> No, they would not do badly if they look at the problems the same way
> the male authors are expecting females to look at current problems in
> jet-plane impact energy releases, flying cannonballs, air-traffic
> control patterns, load-bearing capacities, antenna-erecting and
> miscellaneous other construction projects. That is--ignore the subject
> and concentrate on the numbers. Perhaps that is the problem. Since it is
> obvious most math problem solutions have little relation to real world
> solutions you are liable to encounter yourself, it is more difficult to
> concentrate on their solution. Of course, the only thing more gender
> neutral and mind numbing that this are pages and pages of
> differentiations and integrations with no context whatsoever.

One theory that I find compelling is that typical math instruction goes to
the abstraction level too quickly and the children need to spend more time
working at the concrete level. (This is for both boys and girls.) I have
been using a manipulative-based program for a couple of years now and I am
very impressed with the results. If you are interested you can take a look
at www.mathusee.com

> >>How about the spatial calculus involved
> >>when figuring out how much material in 30 inch wide yards has to be
> >>purchased to most efficiently yield the irregular pieces needed to sew a
> >>Halloween costume. Hey, it's math, right? There are plenty of 'spatially
> >>literate' men who haven't a clue how to take a Dutch cut out of a sheet
> >>of rectangular paper, much less to cut and sew a shirt while wasting
> >>only minimal cloth.
> >
> >
> > Neither do I have a clue about this. I do not think that I ever
> > encountered a math problem as
> > much outside my experience as your sewing examples.
>
> Well, someone's got to figure out how much material it takes to
> economically make a dress pattern. Dutch cuts are common in printing; it
> just means getting another piece out of an 'odd' scrap of leftover,
> thereby maximizing your use of 17x22 or 24x36 parent sheet of paper.
> This is actually easy, but you have to visualize what you are doing
> before you start cutting the stock. Just the same as Michelangelo had to
> cut away everything which wasn't David. I think spatial thinking is a
> teachable (and learnable) skill.

I remember when we did geometry theorems and proofs in high school. I
grasped it immediately. I could just look at the shape and knew the answer.
The majority of the class could not do this and, even after much class time
on it, many still could not do these questions. Perhaps it was teachable
in theory, but that is not what happened.

> Neither the young men nor women were
> very good at it until I showed them with real world examples. And 3-D
> thinking is essential in geology, because you are working with 3-D
> concepts. Actually, you gotta throw time in there as well, making it 4-D
> at least. Just about any manual skill (especially in arts/crafts)
> requires some 3-D thinking ability. But it does not necessarily require
> math or science to comprehend it.

That is consistent with the theory I mentioned earlier.

> >>Part of the answer to 'girls don't understand math and science' is yes
> >>they do, but the questions they find interesting are different, and
> >>often defined by men as uninteresting. Girls and women are not
> >>stupid--they're less likely than men to get fixated, and beat their
> >>heads to a bloody pulp on a lost cause. They just go around the problem,
> >>which often means abandoning both math and science.
> >
> >
> > Western education systems has been greatly influenced
> > by women in general
> > and feminists in particular for the past couple decades. I find it
> > implausible that men are defining the questions in math and science.
>
> In my experience, this statement is simply flat wrong. Of course, we
> really don't have many feminists (whatever they are) around here,
> either. Women may be a lot of the elementary grade teachers, but most
> administration, school boards, college trustees, principals, educational
> consultants, math and science teachers and professors and therefore
> textbook writers are still overwhelmingly male in my part of the world.

I'm in the Toronto area, where the Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education is extremely influential at the policy level. Much of what I have
read coming out of OISE is fairly obviously feminist in orientation. Women
are well represented in most of the areas you mention.

> >
> >>3) The glass ceiling still exists, for one reason: Ambitious men are
> >>defined as go-getters and successes. Ambitious women who do not become
> >>pseudo-men are defined by society as bitches (or worse). If one wants to
> >>be a whirlwind of successful genius, people's feelings are deemed
> >>irrelevant--it's a pursuit of a dream or an idea to the kill. That is
> >>seen as acceptable in men, but not in women. One need go no further than
> >>a person whom even Mr. Summers would call a female genius--Marie
> >>Sklodowska Curie--who was nearly denied her second Nobel in 1911 because
> >>of a morals charge. (Marie Curie--A Life, by Susan Quinn) Imagine a
> >>widowed male genius being in the same predicament because of an affair.
> >>Preposterous!
> >
> >
> > Not in 1911. People took ual morals, even men's, pretty seriously
> > back then.
>
> Perhaps you need to reread some of your history books, if you do not
> believe in a double standard for gender behavior, both then and now.
> (Hollywood excepted--those folks have no standards, regardless of their
> gender.) Men have always gotten away with much more than women, and had
> people think not much less of them for it--as the saying goes--wink,
> wink, nudge, nudge. People may have publicly been Victorian, but there
> was just as much scandal then as there is now, or will be in the future.
> People's behavior doesn't change--just society's assessment of it. True,
> people in 1911 had to have a better public persona than they do now,
> when scandal entertains the masses on TV. But women had to have a much
> better pattern of public behavior than men to stay in societal good
> graces. Even today.

I was just reading about a male professor who lost his job for a morality
issue around that time period. I could look up the reference if you'd like.
I agree that women were judged more harshly, but men in public positions
also had to avoid scandal.

> Or just look in the morning news. Heck, a big honcho for a securities
> firm here just 'voluntarily retired' for nearly the same crime and at
> the same level of culpability as Martha Stewart. He's remaining a
> partner in the firm, and she's in jail. Now, I'm not even close to being
> a Martha fan, but there is no doubt she obtained her fame and fortune
> whilst being 'uppity', and that's her major crime. Otherwise sauce for
> the goose would be sauce for the gander.

I have not followed this case.

> >>Yes, there are women who love math, and love science and excel at both
> >>(or if they don't excel, they can quite capably do what has to be done
> >>to get to the point they need to be.) Or maybe they just redefine the
> >>problem, and discover new things instead.
> >>
> >>In any event, Mr Harvard President Sir has apparently decided to eat his
> >>words, buttered and with honey on them, via his retraction:
> >>
> >>http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/womeninscience.html
> >
> >
> > This is clearly not a retraction. It is a statement that
> > his comments were misunderstood. He says
> > in this statement exactly what he was saying all
> > along.
>
> I disagree. Along with other hats, I've done some work in public
> relations (I have one of those dire liberal arts degrees, too.)
> 'Misunderstood' is a waffle-word for retraction, when saying
> 'retraction' would cause the person to lose face. This is the Harvard
> Office of the President trying to 'spin' what he said into something
> acceptable.

While it is possible that a retraction could be worded that way, in this
case, the statement exactly matched what I had earlier concluded he said.
The reports that I found most plausible claimed that he was saying this
right from the beginning.

> > Your argument is a refutation of Lawrence Summers'
> > alleged claim that women
> > are unfit for math and science professions.
> >However, he did not claim that.
> > You apparently created a misrepresentation
> > of his view in order to refute
> > it. In other words, you have committed the
> > straw man fallacy. Since your
> > entire argument is a logical fallacy, it is not logical at all.
>
> Oh, please... I don't believe that for a minute. Part of the difficulty
> with the entire issue (from a journalism perspective) is without a
> transcript of his remarks, NONE of us know what the man actually said,
> just what is reported that he said. All those reports are colored with
> biases.

You chose an especially refutable version of his remarks to believe. Why
choose this version over the others that portrayed Summers as saying
something reasonable?

> Now, you've said, 'well, he didn't say that'. But you have no
> proof either, as there is no transcript. I gathered as much gist, as
> well as I could, from as many sources as I could muster, going back to
> the earliest web reports, and only those from reputable newspapers
> (Boston Globe, New York Times included).

You are right that, without a transcript, I do not know with certainty what
he said. However, when sorting through the reports I considered the
plausibility of various claims. How likely is it that a highly educated,
experienced public speaker would say that women are unfit for or incapable
of math and science, knowing that his entire audience would consider this
patently absurd? It is reasonable to assume that every person there either
was a woman in these professions or personally knew some. It seems so much
more likely that the reports were correct which claimed that he was talking
about the importance of considering all the possible factors in women's
underrepresentation in these fields.

> My response was to the thread
> as it appeared (truncated) on s.g.g. and all the people signing their
> names with masculine first names, who were ranting uncontrollably about
> women being genetically unfit for math or science. That's it. I'm not on
> some social crusade, one way or the other.

I can understand how difficult it is to follow this thread. George has been
cross-posting it to various groups, apparently seeking some support for his
position. It seems that when he doesn't get it one group, he adds yet
another. He has even responded to several of my posts leaving out the group
that I am reading it in, presumably to discourage me from expressing my
views. He has done this with others as well, so that one must read many
different newsgroups to see where this thread has gone. I was trying to
track it on Google until I gave up in disgust at George's behaviour. I
think there may be a few people who could be described as claiming that
women are unfit for math or science. However, my sense is that the majority
of posts, like mine, have been objecting to the misrepresentation of Summers
remarks.

> > I would also like to note that it seems inaccurate to characterize my
>> posts on this subject as "gesticulating at each other".
>
> None of your posts before this one were propagated to s.g.g. Therefore
> you could not have possibly been included in my original conclusion.

As I said, it is difficult to follow this thread. I was the only poster
with a female name that I had noticed so I assumed that you must be talking
about me. Thank you for clarifying this.

Jayne

From:	Andre Lieven
Subject:	Re: Harvard Pres: Women Lack Ability In Math, Sciences
Date:	20 Jan 2005 17:04:39 GMT

"Jayne Kulikauskas" (momkulio@yahoo.ca) writes:
> "Jo Schaper" wrote in message
> news:10uusuonifutb6c@corp.supernews.com...
>> Jayne Kulikauskas wrote:
>
> Jo as quoted by George wrote:
>> >>"As a woman apparently lacking the genetic abilities under discussion,
>> >>I would advise the men in this discussion to take the time to find out
>> >>what Mr. Harvard President Sir actually said, (at least as reported in
>> >>the news media):
>> >>
>> >>Please read:
>> >>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/19/education/19harvard.html
>> >>No transcript of his exact words are available.
>>
>> > I thought this account seemed like an even-handed one:
>> > http://www.marinij.com/Stories/0,1413,234~24410~2659688,00.html
>>
>> Your story also came from a NY Times reporter. This thread came into
>> s.g.g. already in progress so I had to go find what people were talking
>> about, since it had already escalated almost into chaos. The one I cited
>> was also the most even-handed one I could find.
>
> Since the article you linked to required a subscription, I didn't read it.
> Could you please quote the part that gave you the impression that Summers
> said that women were unfit to do science?
>
>> > He discussed several factors that could help explain the
>> > underrepresentation of women. The first factor, he said, according to
>> > several participants, was that top positions on university math and
>> > engineering faculties require extraordinary commitments of time and
> energy,
>> > with many professors working 80-hour weeks in the same punishing
> schedules
>> > pursued by top lawyers, bankers and executives. Few married women with
>> > children are willing to accept such sacrifices, he said.
>> >
>> > Hopkins said yesterday, "I didn't disagree, but didn't like the way he
>> > presented that point, because I like to work 80 hours a week, and I
>> > know a lot of women who work that hard."
>> >
>> > In citing a second factor, Summers cited research showing that more
>> > high school boys than girls tend to score at very high and very low
>> > levels on standardized math tests, and that it was important to
>> > consider the possibility that such differences may stem from
>> > biological differences between the es.
>>
>> I was deliberately ignoring the remarks of the female attendees, because
>> they expressed their disapproval, but didn't add anything
>> particularily to what Mr. Summers is alleged to have said.
>
> I agree that Hopkins' comment is irrelevant, but I did not want the quote
> to appear with ellisions.
>
>> >>He is quoted for three ways which women may be unfit for these
>> >
>> > professions:
>> >
>> > He described 3 possible factors that could account for women's
>> > underrepresentation in these professions. He never said anything about
>> > women being unfit.
>> >
>> >>1) Reluctance of married women with children to work long (some articles
>> >>say 80-hour) workweeks in pursuit of their vocation;
>> >>
>> >>2) That innate -related/genetic differences make women less capable
>> >>of math or science; or
>> >>
>> >>3)That they are still discriminated against because of their gender.
>> >>
>> >>To refute these remarks:
>> >>
>> >>1) Is undoubtably true of both women and men with families, who value
>> >>their spouses, children and own productive lives both at and away from
>> >>their vocation. Both math and science can be harsh masters and
>> >>mistresses. While hard work is necessary for success in any endeavor,
>> >>this stereotype of the brilliant mathematician/scientist with no time
>> >>for anything but work is false--One need go no further than Einstein and
>> >>his violin, or Richard Feynmann and his theater and drums to note that
>> >>a) home life suffers greviously in the case of many so called
>> >>'brilliant' people; b) recreation is necessary to all humans to keep
>> >>from going crazy. No one can be a genius 24/7 for 70 years on end and c)
>> >>if there are children, someone must mind them, whether parent or nanny,
>> >>or the kids turn out badly.

All nice and well, but men still put in more time at work. A recent UK
survey of female med students showed that 75% intended never to work
full time...

>> >>2) This is an easy remark to make, but a hard one to substantiate. Also,
>> >> math and science, though both use numbers, are not equal. My best
>> >>friend in grade school excelled in math, but had no use for science. I
>> >>excelled in science, but math has always been a harder row to hoe. It's
>> >>not 'socialization pressure', nor genetics which cause women to back off
>> >>from math or science--it's the textbooks, the pedagogy, and the teachers
>> >>along the way.
>> >
>> > Could you give some references to support this claim please?
>> > (Preferably web-based since I don't want to
>> > drive to the university library in all this snow.)
>>
>> Which claim? That my best friend excelled in math, and I in science?
>> About the textbooks, the teaching methods and the teachers? I made no
>> claims in my essay that this was scientific, statistically normed
>> research.
>
> Thank you for clarifying. I received that impression when you said, "It's
> not 'socialization pressure', nor genetics which cause women to back off
> from math or science--it's the textbooks, the pedagogy, and the teachers
> along the way." It sounded to me like you were referring to established
> facts rather than your opinion.

And, Christina Hoff Sommers' work in " The War Against Boys; How Misguided
Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men " makes a well researched case that
the education system is focusing on females, and all but ignoring males,
such that class work is, in fact, skewed towards females.

>> This has been my experience, in my first 16 year trip through
>> the US education system, and then another 4 year stint to complete a
>> second degree 25 years later. I have always held non-traditional jobs,
>> and have been notoriously immune to socialization pressure since about
>> the age of 10. I do what I want to do, and gender stereotypes can go
>> hang for all I care. I've had one professor who told the class the first
>> day that the women could leave because he didn't believe women should be
>> college-educated. I stayed. I've had female professors who have made it
>> doubly hard on the women, because they know it's a rough world out
>> there. I worked side by side with blue-collar printers for 20 years, and
>> have hung out with geologists of all stripes for about the same time.

" The plural of 'anecdote' is NOT 'citation'. "

> I have spent a comparable amount of time in the Canadian education system.
> I have never had a professor that seemed to treat women differently from
> men, even when I was in classes in which I was the only woman.
>
>> My statement is my opinion, based on my experience. I endured the math
>> textbooks for two go rounds. And was very disappointed in the late '90s
>> to see that the celebrated 'gender-neutral' texts were still the same
>> old story, with fingernail polish applied over a few of the word
>> problems.

One hears this, yet such claimants don't bother to cite specific works
and examples. So, one is left unable to refute the smoke and mirror...

> I never noticed any of these issues in math textbooks and did quite well
> in the subject.
>
> [snip comment by George]
>
>> >>Children of either gender will be drawn to study what interests them.
>> >>You can make a million gender-neutral textbooks about girls building
>> >>rocketships and calculating trajectories, or figuring baseball
>> >>statistics, and you're just not gonna 'win the audience' except of a
>> >>very few. Face it, most math texts don't explain "why" something is, or
>> >>how it go to be that way--they just throw a lot of squiggles at you and
>> >>say, if you do thus and so to the squiggles, you win. Math and science
>> >>texts (especially physics) are full of discrete examples whose contexts
>> >>boys are already familiar with--throwing balls, building things from
>> >>wood, making electrical circuits and so forth.
>> >
>> > And why aren't girls familiar with these contexts? Because
>> > they are usually
>> > not interested in these things. Doesn't this suggest some innate
>> > differences to you.
>>
>> No. As a matter of fact, I shot off baking-soda rockets, worked in my
>> dad's basement shop running the power tools and building boxes and
>> boats, played sandlot ball, and put together impossible contraptions
>> with an Erector Set. I even built plastic models of the U-505 and the
>> Starship Enterprise. I did not care one whit about baseball statistics,
>> (nor movie stars) but saw my brother read the Sporting News and memorize
>> stats at the same time I was memorizing things like the color, luster,
>> hardness and fracture of minerals, or worked with my chemistry set, and
>> grew copper sulfate crystals on my windowsill. I also cooked in my
>> Easy-Bake Oven, played with Barbies and the girls on the street, largely
>> because pre-adolescent boys were cruel, and would hurt you if they
>> could. My earliest experience with 'socialization' was being taken by
>> the teacher from the blocks and trucks to the play kitchen (repeatedly)
>> in kindergarten.There was a boy there who liked the kitchen because he
>> liked food, and he got shuffled to the trucks and blocks. (He's probably
>> a famous chef now.) I retaliated by 'opting out'--getting crayons and
>> paper and drawing so I didn't have to go to the kitchen. Had enough
>> kitchen chores (like table-setting and dishes) to do when I was home,
>> anyway--but my brothers too, did dishes. This was before feminism. And a
>> good thing, as none of them have ever married, so they have to do
>> housework.

" The plural of 'anecdote' is NOT 'citation'. "

Its not like that is a particularly novel scientific concept.

> My favorite activity in kindergarten was blocks too, but I do not recall
> ever being discouraged from this. When older, I preferred playing with boys
> than girls at recess since the boy's games were more interesting.
> Nevertheless, I was aware that I was not like most girls. There is an
> important distinction between what individuals do and what is typical.

Indeed. See also " The exception that makes the rule. "

>> Most girls I knew (in the late 60s-early 70s) 'were' interested that I
>> did such different things, but they had mothers who were more interested
>> in them becoming 'ladies' than real people. The mothers were also afraid
>> of power saws and chemistry sets, and their girls were forbidden to
>> partake. Heaven knows what the twenty-something and early
>> thirty-something females now are into. Those I had as students weren't
>> domestically trained. I think they must be into media hype, because all
>> I ever heard about were shopping, Hollywood celebrities, clothes and
>> money. But those (plus sports) were all I heard from the male students.
>> Precious few of them (either gender), seemed really into a hobby, or
>> their studies.
>
> I am around the same age as you and yet my experiences were quite different.
> As a girl, there was never a question in my mind that I was good at math
> and science and that these were career options for me. My family was
> encouraging and approving when I announced that I wanted to be a marine
> biologist. My marks in all my subjects went down towards the end of high
> school, as I became more involved in non-academic life like running for
> student council, the school musical, various clubs and partying in general.
> I ended up not going into science, but not from any sense that I couldn't
> do it.
>
>> >>Math books are written by
>> >>men (for the most part) for boys, using examples out of their own
>> >>boyhood. These fellows' idea of humanizing a text is throwing in clipart
>> >>of old famous white dead mathematicians in wigs. I can recall several
>> >>word problems in probability I couldn't do-- I could do the math all
>> >>right, but didn't understand how one played some game (I think it was
>> >>figuring canasta hands) and without known the distribution of the hands,
>> >>I was clueless. But hey, I'm a woman. I *asked* somebody to help me!
> *|;-)
>> >
>> > This has not been my personal experience of math texts. Do you have
>> > some references that indicate your experience is the norm?
>>
>> I don't claim my experience is the norm, and I never stated that I was
>> either omniscient or infallible. However, before I made that statement,
>> I dug up all my recent math texts (community college intermediate
>> algebra through stats and Calc II). I also made a cursory examination of
>> the other math texts I have in my library. Not a single one has a female
>> author. The trig and calc books even have some of same problems (with
>> the same numbers)(!) as my husband's college trig and calc books from
>> the early 1980s. They aren't even by the same authors. The only material
>> difference is that his books have trig and log tables and problems in
>> degrees, and mine don't, but have calculator and electronic graphing
>> exercises, and trig problems in radians. I suspect some of the calc
>> problems may have been written by Newton himself. *|;-)

In other words, no, you don't have any references to give *context*
to your anecdotes...

>> Oh, and his books do not have the dead mathematicians. But they do have
>> explanations of procedures in plain English paragraphs, explaining not
>> only what to do, and how to do it, but also the historical significance
>> of the usage of the procedure in a practical application. I often went
>> back to his text for that reason alone. Mine just have diagrams and
>> bullet points and equation problems, except for the word problems,
>> which, as I stated are at least 80% drawn from experiences most common
>> to boys or men.
>
> I homeschool my children and when selecting math textbooks for them I make
> a point of finding materials that suit their learning styles. I have never
> personally noticed a corelation with gender, but this is too small a sample
> for that to be significant. I have read articles that indicate there are
> typical differences in the ways that boys learn and that girls learn. The
> books I am using now with my 9 year old boy and 7 year old girl have word
> problems from experiences of both genders.

Indeed.

>> Here's an example: the row the boat across the river problem, in which
>> you are to row your boat at W speed perpendicular to the shore when the
>> current is moving at X speed and you are attempting to intersect a
>> landing on the other shore at point Y, Z feet downstream. What speed do
>> you need to row your boat?
>> Now, this sounds like a straightforward rate problem. However, if you
>> have ever canoed in a current, it is the stupidest problem on the
>> planet, because a) the current in a river is not uniform, but has a
>> channel and eddies, b) only an idiot would try to row *directly* across
>> a current, c) you cannot accurately measure the speed of your rowing
>> across such a small distance, and d) your speed will be variable,
>> anyway. So what is the point? Now, that may be the difference between a
>> thinking or a non-thinking brain, or some may say a male and female one.
>>
>> Why not make a realistic problem, not one where your answer will be
>> false because it is based on untrue assumptions? But,aha, you aren't
>> supposed to get a realistic answer, you are supposed to get the right
>> one, calculated by ignoring the way the river, the boat, and the person
>> actually work. If I had never canoed, I'd say, gee, it's a vector
>> problem, and put the right numbers in the right squiggles and the
>> teacher would be happy. But the boat would still end up somewhere else.
>
> This sort of thing never bothered me. I knew that these problems weren't
> meant to be realistic and how I was supposed to do it. I often was amused
> by their silliness, but it didn't interfere with my ability to do them.

In fact, given that many such offered problems are not based on intuitive
situations, that children may have some experience with, they remove any
possibility of bias between children who might have had such an
experience and those who have not, thus *concentrating* on the actual
math.

If you're teaching math, that seems a very logical thing to do.

>> >>I'd love to see a generation of boys raised on math books with examples
>> >>of calculating how to make a creme rinse from its basic components, how,
>> >>given X amount of prepared food, to redivide it evenly when unexpected
>> >>dinner guests arrive,or how to even out 'playtime' with an even set of
>> >>dolls, and an odd set of girls.
>> >
>> > Apparently you think that they would do badly. Why would
>> > you love to see boys doing badly? I would
>> > love to see education that allows both es to do their best.
>>
>> No, they would not do badly if they look at the problems the same way
>> the male authors are expecting females to look at current problems in
>> jet-plane impact energy releases, flying cannonballs, air-traffic
>> control patterns, load-bearing capacities, antenna-erecting and
>> miscellaneous other construction projects. That is--ignore the subject
>> and concentrate on the numbers. Perhaps that is the problem. Since it is
>> obvious most math problem solutions have little relation to real world
>> solutions you are liable to encounter yourself, it is more difficult to
>> concentrate on their solution. Of course, the only thing more gender
>> neutral and mind numbing that this are pages and pages of
>> differentiations and integrations with no context whatsoever.
>
> One theory that I find compelling is that typical math instruction goes to
> the abstraction level too quickly and the children need to spend more time
> working at the concrete level. (This is for both boys and girls.) I have
> been using a manipulative-based program for a couple of years now and I am
> very impressed with the results. If you are interested you can take a look
> at www.mathusee.com
>
>> >>How about the spatial calculus involved
>> >>when figuring out how much material in 30 inch wide yards has to be
>> >>purchased to most efficiently yield the irregular pieces needed to sew a
>> >>Halloween costume. Hey, it's math, right? There are plenty of 'spatially
>> >>literate' men who haven't a clue how to take a Dutch cut out of a sheet
>> >>of rectangular paper, much less to cut and sew a shirt while wasting
>> >>only minimal cloth.
>> >
>> > Neither do I have a clue about this. I do not think that I ever
>> > encountered a math problem as
>> > much outside my experience as your sewing examples.
>>
>> Well, someone's got to figure out how much material it takes to
>> economically make a dress pattern. Dutch cuts are common in printing; it
>> just means getting another piece out of an 'odd' scrap of leftover,
>> thereby maximizing your use of 17x22 or 24x36 parent sheet of paper.
>> This is actually easy, but you have to visualize what you are doing
>> before you start cutting the stock. Just the same as Michelangelo had to
>> cut away everything which wasn't David. I think spatial thinking is a
>> teachable (and learnable) skill.
>
> I remember when we did geometry theorems and proofs in high school. I
> grasped it immediately. I could just look at the shape and knew the
> answer. The majority of the class could not do this and, even after much
> class time on it, many still could not do these questions. Perhaps it
> was teachable in theory, but that is not what happened.
>
>> Neither the young men nor women were
>> very good at it until I showed them with real world examples. And 3-D
>> thinking is essential in geology, because you are working with 3-D
>> concepts. Actually, you gotta throw time in there as well, making it 4-D
>> at least. Just about any manual skill (especially in arts/crafts)
>> requires some 3-D thinking ability. But it does not necessarily require
>> math or science to comprehend it.
>
> That is consistent with the theory I mentioned earlier.
>
>> >>Part of the answer to 'girls don't understand math and science' is yes
>> >>they do, but the questions they find interesting are different, and
>> >>often defined by men as uninteresting. Girls and women are not
>> >>stupid--they're less likely than men to get fixated, and beat their
>> >>heads to a bloody pulp on a lost cause. They just go around the problem,
>> >>which often means abandoning both math and science.
>> >
>> > Western education systems has been greatly influenced
>> > by women in general
>> > and feminists in particular for the past couple decades. I find it
>> > implausible that men are defining the questions in math and science.
>>
>> In my experience, this statement is simply flat wrong. Of course, we
>> really don't have many feminists (whatever they are) around here,
>> either. Women may be a lot of the elementary grade teachers, but most
>> administration, school boards, college trustees, principals, educational
>> consultants, math and science teachers and professors and therefore
>> textbook writers are still overwhelmingly male in my part of the world.

OK, lets consider that:

I live in Otatwa, Ontario. There are two universities here.

Turning to the White Pages Phone Book, and looking up each of them, and
their listed departments, we find the following:

Carleton University: Women's Studies 520-6645. ( But, no men's
studies ). Pauline Jewitt Institute of Women's Studies 520-6645.
Status of Women 520-5622. Womyn's Centre 520-2712.

Thats four , women, specific departments. Maybe three, if the
two that share a phone, share other things. But, they do have two
separate listings. Yet, no listings for ANY men's departments or
services.

Now, lets have a peek at the University Of Ottawa:

Canadian Women's Movement Archives 562-5910. Sexual Harrassment
Office 562-5222. ( Has anyone ever heard of a ual harrassment
office on a campus, launching a case against a harassing *woman* ? )
Women's Studies (Institute Of) 562-5791. Women's Studies (Joint
Chair in) 562-6644.

Thats also four, and women, specific departments. I left out
that both universities have child care, and most children are in
the custody of women, so that is very likely two more woman/
specific departments.

So, thats *ten* for women, *none* for men. Feminists call this
" equality ".

> I'm in the Toronto area, where the Ontario Institute for Studies in
> Education is extremely influential at the policy level. Much of what
> I have read coming out of OISE is fairly obviously feminist in
> orientation. Women are well represented in most of the areas you mention.

Of course. At a time when, by the numbers, women are not the campus
minority, its absurd to claim that they are.

>> >>3) The glass ceiling still exists, for one reason: Ambitious men are
>> >>defined as go-getters and successes. Ambitious women who do not become
>> >>pseudo-men are defined by society as bitches (or worse). If one wants
>> >>to be a whirlwind of successful genius, people's feelings are deemed
>> >>irrelevant--it's a pursuit of a dream or an idea to the kill. That is
>> >>seen as acceptable in men, but not in women. One need go no further
>> >>than a person whom even Mr. Summers would call a female genius--Marie
>> >>Sklodowska Curie--who was nearly denied her second Nobel in 1911 because
>> >>of a morals charge. (Marie Curie--A Life, by Susan Quinn) Imagine a
>> >>widowed male genius being in the same predicament because of an affair.
>> >>Preposterous!
>> >
>> > Not in 1911. People took ual morals, even men's, pretty seriously
>> > back then.
>>
>> Perhaps you need to reread some of your history books, if you do not
>> believe in a double standard for gender behavior, both then and now.
>> (Hollywood excepted--those folks have no standards, regardless of their
>> gender.) Men have always gotten away with much more than women, and had
>> people think not much less of them for it--as the saying goes--wink,
>> wink, nudge, nudge. People may have publicly been Victorian, but there
>> was just as much scandal then as there is now, or will be in the future.
>> People's behavior doesn't change--just society's assessment of it. True,
>> people in 1911 had to have a better public persona than they do now,
>> when scandal entertains the masses on TV. But women had to have a much
>> better pattern of public behavior than men to stay in societal good
>> graces. Even today.
>
> I was just reading about a male professor who lost his job for a morality
> issue around that time period. I could look up the reference if you'd
> like. I agree that women were judged more harshly, but men in public
> positions also had to avoid scandal.

Given " Sex & The City ", unmarried teen girls having baby showers,
and so on, its clear that this " repression by morality " simply
*doesn't exist* for women today.

>> Or just look in the morning news. Heck, a big honcho for a securities
>> firm here just 'voluntarily retired' for nearly the same crime and at
>> the same level of culpability as Martha Stewart. He's remaining a
>> partner in the firm, and she's in jail. Now, I'm not even close to being
>> a Martha fan, but there is no doubt she obtained her fame and fortune
>> whilst being 'uppity', and that's her major crime. Otherwise sauce for
>> the goose would be sauce for the gander.

" The plural of 'anecdote' is NOT 'citation'. "

> I have not followed this case.
>
>> >>Yes, there are women who love math, and love science and excel at both
>> >>(or if they don't excel, they can quite capably do what has to be done
>> >>to get to the point they need to be.) Or maybe they just redefine the
>> >>problem, and discover new things instead.
>> >>
>> >>In any event, Mr Harvard President Sir has apparently decided to eat his
>> >>words, buttered and with honey on them, via his retraction:
>> >>
>> >>http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/womeninscience.html
>> >
>> > This is clearly not a retraction. It is a statement that
>> > his comments were misunderstood. He says
>> > in this statement exactly what he was saying all along.
>>
>> I disagree. Along with other hats, I've done some work in public
>> relations (I have one of those dire liberal arts degrees, too.)
>> 'Misunderstood' is a waffle-word for retraction, when saying
>> 'retraction' would cause the person to lose face. This is the Harvard
>> Office of the President trying to 'spin' what he said into something
>> acceptable.
>
> While it is possible that a retraction could be worded that way, in this
> case, the statement exactly matched what I had earlier concluded he said.
> The reports that I found most plausible claimed that he was saying this
> right from the beginning.
>
>> > Your argument is a refutation of Lawrence Summers'
>> > alleged claim that women
>> > are unfit for math and science professions.
>> >However, he did not claim that.
>> > You apparently created a misrepresentation
>> > of his view in order to refute
>> > it. In other words, you have committed the
>> > straw man fallacy. Since your
>> > entire argument is a logical fallacy, it is not logical at all.
>>
>> Oh, please... I don't believe that for a minute. Part of the difficulty
>> with the entire issue (from a journalism perspective) is without a
>> transcript of his remarks, NONE of us know what the man actually said,
>> just what is reported that he said. All those reports are colored with
>> biases.
>
> You chose an especially refutable version of his remarks to believe. Why
> choose this version over the others that portrayed Summers as saying
> something reasonable?

Ideology...

>> Now, you've said, 'well, he didn'