Sorry for cross posting but here was my reply in the other forum.

a) I WISH TO GOD I could go to conferences like this.. (ok not god but whomever will send me)

b) then I have to say that in a way I see both sides of the coin. I just think its a VERY delicate subject and people have to be VERY clear about their intentions and linguists when discussing this.

For example, I think the woman who filed a discrimination suit at MIT made an astute comment with ""Let's not forget that people used to say that women couldn't drive an automobile."

I have a problem with Dr. Summer's use of the words "innate differences in sex". I bought that darwinistic biologically driven bullshit for so long, until I read Women in Human Evolution. Fucking rocked my world.

That being said, there is a culture that we grow up in and women ARE generally socialized to think, intuit, and react differently than me. Sure, thats a gross generalization, but I believe that its there all the same.

Part of that socialization for girls has to do with, well, being social. Math and science are not generally introduced to young women, or people for that matter, as being very social fields. There is also not a lot of emotion that is "allowed" to enter in to the science and math equations. MY personal biggest problem with math (which I needed to do the science I wanted to do), was the lack of application to my life and the real world. I have still never found someone who could explain sine, cosine and tangents etc all that well. So my interest in math just fell apart.


BUT....Dr Summers says that "I began by saying that the whole issue of gender equality was profoundly important and that we are taking major steps at Harvard to combat passive discrimination,"

This is an important point as well and one I totally agree with. Passive discrimination is so prevalent, and socialization differences could probably be considered part of it.

He admits to trying to provoke and it was a conference on gender. So it seems like an acceptable forum to discuss such hypotheses.

But would I have stayed in the room? I don't know.

i'm kinda surprised no one's commented on all the hoohah over harvard president summers's remarks about women in science and that similar blowup involving susan estrich (usc law prof).

check these out- both blurbs copied from www.aldaily.com/ :

""Curious how so many feminists, when crossed, turn into hysterical harpies. Or delicate flowers, made “sick” by any challenge. Consider the Los Angeles Times... more»
www.city-journal.org/html/eo...5hm.html
... more»
www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp
""

""Larry Summers is easily the most intelligent and energetic college president in the U.S. Alarmed by this, the Harvard faculty decided to humiliate him... more»
www.weeklystandard.com/Utilit...iew.asp
What about families?
www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...22.html
Again, he said...
www.president.harvard.edu/speec...r.html
But where’s Larry?
chronicle.com/temp/email.php
""