SlowpokeBlog

Though I'm sure many will interpret this week's strip as an ad hominem attack on Larry Summers, let me state up front that that is not my intent. I'm not angry at Larry Summers. I see his statements about women and science as the product of ignorance, not hostility toward women. This is why I was careful to include his qualification that he hoped he would be proven wrong. I also see Summers as the product of a university culture that increasingly values the fund-raising capabilities and powerful connections of its presidents rather than their scholarship; but that's an issue for another day.

I am, however, troubled by those on the far right -- and some moderates as well -- who are vocally defending Summers' comments about women's innate scientific abilities. On the surface, their viewpoint sounds like conventional wisdom: since we don't fully understand the human brain, maybe it is true that women are wired differently. "Politically correct" people who criticize Summers are being intellectually dishonest by not considering all the possibilities.

The problem with this argument is that it ignores the mountain of evidence of cultural biases -- some overt, some subtle -- that make the sciences seem more attractive to males. It also completely ignores the history of gender in this country; it wasn't until 1970 that women were even admitted to the University of Virginia! People have been invoking biological difference for centuries to account for things we now clearly know to be cultural. As someone with a social science background, this is elementary stuff, but as I've mentioned before, much of America -- as well as the field of sociobiology from which Summers appears to be drawing -- seems to possess virtually no culture concept.

For the record, Summers did also address the issue of 80-hour workweeks as a deterrent to women who want a family, citing this as the most important factor. There was no way to address this in an already overcrowded cartoon. However, the basic point of the cartoon is that, despite his awareness of these other factors, Summers still felt the need to invoke a biological explanation. As I depict in the cartoon, he went so far as to say that biological factors are more influential than social ones (thus, in a sense, contradicting his emphasis on the 80-hour workweek).

Science Korner