A Question Of Science
‘ANORAK readers will have noticed that of the three suggestions for disposing of wasps quoted in our first story, only one came from a woman.
| Newton’s curls were the envy of his female lab assistants |
And that did not even involve killing the wasp, merely getting it drunk.
The reason for this is, according to no less an authority than the president of Harvard University, because women and science dont mix.
At an invitation-only economics conference last Friday, Larry Summers said there were innate differences between the sexes that accounted for the lack of top women scientists.
Boys, he said, outperformed girls in maths and science at high school because of genetic differences.
Research in behavioural genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialisation werent due to socialisation at all, he later told the Boston Globe.
But his audience werent so sure the Guardian says several women in the audience walked out in disgust.
It was really shocking to hear the president of Harvard make statements like that, said Denice Denton, soon-to-become president of the University of California.
However, Dr Richard Freeman (who invited Dr Summers to speak) insisted that many women had overreacted.
It does not seem to me insane to think that men and women have biological differences, he said.
Indeed not. Women cant throw and theyre not much cop at killing wasps either…’
Posted: 18th, January 2005 | In: Uncategorized Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
