Posted on 07/15/2006 8:09:25 PM PDT by Coleus
SAN FRANCISCO -- As an Ivy League-trained neurobiologist who oversees a research lab at Stanford, Ben Barres feels qualified to comment on whether nature or nurture explains the persistent gender gap in the scientific community. But it wasn't just his medical degree from Dartmouth, his Ph.D from Harvard and his studies on brain development and regeneration that inspired him to write an article blaming the shortage of female scientists on institutional bias.
Rather, it was that for most of his academic life, the 51-year-old professor who now wears a beard was once known as Dr. Barbara Barres, a woman who excelled in math and science.
"I have this perspective," said Barres, who switched sexes when he started taking hormones in 1997. "I've lived in the shoes of a woman and I've lived in the shoes of a man. It's caused me to reflect on the barriers women face." Barres' opinion piece, published in Thursday's issue of the journal Nature, was a response to the debate former Harvard president Lawrence Summers reignited last year when he said innate sexual differences might explain why comparatively few women excelled in scientific careers.
Summers' clashes with faculty -- including over women in science -- led to his resignation, though not before he committed $50 million to child-care and other initiatives to help advance the careers of women and minority employees. Barres thinks a meaningful discussion of what he calls the "Larry Summers Hypothesis" ended too soon, leaving missed opportunities and a bad message for young female scientists.
"I feel like I have a responsibility to speak out," he said.
In his article, Barres offers several personal anecdotes from both sides of the gender divide to prove his own hypothesis that prejudice plays a much bigger role than genes in preventing women from reaching their potential on university campuses and in government laboratories. The one that rankles him most dates from his undergraduate days at MIT, where as a young woman in a class dominated by men he was the only student to solve a complicated math problem. The professor said a boyfriend must have done the work for her, according to Barres.
Aside from his unique vantage point, the thrust of Barres' article is that neither Summers nor the prominent scientists who defended his position used hard data to back up the claim that biology makes women less inclined toward math and science. He cites several studies -- including one showing little difference in the math scores of boys and girls ages 4 to 18 and another that indicated girls are groomed to be less competitive in sports -- to support his discrimination argument.
Don't forget about modeling! Female models make WAY more than men!
In case you're around, there's so much wrong with this picture that it's hard to know where to start.
Yup and most women do not pursue an advanced degree because they have families and are no longer interested in that kind of stress/etc. And I think women just aren't as inclined to "prove themselves" in the working world. Biologically speaking, we aren't meant to be the breadwinners. I say this from my experience as a female in a math/science field dominated by men.
Not in my experience. My professors and advisor were pretty miffed that I didn't go on to get my master's degree and that I chose to stay home and have a family instead. They even recommended me to a local employer looking for help; and that was 18 years ago. People will find bias where they want, whether is exists or not. They become overly sensitive to every slight, are way too easily offended, and read too much into things they shouldn't.
Why does this guy think people care about what he has to say?
Publicity seeking remarks to publicize his/her publicity seeking sex change. What a capital-L loser.
That's so true. My daughter is majoring in computer science and with her SAT score, that very thing was happening when she was looking at colleges. She applied only to the college where she wanted to attend and not only got in easily but is in their honors program.
Or maybe the prof was just trying to be nice. :-)
Two comments:
1) That's horrendously unprofessional.
2) I've never known (or heard secondhand about) a female physics student who's ever had anything remotely like that happen to her during my career. Undoubtedly things like this used to be more common, but I can't believe it's widespread now.
I'll give a counter-anecdote. There was a female physicist who was being considered for a position at a university where I worked. This researcher was very highly regarded; even as a grad student, I knew who she was by reputation alone. I chanced to overhear a discussion about her hiring; there was general agreement that hiring her would be great for the department, because as a woman and a minority, she would count towards two of the department's affirmative-action targets.
Those words hit me like a punch in the gut. Here was someone whose work I admired, someone I looked forward to having as a mentor. But to the department, that counted for nothing: her value was as a token. Her genitals and her yellow skin color had value while her world-class mind did not. And this value was assigned by the attempt to redress the wrongs of racism and sexism!
Can one eat enough, to vomit enough?
Who cares if not enough women are in the scientific field?! Maybe they are home having babies...
That is PRECISELY what is horribly wrong with affirmative action.
I'll never forget my advisor advising me against signing up for a course because it had lots of math, and I was already employed by the school as a calculus tutor.
I don't remember what I said but it wasn't polite, and yes, I signed up anyway.
I was at MIT as an undergrad at around the same time that this guy/girl/whatever must have been there. I can attest from personal experience that there were plenty of professors there who would willingly bust your balls (um, guess that may not have been the most appropriate expression to use, huh) no matter what the pretext was. At the same time, there was constant whining about how difficult it was to be a black person at MIT. People tend to look for ways to blame their own personal problems on others. Guess what - it was difficult to be any kind of person at MIT. I came to that realization because I didn't have a convenient scapegoat to blame for my own difficulties...
Catherine Beecher.
Oh, and Florence Nightingale.
Could be that women aren't attracted to science in the same proportion as men. Was anyone aware of the need for male/female balance in science for success? I mean, who figured that balance was an issue?
I am sorry, I thought that was included in the Porno biz...
Male models: If you ever want to find some, take a few pictures of the security cameras at the mall. The mall rent a cops will send out some lovely male models for you.
Nurse Ratchet
Nice graphic. Since it's the folks who score 700 and above in math who have much likelihood of being happy in mathematics and physics, if there's any institutional bias, it's in the K-12 schools and it's taking its toll on girls' mathematical ability before they hit the SAT.
(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em, Down Hezbullies.)
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