Irvine511
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nbcrusader said:
my understanding is that it is the conclusion of scientific research in genetics. can't reference an article for you at work, but i believe i have it in a book somewhere at home.
MERGED: Lawrence Summers' Speech on Gender Difference
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my understanding is that it is the conclusion of scientific research in genetics. can't reference an article for you at work, but i believe i have it in a book somewhere at home.
nathan1977
Rock n' Roll Doggie
Irvine511 said:
Would find it hard to believe geneticists would conclude anything.
What was that fascinating book a year ago about a little boy who was raised as a girl (or v/v, can't remember), but who rebelled against his/her social programming? It was a true story. Have to check that one....
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
nathan1977 said:
i'm fairly certain that there is no "race gene" -- but i'll look it up when i get home.
and i think the lesson stands -- the genetic difference between two white Americans is no more or no less than the genetic difference between a black and a white American.
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
drhark said:
thus underscoring the scientific rejection of any notions that certain races have certain "traits."
pax
ONE love, blood, life
I have read that racial characteristics are, genomically speaking, so insignificant that on a DNA level, every single human being is more than 99% identical.
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deep
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Irvine511
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hmmmmm ... can't seem to find the book that i was talking about earlier -- stupid move, misplaced lots of things.
anyway -- race and gender, is it innate?
i do feel confident in asserting, at least among academics, that "race" is a socially constructed concept. the meaning of "race" has evolved over centuries. racism itself developed as a set of ideologies and pseudo-scientific doctrines after the Renaissance, especially with the industrialization of Europe and the process of colonization. racism became universal. non-European peoples were seen as inferior, and material ripe for exploitation. non-wetsern cultures are still seen as obstacles to development, and the idea that there is even race to begin (and then the century's old justification for one race as being better than the other) has done a wonderful job maintaining colonialist attitudes and exploits, despite the fact that there is no biologically valid difference between the genetic make-up of different "races." racial identities are constituted by power relations, and western representations of race have created ethnic identities not through any actual difference but through novels, theater, painting, films, television, music and photography. essentailly, race is a "social imaginary" which divides various cultrual groups into "imagined communities" by bonmding them together in media narrations created, usually, by the dominant (white) culture.
gender -- we need to contrast this with "sex," in order to understand the difference between social consturction and biological determination. feminist thought posits that society not only influences personality and behavior, but also the ways in which the body appears. if the body is seen through social interpretation, then sex is not something seperate from gender, but is only an artifice under it. feminism itself is still debating the biological male/female difference, and some deliberately blur the distinction.
how? postmodernity, of course! gender and race do not have a fixed meaning. individuals are composites of subjective elements. no one is naturally male or female. femininity and masculinity are socially constructed, and po-mo feminists do not concern themselves with finding an "authentic" female, but in showing that social construction of gender involves power relations.
so there's some theory for thought. sorry i can't find the science part, but like i said, i feel pretty confident.
anyway -- race and gender, is it innate?
i do feel confident in asserting, at least among academics, that "race" is a socially constructed concept. the meaning of "race" has evolved over centuries. racism itself developed as a set of ideologies and pseudo-scientific doctrines after the Renaissance, especially with the industrialization of Europe and the process of colonization. racism became universal. non-European peoples were seen as inferior, and material ripe for exploitation. non-wetsern cultures are still seen as obstacles to development, and the idea that there is even race to begin (and then the century's old justification for one race as being better than the other) has done a wonderful job maintaining colonialist attitudes and exploits, despite the fact that there is no biologically valid difference between the genetic make-up of different "races." racial identities are constituted by power relations, and western representations of race have created ethnic identities not through any actual difference but through novels, theater, painting, films, television, music and photography. essentailly, race is a "social imaginary" which divides various cultrual groups into "imagined communities" by bonmding them together in media narrations created, usually, by the dominant (white) culture.
gender -- we need to contrast this with "sex," in order to understand the difference between social consturction and biological determination. feminist thought posits that society not only influences personality and behavior, but also the ways in which the body appears. if the body is seen through social interpretation, then sex is not something seperate from gender, but is only an artifice under it. feminism itself is still debating the biological male/female difference, and some deliberately blur the distinction.
how? postmodernity, of course! gender and race do not have a fixed meaning. individuals are composites of subjective elements. no one is naturally male or female. femininity and masculinity are socially constructed, and po-mo feminists do not concern themselves with finding an "authentic" female, but in showing that social construction of gender involves power relations.
so there's some theory for thought. sorry i can't find the science part, but like i said, i feel pretty confident.
MrsSpringsteen
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speedracer
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Math class is hard!
Everyone's favorite former Treasury Secretary turned university president gets in trouble again:
Everyone's favorite former Treasury Secretary turned university president gets in trouble again:
A_Wanderer
ONE love, blood, life
Race exists in this world, it would be wrong to suggest that there are absolutely no differences between a negro and a caucasian, I would venture that there are a good many differences for better or worse in each that while minor when considering the simmilarities are differences nontheless. I think that the push to ignore the taxanomic value of race is driven by political correctness and politics. Races do exist in this world however much they can be blurred in many parts of the world and in the final analysis these slight differences in appearance and some other functions have no effect on individual worth or potential. When tracing the origins of man is it not better to have an agreed benchmark for the differing populations.
I do wonder would you have considered race to be a social framework if you were comparing two groups that had never encountered one another.
As for postmodenism, I find most of what is churned out by that to be complete and utter garbage especially when it starts to argue that there are no such things as facts and only interperatations. It really gets under my skin when some take it to such an extreme level I make the suggestion that they consume a big glass of dihydrogen sulfate safe in the knowledge that science is but a social construct equally as valid as tribal sun worship
.
I do wonder would you have considered race to be a social framework if you were comparing two groups that had never encountered one another.
As for postmodenism, I find most of what is churned out by that to be complete and utter garbage especially when it starts to argue that there are no such things as facts and only interperatations. It really gets under my skin when some take it to such an extreme level I make the suggestion that they consume a big glass of dihydrogen sulfate safe in the knowledge that science is but a social construct equally as valid as tribal sun worship
.
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Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
A_Wanderer said:
race exists in this world because it was invented and then maintained. there are superfical differences between a white person and a black person, but these are cosmetic and nothing more, and of no greater biological difference than that between you (assuming you're a white australian) and me (a white american). however, you're focusing on biological differences between the races, and those are the least important. it is the invented, imagined cultural differences between the races that constitute what "race" actually is, and more importantly, how it functions in power relations and politics. race is more of a socio-political identity than a biological one.
if you were to place two groups together who had never seen each other before, you'd have the beginnings of the makings of two different races. they'd regard each other, notice the difference, and then through language, stories, art, whatever cultural practices, replicate and interpret these differences thus pushing these two groups apart. yes, there might be a biological difference between the two, but it is first what is noticed by the human eye (the most obvious differences, skin color to begin with, then body shape characteristics) and then what specific featuers one race chooses to exagerate in order to distinguish themselvse from that race.
convoluded? probably my fault ... let's take an example: blackface. minstrel shows. what these performances do, wonderfully, is emphasize the performative nature of race, and notice the features of african-americans that white-americans chose to exaggerate -- lips, skin color, and wildly emotive gestures. you then get a chicken-and-egg situation -- when a black person sees a white person imitating a black person, and when white people are in control of the methods of cultural reproduction, the effect becomes, "what if that's really how i am?" "what if that is how we act?" "what if that is how i should be acting." one then feeds into the other, and you basically have white people creating, in a sense, "black people." and now that we have a category of "black people," suddenly there can be "white people."
all categories of social difference pretty much follow this pattern -- and i could continue this with some personal examples and observations on gay culture, but i should go do some work.
nbcrusader
Blue Crack Addict
Jamila said:
Please add something more than cheap implications about other forum members.
verte76
Blue Crack Addict
Horrors! Controversy at Harvard! Seriously, where did Summers get these ideas? They're ridiculous. Using the same line of reasoning you could say that I'm a an artist or a library worker because I'm a woman. I'm not an artist because I'm a woman, I like drawing and painting. I work in a library because I think libraries are important tools in fighting illiteracy. It's got nothing to do with gender.
*edited to say I hope this makes sense, I'm a little under the weather and there is a totally infernal racket due to a construction project next door*
*edited to say I hope this makes sense, I'm a little under the weather and there is a totally infernal racket due to a construction project next door*
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verte76
Blue Crack Addict
Academics used to claim that there was indeed a difference between men and women as per scientific skill, thus justifying the now outmoded practice of maintaining sex-specific schools. I think it's more of an expectations thing. They expected men to be better at science than women. Looking at my own family you could use us as examples. My dad is a retired physician, a scientific ace, while all of us girls struggled like hell to pass our math and science classes, as did my mother. Our brother is an engineer. However, my mother's opthamologist is a woman. You can't become a nurse without being really good in science; nursing is both a science and an art. I've looked at the texts at work that nursing students study when they take their boards. At one point, back in the '20's or so, some idiots even claimed that M.D. stood for "male doctor". This, of course, is bull
!! So I don't agree that the difference are innate, they are socialized into people from the environment.
!! So I don't agree that the difference are innate, they are socialized into people from the environment.
pax
ONE love, blood, life
I'm going to merge these.
verte76
Blue Crack Addict
I pretty much follow the postmodernist school of historical thought because the modernist school is too romantic. It was the Victorians who thought one day there would be no need to write any more history books because all the "facts" would be in the books. Then the twentieth century rolled around and an Italian historian and philosopher, Benedetto Croce, argued that this could not be true. Of course there are certain things that are facts, such as the exact date of the Battle of Agincourt. But whose assessment of King X is "fact"? Was Battle X immoral or glorious? What about Seige X? Was it a triumph or a defeat for "civilization"? There's a big grey area where it's tough to establish "facts". Admittedly this can definitely sound like an extreme, but the guy who taught me this stuff in "Historian's Craft" was that conservative Napoleonic scholar I was talking about who had that fight with the PC police at school.
I need to write a disclaimer that I'm sick today, my brain is on strike and maybe this doesn't make sense. We'll see how I manage with the Dewey Decimal system at work today.
I need to write a disclaimer that I'm sick today, my brain is on strike and maybe this doesn't make sense. We'll see how I manage with the Dewey Decimal system at work today.
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MrsSpringsteen
Blue Crack Addict
I know this is an old thread but this new study just came out..
Thursday, Jul. 24, 2008
The Myth of the Math Gender Gap
By Alice Park
A new report by researchers at University of Wisconsin and University of California, Berkeley, aims to overturn the long-held belief that girls aren't as good at math as boys. According to new data, the researchers say, that gender gap has become a myth — a finding they hope will help shift the very real gender gap in math, science and technology professions, which are currently dominated by men.
Janet Hyde, a psychologist at University of Wisconsin, and her (all-female) collaborators culled data from federally mandated annual math tests administered to 7.2 million second- through 11th-grade students in 10 states. They found little difference between boys' and girs' average math scores. Hyde also searched for a gender difference in the outlying scores — that is, whether more boys were among the top math scorers than girls — but again found negligible difference, although boys did still slightly outnumber girls in the 99th percentile.
The equalizing of math scores may reflect the simple fact that more female students are now taking math courses, says Hyde, whose study, funded by the National Science Foundation, appears in the current issue of Science. In Hyde's earlier research in the 1990s, she found that girls and boys scored similarly on math tests in elementary school, but that by high school the boys were overtaking the girls. Why? Because somewhere along the way, girls stopped taking math and never learned the skills required to do well on standardized tests. Today, girls are increasingly sticking with math classes through school — according to the paper, girls and boys take advanced math in high school in equal numbers, and women receive nearly half of all bachelor degrees given in math in the U.S. — and their scores are closing the gap. But "the stereotype that boys are better at math is alive and strong," Hyde says. "Parents still believe it, and teachers still believe it."
That skewed view — and not some lack of aptitude — may be what keeps girls from pursuing math and science as a career. But Hyde notes that more and more girls are continuing to study math through high school and college, which points to the fact that female students are increasingly aware of the careers that are open to them. These students are making forward-looking decisions about what courses to take in high school, Hyde says, based in part on what they want to do next. The next step, she says, is attracting more women to the graduate and career levels in math. "Mathematics and science departments need to work on making graduate departments more women-friendly for not just the students but for the faculty as well," says Hyde, by encouraging more women into their ranks where they can serve as role models for future generations of female students.
"What I am hoping is that as this cohort of girls, who are taking calculus in school, pass through the system, they will get more gender equity in the highest level research jobs in science and math," she says.
Thursday, Jul. 24, 2008
The Myth of the Math Gender Gap
By Alice Park
A new report by researchers at University of Wisconsin and University of California, Berkeley, aims to overturn the long-held belief that girls aren't as good at math as boys. According to new data, the researchers say, that gender gap has become a myth — a finding they hope will help shift the very real gender gap in math, science and technology professions, which are currently dominated by men.
Janet Hyde, a psychologist at University of Wisconsin, and her (all-female) collaborators culled data from federally mandated annual math tests administered to 7.2 million second- through 11th-grade students in 10 states. They found little difference between boys' and girs' average math scores. Hyde also searched for a gender difference in the outlying scores — that is, whether more boys were among the top math scorers than girls — but again found negligible difference, although boys did still slightly outnumber girls in the 99th percentile.
The equalizing of math scores may reflect the simple fact that more female students are now taking math courses, says Hyde, whose study, funded by the National Science Foundation, appears in the current issue of Science. In Hyde's earlier research in the 1990s, she found that girls and boys scored similarly on math tests in elementary school, but that by high school the boys were overtaking the girls. Why? Because somewhere along the way, girls stopped taking math and never learned the skills required to do well on standardized tests. Today, girls are increasingly sticking with math classes through school — according to the paper, girls and boys take advanced math in high school in equal numbers, and women receive nearly half of all bachelor degrees given in math in the U.S. — and their scores are closing the gap. But "the stereotype that boys are better at math is alive and strong," Hyde says. "Parents still believe it, and teachers still believe it."
That skewed view — and not some lack of aptitude — may be what keeps girls from pursuing math and science as a career. But Hyde notes that more and more girls are continuing to study math through high school and college, which points to the fact that female students are increasingly aware of the careers that are open to them. These students are making forward-looking decisions about what courses to take in high school, Hyde says, based in part on what they want to do next. The next step, she says, is attracting more women to the graduate and career levels in math. "Mathematics and science departments need to work on making graduate departments more women-friendly for not just the students but for the faculty as well," says Hyde, by encouraging more women into their ranks where they can serve as role models for future generations of female students.
"What I am hoping is that as this cohort of girls, who are taking calculus in school, pass through the system, they will get more gender equity in the highest level research jobs in science and math," she says.
INDY500
Rock n' Roll Doggie Band-aid
Actually it's about 2 to 1 (1.85 of boys to 0.9% of girls) in the 99th percentile -- the pool from which Harvard, MIT and other elite schools would surely draw their applicants. So it should be no surprise that we see the fields of mathematics and engineering dominated by males.
Interesting study but it does nothing to discredit Lawrence Summers or the theory that male and female brains learn differently.
MrsSpringsteen
Blue Crack Addict
No amount of study is ever going to discredit what some people want to believe
I believe he's ignorant, maybe Harvard could study that
I believe he's ignorant, maybe Harvard could study that
MrsSpringsteen
Blue Crack Addict
Girls worse at math? No way, new analysis shows
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor | June 1, 2009
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Girls can do just as well at math as boys -- even at the genius level -- if they are given the same opportunities and encouragement, researchers reported on Monday.
Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradicts studies showing girls can do as well as boys on average in math -- but cannot excel in the way males can.
They also said it is a clear rebuttal to Larry Summers, who as president of Harvard University said in 2005 that biological differences could explain why fewer women became professors of mathematics. Summers is now chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Barack Obama.
"We conclude that gender inequality, not lack of innate ability or 'intrinsic aptitude', is the primary reason fewer females than males are identified as excelling in mathematics performance in most countries, including the United States," Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz of the University of Wisconsin in Madison wrote in their report.
They did a statistical analysis comparing various math scores and contests with the World Economic Forum's 2007 Gender Gap Index. This annual report ranks countries according to employment and economic opportunities, education and political opportunities and medical status.
The United States ranks 31 out of 128 nations on the World Economic Forum index.
"We asked questions about how well females relative to males are doing at the average level, at the high-end level -- 95th percentile or above -- and the profoundly gifted level, the one-in-a-million type level," Mertz said in a telephone interview.
"Countries with greater gender equity are also the ones where the ratio of girls to boys doing well in math is close to equal," she said.
GIFTED AND AVERAGE
She said no one disputes that at the average level, girls perform as well as boys mathematically.
But at the top levels, disparities persist and some experts have said this is do to the "greater male variability" theory -- the idea that males in general are more likely to score both extremely high and extremely poorly on tests than girls are.
Mertz said the analysis shows this is not true. "It's not that everywhere in the world there are fewer girls than boys in the top 1 percent," she said.
If there were a biological reason for the differences, this would have to hold everywhere, she said. But it does not.
"Analysis of data from 15-year-old students participating in the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment likewise indicated that as many, if not more girls than boys scored above the 99th percentile in Iceland, Thailand, and the United Kingdom," Mertz and Hyde wrote.
Several different international tests show the same pattern, including the International Math Olympics, Mertz said.
"If girls don't have equal educational opportunities or if they know if they learn the material there won't be jobs available to them, why bother, they seek something else," she said.
This is changing, slowly, in the United States, they pointed out.
"For example, only 14 percent of the U.S. doctoral degrees in the biological sciences went to women in 1970, whereas this figure had risen to 49 percent by 2006," they wrote.
"The percentages in mathematics and statistics were 8 percent in 1970 and 32 percent in 2006."
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor | June 1, 2009
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Girls can do just as well at math as boys -- even at the genius level -- if they are given the same opportunities and encouragement, researchers reported on Monday.
Their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, contradicts studies showing girls can do as well as boys on average in math -- but cannot excel in the way males can.
They also said it is a clear rebuttal to Larry Summers, who as president of Harvard University said in 2005 that biological differences could explain why fewer women became professors of mathematics. Summers is now chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Barack Obama.
"We conclude that gender inequality, not lack of innate ability or 'intrinsic aptitude', is the primary reason fewer females than males are identified as excelling in mathematics performance in most countries, including the United States," Janet Hyde and Janet Mertz of the University of Wisconsin in Madison wrote in their report.
They did a statistical analysis comparing various math scores and contests with the World Economic Forum's 2007 Gender Gap Index. This annual report ranks countries according to employment and economic opportunities, education and political opportunities and medical status.
The United States ranks 31 out of 128 nations on the World Economic Forum index.
"We asked questions about how well females relative to males are doing at the average level, at the high-end level -- 95th percentile or above -- and the profoundly gifted level, the one-in-a-million type level," Mertz said in a telephone interview.
"Countries with greater gender equity are also the ones where the ratio of girls to boys doing well in math is close to equal," she said.
GIFTED AND AVERAGE
She said no one disputes that at the average level, girls perform as well as boys mathematically.
But at the top levels, disparities persist and some experts have said this is do to the "greater male variability" theory -- the idea that males in general are more likely to score both extremely high and extremely poorly on tests than girls are.
Mertz said the analysis shows this is not true. "It's not that everywhere in the world there are fewer girls than boys in the top 1 percent," she said.
If there were a biological reason for the differences, this would have to hold everywhere, she said. But it does not.
"Analysis of data from 15-year-old students participating in the 2003 Program for International Student Assessment likewise indicated that as many, if not more girls than boys scored above the 99th percentile in Iceland, Thailand, and the United Kingdom," Mertz and Hyde wrote.
Several different international tests show the same pattern, including the International Math Olympics, Mertz said.
"If girls don't have equal educational opportunities or if they know if they learn the material there won't be jobs available to them, why bother, they seek something else," she said.
This is changing, slowly, in the United States, they pointed out.
"For example, only 14 percent of the U.S. doctoral degrees in the biological sciences went to women in 1970, whereas this figure had risen to 49 percent by 2006," they wrote.
"The percentages in mathematics and statistics were 8 percent in 1970 and 32 percent in 2006."
