The President of Harvard University has recently come under scrutiny about comments he made at the NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce. It was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts on January 14, 2005. I would encourage you to read the entire transcript of the conference. (see below for link) Sentence four explains in a nutshell what concern this discussion would be tackling;
“I'm going to confine myself to addressing one portion of the problem, or of the challenge we're discussing, which is the issue of women's representation in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions…”
Larry Summers has received the most negative attention on the following statement: “…why is the pattern different in science and engineering, and why is the representation even lower and more problematic in science and engineering than it is in other fields. And here, you can get a fair distance, it seems to me, looking at a relatively simple hypothesis. It does appear that on many, many different human attributes-height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability-there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means-which can be debated-there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.
He stated some facts and made conjectures; numbers show 20-25 years ago there was an upswing in the number of women entering science and engineering and today the swing has regressed. “…The relatively few women who are in the highest ranking places are disproportionately unmarried or without children… one has exactly the same conversation in almost any high-powered profession.” Then he follows encouraging the conference with a rhetorical question; “ What does one make of that?”
He gave a hypothetical answer using other empirical data and his own judgement, again stressing it is up for debate; “…The most prestigious activities in our society expect of people who are going to rise in leadership positions in their forties near total commitments to their work. They expect a large number of hours.. flexibility of schedules (favoring the institution), continuity of the life cycle… That is a level of commitment that a much higher fraction of married men have been historically prepared to make then of married women.
Mr Summers wanted, “…attempts at provocation...”“…and I think it’s important to try to think systematically and clinically about the reasons for underrepresentation.”“To what extent is there overt discrimination? Surely there is some.”
“The work that Claudia Goldin and Larry Katz are doing will… contribute greatly to our understanding of these issues and... may prove my conjectures completely wrong.”Larry Summers brings his opening remarks to a close prior to Q&A: “I’ve given you my best guesses after a fair amount of reading the literature and a lot of talking to people. They may all be wrong. I will have served my purpose if I have provoked thought on this question and provoked the marshalling of evidence to contradict what I have said.”
Larry Summers obviously did not anticipate the negative backlash to his remarks. When reading many articles written in the newspapers it appears Mr. Summers is not getting a fair shake. However, when the dust settles we will all look back and see his ideas have stimulated “thought,” and dialogue and quite possibly more positive results then if the conference ended and it's transcript was filed away deep into archived history. He may have accidentally or not, promoted this topic into national discussion.
President Larry Summers' work will be well served.
http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html
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