A correspondent writes that “my complaints”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003260.html about the “Summers controversy”:http://www.president.harvard.edu/speeches/2005/nber.html are unfair to Larry Summers. If you’re interested, his case and my reply are below the fold.
My correspondent says,
To pick just one relevant passage:
Now that begs entirely the normative questions-which I’ll get to a little later-of, is our society right to expect that level of effort from people who hold the most prominent jobs? Is our society right to have familial arrangements in which women are asked to make that choice and asked more to make that choice than men? Is our society right to ask of anybody to have a prominent job at this level of intensity, and I think those are all questions that I want to come back to. But it seems to me that it is impossible to look at this pattern and look at its pervasiveness and not conclude that something of the sort that I am describing has to be of significant importance.
Maybe I’m just imagining things, but Summers appears to be doing the opposite of reducing “entrenched” social expectations to “a more-or-less simple result of the expression of individual preference.” Summers asks here: “Is our society right to have familial arrangements in which women are asked to make that choice and asked more to make that choice than men?” This appears to suggest that the socially structured “familial arrangements” are the key factor. All through this passage, the way Summers begins each point is to ask “is our society right to expect …. Is our society right to have familial arrangements … Is our society right to ask … ?”
Now, it’s also true that Summers didn’t put all his suggestions, speculations, and reflections in precisely this form. At other times, he’s asking whether factors other than social arrangements might also play some role, including marginal differences between categories of people due to socialization or (a tricky point) genetics. But that’s really the point. Whatever might be said for or against his social graces in other situations, in this particular context Summers was not handing down hard-and-fast conclusions but trying to frame open questions and alternative possibilities in thought-provoking (and sometimes provocative) ways. One can certainly criticize a lot of his points on various grounds–and I agree that some of them provided reasons for people to get upset (though not hysterical)–but (in my humble opinion) there is just no way that the thrust of his remarks fits your characterization.
I see the point here, and there is something to it. Over the past few days, having re-read the transcript, I’ve thought myself that if Summers had pitched his remarks just a little bit differently, and demonstrated a just bit more knowledge of existing work on this issue, there would have been no controversy. But in his talk he failed to show that he knew what he was talking about, and he presented himself in a way that invited criticism that he deserved. (And the bulk of it wasn’t “hysterical”, either.) Take his main conclusion:
bq. So my best guess, to provoke you, of what’s behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people’s legitimate family desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.
Now, Summers might have said something like, “It seems the main reason for the under-representation of women in academia is that we have these expectations for work built in to the system that assume, in all kinds of ways, that you have someone taking care of you and the kids, if you have kids. Those expectations tend to disadvantage women.” And then he might have said “You know, there’s a been a lot of work by researchers in this area looking into just how this happens, and some proposals for how it might be fixed. Obviously, just one school can’t change the world, but here’s what could be done …” Instead, though, he frames the problem like this: “the first very important reality is just … who _wants_ to do high-powered intense work?” (Emphasis added.) He then launches into his discussion of differences in IQ, differences in socialization (which are dismissed with the “mommy truck, daddy truck” story) and the role of explicit discrimination, which he thinks relatively unimportant.
These remarks are not focused on understanding the social context he gestures towards, notwithstanding his mention of very broad questions like “Is our society right to expect …” and so on. These ideas aren’t developed in the talk. Maybe if you knew Summers personally (I don’t) you could add that his heart is in the right place. But it’s obvious that the thrust of his remarks is that, for good or bad, our system presents people in general with a choice about working hard and (a) women tend to _choose_ not to work hard, because they prefer to have kids, (b) sometimes they’re just not smart enough anyway, and (c) discrimination on the ground isn’t really as important as women’s initial choices or their mathematical limitations. This view is presented by shuttling back and forth between his own speculations and some anecdotes. It’s obvious from the content and tone that he neither knows nor cares about the relevant research literature. Work in this area makes it clear that the three mechanisms he mentions interact and reinforce each other: e.g., negative expectations negatively affect performance; broad expectations about careers lead to people making specific decisions for you (by not offering an opportunity, say); and small differences in initial advantage — I mean a bit of time off here, a nicer research budget there — can accumulate into large differences in outcomes. This means that the role for discrimination may be greater than Summers imagines, because discrimination isn’t just running into some guy who really believes women don’t want to or just can’t cut it in high-powered research jobs. Fine-grained features of the career path can accumulate into bad outcomes. This is what the “MIT Gender Equity Project”:http://web.mit.edu/gep/res.html found:
bq. Marginalization increases as women progress through their careers at MIT, and was often accompanied by differences in salary, space, awards, resources, and response to outside offers; women receiving less despite professional accomplishments equal to those of their male colleagues.
In nearly all cases, Department chairs or other decision-makers could give plausible particularistic reasons why a decision was made in a specific case, but the outcome was always gender-specific. Similar things happen even further back in the pipeline: if women get encouraged to pursue lower-status specialties, for example, or are not called for an interview because someone thinks they wouldn’t accept a job because they have a husband who works elsewhere. And that’s not even going further back to college or high-school. Of course, it should go without saying that if there _are_ people who really believe women generally can’t or don’t want to manage a job at an elite school, and those people are in the happy position of having the power to help make their beliefs true — well, then discrimination _can_ have a bigger role than we imagine. Summers’ convictions about women’s work choices and his anecdotes about Mommy and Daddy trucks rather put him in this position. The burden is on him to show that it’s not a problem.
So, I just don’t buy the defence that Summers wanted to understand what’s happening, and forthrightly put forward some challenging hypotheses about it, but was beaten up by the evil PC witches because he mentioned biology. Instead, I see someone who believes he already knows the answer, and frames it in a completely conventional rhetoric of work-family choices, with a bit of biology thrown in. Because he’s very smart, he came up with some decent, but half-formed, ideas about the structure of careers in academia. But they were presented in an empirically uninformed way. Listening to some of his defenders, you’d think no-one had ever raised the issue of career paths, or the role of gender differences in math ability or what have you, when in fact they have been the subject of research for years. In particular, the speech shows an impoverished understanding about the relationship between careers and discrimination. He sees the latter as overcome and the former as framing a perhaps tragic individual choice. There’s what employers want, and there’s what women choose. This is not a provocative analysis. It’s just Sunday-Supplement stuff. Combined with the obnoxious tone, and the record of tenuring and senior hires of women at Harvard under Summers’ administration, it’s no wonder his audience didn’t feel especially sympathetic. Frankly, when you’re the President of Harvard, you should do a lot better on a topic like this. And by “better” I don’t mean “you should be nicer”, or “you should deliver the usual bromides.” I mean, “you should know what you’re talking about.”
In summary, I agree that there were positive elements in the talk. That’s partly why it’s been such a disaster for him: a little more work and he could really have impressed people. But given what he said, it’s no surprise that he angered a lot of people in the audience, and I think he deserved to be criticized for it. As I said before, I really don’t think he should lose his job over this: if the Harvard Corporation removes him, it’ll be because this incident provided a focus for more widespread dissatisfaction with his Presidency and allowed his enemies, motivated by all kinds of grievances, to move against him.
{ 42 comments }
rilkefan 02.22.05 at 1:58 am
“It’s obvious from the content and tone that he neither knows nor cares about the relevant research literature.”
If I understand a remark by Prof. DeLong at his blog, this is in fact not a conclusion one can safely draw from Summers’s comments.
Re your post, I think you overlook at least in part the context – Summers was speaking not to a public lay audience but to a private expert audience – the remarks were a summary of things as Summers sees them, not a step-by-step fully-developed thesis. And is it really correct to say “he angered a lot of people in the audience”? Do I need to go reread the Q/A for tone?
Donald A. Coffin 02.22.05 at 3:32 am
On the “choice” thing. Summers’ remarks seem to place the “choice” made by women to take on a larger share of (e.g.) child care as a matter of their (intrinsic) preferences. One thing I got drilled into me in grad school was to rely on a difference in preferences as an explanation for a difference in choices only in cases in which there were no other answers.
Those differences in choices might equally result from differences in market rewards (earnings, chances of promotion) relative to effort, or to differences in perceived social approbation.
That is, the standard approach in economics is to search for non-preference-based explanations, and to turn to preference differences only as a last resort.
Usually, one need not turn to preferences.
My own bias is to treat genetic differences as a basis for different choices in the same way.
If there are extrinsic factors that explain the choices, then Occam’s razor suggests, I think, relying on those extrinsic factors. My quarrel with Summers, in this case, is that he turned to intrinsic differences–intrinsic differences in preferences, differences in genetics–way, way too soon, and, as you point out, against a large body of evidnce that exists.
So, for me, it’s both a methodological issue and an issue of his having ignored a lot of the research that’s been done.
david 02.22.05 at 3:40 am
What irritates me about the published comments, especially, is that the hedging and hawing that was presented as “hypothesis” reads more like Matlock doing an aw shucks routine in front of an Atlanta judge. “This is just a thought” blah blah “I don’t have enough evidence” blah blah, but this man killed his lover. It’s hard to see how Summers’ heart is in the right place after reading what he said — he may think so, but I think your response is much much smarter.
My older boy, now obsessed with weapons, divided all his toys into mommy and daddy toys, based on size.
Sunday-supplement is just right.
I don’t think this is going to end well for people who’d like women to have a more equal chance in the academic market. Summers won’t be fired (I wish he would be for reasons other than what’s gone on here) and this will be seen as authorization for the iron fist he wants to wield. Depressing.
Prof Female 02.22.05 at 3:52 am
sit in any group of senior women faculty, and discover that (1) they generally were better than boys in science. (in fact, I suspect that women probably leave science at a higher level than men, because if they aren’t really really good, they don’t want to do it . )
(2) a much higher fraction of them are unmarried and childless than men and
(3) they are still aware that their careers are slower and their rewards reduced compared to their male colleagues.
The MIT report wasn’t about women wrestling with the very real issues of child bearing. Family issues may overlap with women’s issues, but they are not an identical set, and they affect many thoughtful young men too. Nancy Hopkins is not married and is childless. Her treatment, and that of her cohort who spearheaded the report–less lab space, fewer rewards, lower salary–fits neither the aptitude, nor the child-bearing theory. But according to Dr Summers’ model, these two issues are by far the most important.
The reason everyone is so peeved at the guy is that there is a lot of data saying that other things are more important. Even if you just look at the childless, accomplished women, there is still an issue.
If he had JUST paid attention to existing stuff, if he had addressed the Harvard tenure problem as not just the fault of the women, but perhaps things that he could change at Harvard, he would have been lauded. But he classically BLAMED THE WOMEN implying that they are not good enough. I read the transcript, and that’s what he implied. It’s not Harvard;s fault, he says. The women aren’t good enough. That he couldn’t even be bothered to get familiar with the literature on this subject shows how he belittles it.
As it is, any woman faculty recruit at Harvard is probably seriously rethinking whether she wants to go there. Good job, Larry.
yellow 02.22.05 at 4:45 am
Larry is yes; Curley is yes; Moe is two days; shemp is four days.
Dan Simon 02.22.05 at 7:59 am
Now, Summers might have said something like, “It seems the main reason for the under-representation of women in academia is that we have these expectations for work built in to the system that assume, in all kinds of ways, that you have someone taking care of you and the kids, if you have kids. Those expectations tend to disadvantage women.â€
Kieran, why do these expectations “tend to disadvantage women”? They certainly tend to disadvantage those who don’t have supportive, stay-at-home-type spouses/partners, but why do you assume that women necessarily dominate in that category?
Now, I understand that today, women do happen to dominate that category. But presumably you blame societal expectations and conventions–rather than personal choices or congenital preferences–for that state of affairs. How, then, does Harvard’s or MIT’s preference for professors who are willing to work eighty-hour weeks–irrespective of gender–while the spouse takes care of the house and kids, reinforce the purely socially propagated expectation (if that’s indeed what it is) that men take on the workaholic role, and women the caregiver role? Is it fair to complain that those universities adopt policies that may make perfect practical sense, and that are not in themselves discriminatory, but that turn out to have disparate impact because of social expectations that they neither control nor contribute to? Or to put it another way, wouldn’t it help to reinforce those expectations if Harvard and MIT were obliged to accommodate their propagators, as you suggest they should, by reducing the cost of living by–and perpetuating–those same expectations?
And one more thing, Kieran–you seem to lend considerable credence to Nancy Hopkins’ study of gender equity at MIT. I assume you’re familiar with Judith Kleinfeld’s (in my opinion) utterly devastating critique of that study. Putting aside her alternative explanations for the gender disparities in science–which I know you dismiss–what do you make of her specific complaints about the study itself?
dsquared 02.22.05 at 12:00 pm
Just a couple of tips, Dan:
1. If you want to be taken seriously on Crooked Timber, it’s probably best to avoid the phrase “devastating critique”. In our minds, it’s linked irretrievably with Steven Milloy.
2. Could you please summarise exactly which parts of the linked paper are, in your opinion, “devastating”. Skimming through it, lots of it seems devoted to rehearsing the material about tails of distributions and “career choices”.
3. I think that when you’ve gone through (2) above, you’re not going to come up with a smoking gun. It looks very much to me as if the linked piece is much heavier on dark allegations of “this was politically biased” than on specific methodological criticisms. I also notice that it attempts to show that differences in salary were attributable to differences in quality based on the fact that more male faculty were elected to “prestigious scientific academies”, which doesn’t exactly encourage the reader.
dsquared 02.22.05 at 12:01 pm
And inter alia:
Kieran, why do these expectations “tend to disadvantage women� They certainly tend to disadvantage those who don’t have supportive, stay-at-home-type spouses/partners, but why do you assume that women necessarily dominate in that category?
Without presuming to speak for Kieran, I’d guess that his reasons for assuming this have something to do with his having a pair of eyes in his bloody head.
Paul Gottlieb 02.22.05 at 1:35 pm
When can we finally put that stupid “80 hour work week” meme to bed? This is just the kind of routine self-glorification that academics do to try to made their lives look heroic. I suggest that every Crooked Timber readr try calling up his favorate academic researcher at 3:00 AM every day for the next week. See how often you catch them in the middle of a research project.
Steve LaBonne 02.22.05 at 1:49 pm
Everyone please reread rilkefan’s comment, and then for Chrissake _listen_ to yourselves. A university president can’t, in a private forum, even raise in a tentative way possibilities that happen to make some people uncomfortable? (That has nothing to do with whether they’re correct or not- do academics have to have ironclad proof of the truth of everything they say that might be remotely considered controversial, before they can say it? What a dreary anti-intellectual world that would be.) What the hell has happened to academia?
Now, given that PR is a big part of a president’s duties, I quite agree Summers’s gaucherie is not a good thing. But the storm of manipulated “controversy” in a teacup that his remarks generated is a worse thing, by far.
david 02.22.05 at 2:41 pm
I disagree Paul. It all depends on how you define work. Academics regularly define work as talking about stuff while drinking, or thinking about stuff while running, or saying “oh shit, I forgot to grade that late paper” while cooking. Add it all up, and insist that that trip to Puerto Rico was business, and you can clock a lot of hours.
Steve LaBonne 02.22.05 at 2:49 pm
As a scientist and former (or should I say recovered ;) )professor, I must point out that the 80 hour workweeks occur only _before_ you get tenure. In my experience 8 hour weeks are more characteristic of tenured faculty. Just kidding. Partly. ;)
Nicholas Weininger 02.22.05 at 3:04 pm
dsquared, it seems to me that the most devastating point in the report is the first one: the chair and two-thirds of the committee members were people with the most direct personal interest imaginable in the report’s conclusion. How is it not a “specific methodological criticism” to point out that the report was written by people with a huge, obvious conflict of interest? How is that not a smoking gun?
EKR 02.22.05 at 3:32 pm
Dan Simon writes:
To which D-Squared response
I think you’re missing Dan’s point here, which is not that women aren’t less likely to have supportive partners–of course they are–but that it’s potentially a matter of sociology rather than biology.
baa 02.22.05 at 3:33 pm
Here’s one concern about the MIT study — the published report doesn’t actual present any data supporting the conclusions. Here’s another — the authors of the study have has been unwilling to share any of the data that they allege support the study’s conclusions. Here’s a third — at least one independent (although, perhaps biased) attempt to replicate the findings did not succeed.
The study: http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html#The%20Study
Press coverage:
http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=14593
http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i23/23a01701.htm
eudoxis 02.22.05 at 4:07 pm
Steve is right, the 80 hour work week is a way of life before tenure. 80 hours is, of course, a metaphor for unreasonably long hours. In the sciences, however, it doesn’t quite end at the moment of tenure. It may slow down when a collection of post-docs can take up the slack. The years those long hours are required are the critical years for women who want a family. Research shows that it is between degrees and tenure positions that the highest attrition takes place for women. The many calls for simply hiring more women (from an imaginary pool) doesn’t remedy the situation, particularly in the sciences, where competition for grants and results continue to demand long work hours.
I’m completely puzzled by the vehemence directed at Summers for suggestions that blindingly obvious gender differences may have a constitutive basis. Why is this objectionable?
Dan Simon 02.22.05 at 4:13 pm
Could you please summarise exactly which parts of the linked paper are, in your opinion, “devastatingâ€.
I’m referring to the bits which claim that junior female science faculty generally did not report any discrimination; that in two of the five departments, even the senior faculty reported no discrimination; and that the alleged objective evidence of discrimination, such as statistics on office and laboratory space assignments, was kept strictly confidential by the committee–a majority of whom stood to gain directly from a finding of discrimination. Are these accusations false? If they were about, say, a drug study by a pharmaceutical firm, would you dismiss them so cavalierly?
I’d guess that his reasons for assuming this have something to do with his having a pair of eyes in his bloody head.
Well, let’s look at this a little more closely with our eyes, shall we? If I understand you correctly, you’re claiming that the top universities’ policy of demanding long work hours of faculty discriminates against women, because anybody with “a pair of eyes in his bloody head” can see that women in our society face social pressure to be housewives rather than workoholics and that men face pressure to be workoholics rather than househusbands.
By the same token, though, the top universities’ policy of only hiring extremely competent, accomplished scientists discriminates against women, because anybody with “a pair of eyes in his bloody head” can see that women in our society face pressure not to be competent or accomplished, especially in the sciences, and men don’t (or at least do to a much lesser extent). Do you advocate, then, that Harvard and MIT abandon their discriminatory policies of demanding high standards of competence and accomplishment in their science faculties?
dsquared 02.22.05 at 4:16 pm
the authors of the study have has been unwilling to share any of the data that they allege support the study’s conclusions
This seems entirely innocent to me. The data is highly personal and could easily be reverse-engineered to identify individuals. Whenever there’s been a survey of employee attitudes in any workplace I’ve been in, it’s always been carried out on the basis that the data would only be available in highly aggregated form.
LizardBreath 02.22.05 at 4:23 pm
I just spent a day arguing about this on another blog, so I haven’t the energy to get heated about it but no one is angry because Summers suggested “that blindingly obvious gender differences may have a constitutive [I assume you mean innate or biological?] basis.” Research is fine. We’re all very pro research. There could be a biological basis for behavior differences between the sexes — it’s very difficult research to design and do, so it hasn’t been done to any satisfactory extent yet, but it should be done.
Any crossness relating to Summers’ remarks comes from his belief, without a basis in research, that intellectual differences between the sexes do have a biological/innate basis.
See the distinction? “There might be something to this idea.” No problem. “I believe that innate differences between men and women explain a larger portion of the underrepresentation of women in academia in the sciences than societal discrimination.” (Not a real quote, but does accurately give Summers’ ranking of the two factors.) Problem.
eudoxis 02.22.05 at 4:24 pm
“women in our society face pressure not to be competent or accomplished, especially in the sciences”
In fact, they face considerable pressure to be competent and accomplished. Hence, the intense conflict with family obligations.
Steve LaBonne 02.22.05 at 4:26 pm
dasquared, statistics on laboratory space are highly personal and confidential? Bit of a stretch there…
You can’t have it both ways. If you seriously mean to defend the study despite the blatant conflict of interest of its authors, then you have to be pretty seriously put out by the fact the the very data which you would need in order to mount that defense have been buried. As someone else noted, it’s not likely you would be so cavalier about a study on the effectiveness of a new drug authored by scientists with a major finacial stake in the drug’s success.
Steve LaBonne 02.22.05 at 4:46 pm
lizardbreath, I just went back and looked at the transcript again and your summary of what the man said is simply not accurate. He clearly placed socialization differences in first place, and only then speculated that biological differences may explain “a fair amount”- he did not say the majority- of the phenomenon under discussion.
I also have a problem with that “big problem” of yours. I don’t know about you but I don’t recognize the legitimacy of the category “thoughtcrime”.
eudoxis 02.22.05 at 4:46 pm
lizardbreath, by the same token, there is no research that indicates that ulterior differential treatment of girls results in differential accomplishments as female adults in the hard sciences. Yet, the default position is assumed to be just such a social situation and doesn’t incite the same level of crossness. I suspect part of that rests in the belief that cultural differences are easily redressed while constitutional or inherent differences are not.
LizardBreath 02.22.05 at 4:55 pm
lizardbreath, by the same token, there is no research that indicates that ulterior differential treatment of girls results in differential accomplishments as female adults in the hard sciences.
Not so. There is historical evidence that in a differing social climate, women were far more underrepresented in the hard sciences than they are now; there is international evidence that in other countries, which, presumably, differ only socially rather than in the genetic makeup of their women, women are less underrepresented in the hard sciences than they are in America.
There is therefore, as I have just described, good hard proof that social factors strongly affect the representation of women in academia. There is no such good hard proof that innate differences do. Innate differences may still account for a portion of the underrepresentation of women, but the currently existing evidence that this is a factor at all is in no way comparable to the currently existing evidence that social factors account for some or all of the underrepresentation.
LizardBreath 02.22.05 at 5:03 pm
Steve-
With regard to my ‘misquotation’ — he ranked innate differences above discrimination, and stated that he believed that they do account for a portion of women’s underrepresentation.
I also have a problem with that “big problem†of yours. I don’t know about you but I don’t recognize the legitimacy of the category “thoughtcrimeâ€.
This is just silly. Am I the secret police? Have I got a gun to Larry Summers’ head? Obviously, no. I described what about his remarks (essentially, that they were unjustified by facts) made me, and those who agree with me, angry. My expression of an opinion that Larry Summers is an ignorant blowhard is not Orwellian oppression — it’s the free marketplace of ideas. If someone says something stupid, I will often comment on it — where does ‘thoughtcrime’ enter into that?
baa 02.22.05 at 5:09 pm
As steve labone notes, a way could have been found to release data and protect confidentiality. Lots of methods exist to do this. There’s a big problem with a study that says “data support a discrimination claim” and then include no data supporting that claim. Don’t you agree D^2?
Steve LaBonne 02.22.05 at 5:15 pm
The evidence you mention, lizardbreath is interesting but not conclusive. On your first point, what was going on in the bad old days included not merely socialization issues affecting the likelihood of women being seriously interested in scientific careers, but blatant employment discrimination against women who were in fact both motivated and able to excel- this is a serious confounding factor in the analysis.
Second, what Summers was talking about was not just “representation” tout court but representation in the highest ranks of achievement. We’d have to know more about the countries of which you speak, and in particular how many scientists they have, male or female, who are first-rate by international standards.
I’d say we frankly understand very little about the phenomenon Summers was addressing- all the more reason why keeping an open mind, and not dismissing certain points of view for reasons of ideology or personal discomfort, is particularly important.
Steve LaBonne 02.22.05 at 5:20 pm
The mistake you’re still making, lizardbreath, is contained in that phrase “societal discrimination” – you’re confounding two _separate_ factors separately discussed by Summers. One is discrimination in academic _hiring_. The other is differences in the way males and females are socialized in our society. It’s hiring discrimnation, per se, that Summers was perhaps ranking below genetics. And in this era of intensive recruitment of female candidates for hard-science positions, he’s probably right to do so.
eudoxis 02.22.05 at 5:21 pm
lizardbreath, it is not correct to compare results from past, open discrimination, which is quite readily measurable and not on topic regarding Summers remarks or research in extant, ulterior discrimination. At issue is the subtle discrimination that supposedly keeps women out of tenured, hard science positions while they are actively recruited to such positions.
Other countries show exactly the same trends as the US. There is no evidence that social tinkering changes the proportion of women in the hard sciences vs. other fields, even when social tinkering can change the variability across groups. In other words, there is absolutely no hard evidence that social factors present in different countries can change the relative composition of women in the hard sciences.
Summers also reminds his listeners that achievements for women in the academy is crucial. Nobody denies the importance of removing prohibitive social barriers where they can be identified.
Dan Simon 02.22.05 at 5:41 pm
“the authors of the study have has been unwilling to share any of the data that they allege support the study’s conclusions”
This seems entirely innocent to me. The data is highly personal and could easily be reverse-engineered to identify individuals.
Well, I wasn’t going to mention the unnamed inside source who privately informed Judith Kleinfeld that the MIT study never actually found any evidence of discrimination, but that the faculty administration went along with its unsubstantiated conclusions to appease a few discontented senior female faculty, and to avoid taking flak for some serious political problems in the biology department (still reeling from the Baltimore scandal). You see, I’d assumed that the august social scientists at Crooked Timber would consider any claims made by an interested party based on unverifiable confidential information to be laughably weak.
But I guess I was wrong–and who am I to question their judgment? You can read all the inside dirt on the MIT study about halfway through this document–just search for “confidential source”.
dsquared 02.22.05 at 6:25 pm
As someone else noted, it’s not likely you would be so cavalier about a study on the effectiveness of a new drug authored by scientists with a major finacial stake in the drug’s success.
If this were true, I would never take any drugs at all and would presumably be dead. You have to use common sense and be specific about these things. Please do so. I’m not going to go through the whole Lancet battle again, so I’m afraid that this time round I’m responding only to specific comments about data or methodology.
baa 02.22.05 at 6:46 pm
Specific comment about data: no data is presented that support the conclusions. The only data presented in anything like detail are the numbers of faculty by gender in the various MIT schools.
Here’s the “results section”:
What the Committee Learned
From data
Given the tiny number of women faculty in any department one might ask if it is possible to obtain significant data to support a claim of gender differences in terms of the distribution of resources and rewards to men vs women faculty. The answer to this question is unequivocally yes. The key to a meaningful review is twofold:
1) It is essential to review primary rather than processed data, and
2) It is essential that the review be done by senior women faculty who are deeply knowledgeable about the particular department, discipline and area of research.
Data reviews revealed that in some departments men and women faculty appeared to share equally in material resources and rewards, in others they did not. Inequitable distributions were found involving space, amount of 9-month salary paid from individual research grants, teaching assignments, awards and distinctions, inclusion on important committees and assignments within the department. While primary salary data are confidential and were not provided to the committee, serious underpayment of senior women faculty in one department had already been discovered and corrected two years before the Committee formed. Further possible inequities in salary were flagged by the Committee from the limited data made available to it.
The Committee sought data to try to determine whether the number of women faculty was increasing. The data, shown in Table 2 and Figure 2 for the six departments in the School of Science, reveal that there are very significant numbers of women students in the sciences at MIT, but, as has been found in studies of many academic institutions, the pipeline leaks at every stage of career. It was apparent that overall the percent of women faculty had not changed for at least 10, and probably 20, years and there was no indication that there would be any change in the foreseeable future.
Specific comment about methodology: we do not know what methodology was used to generate the data we haven’t seen, or what analyses were performed on the data we haven’t seen. This makes it difficult to interpret or assess conclusions like “Inequitable distributions were found involving space, amount of 9-month salary paid from individual research grants, teaching assignments, awards and distinctions, inclusion on important committees and assignments within the department.” Here’s the methodology statement from the study, in full:
Committee membership and how the Committee operated
The Committee was composed of a single tenured woman from each of the six departments in Science (except Mathematics since there were and still are no tenured women faculty in math) plus three senior male faculty. The three men were or had been department Heads. This was important as their knowledge and administrative experience proved to be invaluable to the work of the Committee.
To analyze the status and equitable treatment of women faculty the Committee collected two types of information – data and interviews with women faculty and department heads.
Data
Data were collected pertaining to the allocation of resources that impact the professional success of faculty, compensations and awards that reflect the administration’s valuation of faculty, and obligations that impact the professional quality of life of faculty. Although the Committee was not initially charged with addressing the question of the very small number of women faculty, the issue is so important that it could not be ignored so pipeline data were also studied. Thus, data for men vs women faculty were studied concerning salary, space, resources for research, named chairs, prizes, awards, amount of salary paid from individual grants, teaching obligations and assignments, committee assignments – departmental, Institute, outside professional activities and committees, and pipeline data: numbers of women/men students and faculty over time. Most data were obtained from the Dean’s office, some from the planning office at MIT.
Interviews with women faculty and department heads
All but one senior woman faculty in the School of Science either served on the Committee or was interviewed by the Committee. All department Heads in the School of Science either served on the Committee or were interviewed by the Committee. A difficult decision was whether to interview junior women faculty as the Committee did not wish to place them in a possibly awkward position. In the end interviews were conducted with most of the junior women faculty since these women considered the initiative important and wished to contribute.
A particularly important aspect of how the Committee operated was that no substantive letter, memo, or report was written, and no important action taken without seeking the participation and advice of all the tenured women faculty in Science. As discussed below, exclusion and invisibility proved to be the common experience of most tenured women faculty. The Committee’s purpose was to be the voice and opinion of all the senior women faculty. A great value of the Committee also lay in sharing the data collected with all the tenured women faculty, since most women had been excluded from this type of information throughout their careers, often with negative consequences for their professional lives.
Seth Finkelstein 02.22.05 at 6:50 pm
Since most readers of this blog are “across the pond”, you may not be aware that there’s additional context possibly motivating the Harvard faculty, which is not well-explained by the reporting. It’s being presented as if Summers simply put his foot in his mouth, and some faculty are going after him for a gaffe. But Harvard has previously been embroiled in some very contentious tenure litigation, involving charges of gender discrimination. I suspect all the fallout from that litigation is part of the background here.
See, e.g. the Clare Dalton saga.
Gareth 02.22.05 at 7:42 pm
Speaking of statements not justified by empirical data, what are we to do with “if Summers had pitched his remarks just a little bit differently, and demonstrated a just bit more knowledge of existing work on this issue, there would have been no controversy.”
I grant it is hard to prove a counterfactual. But knowledge of North American academic battles of the last fifteen years suggests the opposite. It doesn’t matter how Summers “pitched” his remakrs, or how many citations he had included. The objection to Summers was precisely that he considered, as a topic to be calmly considered, an idea that undergraduates have been told for a decade and a half will get them disciplined.
LizardBreath 02.22.05 at 8:23 pm
No. It was that he had stated that he, personally, had formed a belief that innate differences between men and women explained a portion of the underrepresentation of women in the hard sciences.
Again — calling for research? Okay. Stating that the question remains open? Fine. Stating that his personal belief is that innate differences are important to the underrepresentation of women in the hard sciences, and falsely implying that research exists supporting this conclusion? That’s going to irritate people.
Uncle Kvetch 02.22.05 at 8:27 pm
Eudoxis: Other countries show exactly the same trends as the US.
No, they don’t.
Steve LaBonne 02.22.05 at 9:07 pm
I’d be cautious in interpreting that chart- at the high end there is a preponderance of countries that are not especially known for world-class physics research, and/or that pay professors much worse, relative to alternative careers, than the US. The relevance to the question of women at top-tier universities is not immediately obvious. It is also true in the US that low-prestige institutions are likely to have a much higher proportion of tenured female physicists and mathematicians than the Harvards and MITs.
Another point to consider is that- _pace_ Nancy Hopkins- it has proven much easier to advance the representation of women in top-flight positions in the life sciences than in physics and math (I speak as a higher-math-challenged, though male, molecular biologist myself. ;) ) It can’t just be that the male tenured physicists who control hiring are so much more likely to be misogynistic dinosaurs than male tenured biolgists.
Steve LaBonne 02.22.05 at 9:10 pm
P.S. I could understand the anger at Summers if he had been arguing that we should throw up our hands and stop doing anything to try to increase the representation of women in fields where they are underrepresented. He’d deserve to be fired for that. But that is emphatically not what he was saying.
eudoxis 02.22.05 at 11:07 pm
uncle kvetch, you link to an unreferenced drawing.
For anyone seriously interested in looking at comprehensive reports on women in science, here’s a start:
European Commission She Figures 2003
AIP Women in Physics and Astronomy 2005
dsquared 02.22.05 at 11:27 pm
Baa: I’m sorry. Those are not specific criticisms. They’re just dark allegations of “we don’t know this so it’s probably dodgy”.
Steve: I count Portugal, France and Italy in the top half of that table, and nobody would say they didn’t have world-class physics departments (the number for the UK looks a bit low though).
It can’t just be that the male tenured physicists who control hiring are so much more likely to be misogynistic dinosaurs than male tenured biolgists.
There’s no reason why they couldn’t, and in any case, we’re not talking about misogynistic dinosaurs here; just perfectly decent, even (ye gods) liberal gentlemen who honestly believe themselves to be making the honest decision that the person most like themself is the right one for the job. I speak as a white male working in an industry where you could train a monkey to do most of the job, objectively, but where we have convinced ourselves that a) you need the very best and brightest graduates of the best universities and b) the very mark of intelligence is to be a chap almost exactly like me.
Steve LaBonne 02.23.05 at 12:48 am
“I speak as a white male working in an industry where you could train a monkey to do most of the job…” I could say the same of my job as well, though I love it because, as one of those fabled lazy government employees, I get to have a life. (As an interesting but meaningless aside, my field- forensic DNA work- is increasingly female-dominated, perhaps in part because the salaries of most jobs in the industry are nothing to write home about.) But I tend to think replaceability by a monkey may be _somewhat_ less true of world-class research physicists. ;)
Seth Finkelstein 02.23.05 at 1:36 am
I can’t opine yea or nay, but I have heard it said that there is a much more extensive support network overall for women biologists versus say women physicists.
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