We’ve got a gender problem in this country. Hopefully, this is not news. While not all of us have directly participated in gender equality movements, we all have learned about the struggles women have faced in the quest for political equality.
Along the way, it seems that while women have made great strides towards social equality, we’ve lost our ability to talk about gender in any quantitative way, while both genders lament the power and advantages that the other has in various areas of life.
Let me give you an example. Last January, Lawrence Summers, then the president of Harvard University, spoke at a conference about the under-representation of females in the science and engineering disciplines. During his remarks, he offered several alternative explanations he believed that when taken together comprised most of the difference.
Among the explanations he offered was the possibility that there is a difference in the distribution of innate abilities between men and women. He cited studies which supported that hypothesis, but was quick to point out that there wasn’t any way to be sure that the differences observed were not merely caused by bias in the tests.
The public outcry forced his resignation within weeks.
The point is that in all of our discussions of equality between the genders, it seems that we’ve lost sight of the fact that men and women are in fact, not the same.
Physiologically, this is incredibly easy to verify. Stand your average woman next to your average man. Statistics tells us that the man will be a little taller than the woman. The woman will have a different blend of hormones, with more estrogens and less androgens than the man. The man’s brain will have a larger parietal lobe, while the woman’s will have larger Wernicke’s and Broca’s areas.
Knowing these facts, is it hard to believe that it is possible that physical differences in the brain between genders may create some innate differences in ability at different tasks?
Bear in mind that this isn’t to suggest that either gender is superior or “better” in some larger, more general sense. Instead, I believe that a better understanding about what makes us different can reinforce our ability to treat each other with respect and equality. In short, facing the issue head-on is far superior to covering it up in politically-correct nonsense.
Maybe we’re not ready for discussing these types of things. It has been so easy for stereotypes to develop in the past that perhaps we need our atmosphere of ignorance in order to keep our society at the level of gender equality we currently have. While I believe that my peer group is capable of taking differences for what they are without deciding that one gender is superior to the other, perhaps society isn’t.
It is not up to me to decide these things. It isn’t up to science to decide what should be. But simple economics tells us that the more information we know about ourselves and our own abilities, both in context with society and independent from anyone else, the more ability we have to specialize in whatever we are good at.
Keaton Miller is majoring in math and economics, and, for the record, is consistently outsmarted, outfoxed and generally outclassed by the women surrounding him. If he pissed you off, made you think, or caused you to sneeze, let him know at keatonmiller@wisc.edu
