Where Do Women Live in Greater Fear?  At Harvard or in Iran?

March 1, 2005

For nearly a month and a half, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers has been on the firing line.  Summers raised the ire of women’s organizations and much of the Harvard faculty for having the temerity to suggest that there might actually be innate differences between men and women.  It was one of three hypotheses he offered as to why women were not adequately represented in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions.  The other two hypotheses focussed on the life cycle of women with regard to marriage and raising children and patterns of discrimination and socialization.    

Speaking of the firing line, I cannot help but think of William F. Buckley’s remark about Harvard.  The founder of National Review commented, “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”  In retrospect, Buckley may actually be acting generously towards Harvard.  I’d rather entrust the administration of Harvard University to the first 400 people in the Boston telephone directory than to faculty of Harvard University.  Especially after reading what Summers actually said about the subject when speaking to the NBER Conference on Diversifying the Science & Engineering Workforce this past January 14th:

The second thing that I think one has to recognize is present is what I would call the combination of, and here, I’m focusing on something that would seek to answer the question of 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 female population.  And that is true with respect to attributes that are and are now plausibly, culturally determined.  If one supposes, as I think is reasonable, that if one is talking about physicists at a top twenty-five research university, one is not talking about people who are two standard deviations above the mean.  And perhaps it’s not even talking about people who are three and a half, four standard deviations above the mean in the one in 5,000, one in 10,000 class.  Even small differences in the standard deviation will translate into very large differences in the available pool substantially out.  I did a very crude calculation, which I’m sure was wrong and certainly was unsubtle, twenty different ways.  I looked at the Xie and Shauman paper -- looked at the book, rather -- looked at the evidence on the sex ratios in the top 5% of twelfth graders.  If you look at those -- they’re all over the map, depends on which test, whether it’s math, or science, and so forth -- but 50% women, one woman for every two men, would be a high-end estimate from their estimates.  From that, you can back out a difference in the implied standard deviations that works out to be about 20%.  And from that, you can work out the difference out several standard deviations.  If you do that calculation -- and I have no reason to think that it couldn’t be refined in a hundred ways -- you get five to one, at the high end.   Now, it’s pointed out by one of the papers at this conference that these tests are not a very good measure and are not highly predictive with respect to people’s ability to do that.  And that’s absolutely right.  But I don’t think that resolves the issue at all.   Because if my reading of the data is right -- it’s something people can argue about -- that there are some systemic differences in variability in different populations, then whatever the set of attributes are that are precisely defined to correlate with being an aeronautical engineer at MIT or being a chemist at Berkeley, those are probably different in their standard deviations as well.  So my sense is that the unfortunate truth -- I would far prefer to believe something else, because it would be easier to address what is surely a serious social problem if something else were true -- is that the combination of the high-powered job hypothesis and the differing variances probably explains a fair amount of this problem.

At the conclusion of his remarks, Summers took questions from the audience and no one objected to his remarks nor accused him of being either sexist or insensitive.  Though at least one audience member -- rather than confront Summers face to face -- decided to contact a reporter at the Boston Globe.  And that’s when the fit hit the shan so to speak.

On January 20th, the National Organization for Women (NOW) issued a press release.   NOW President Kim Gandy declared:

Summers’ suggestion that women are inferior to men in their ability to excel at math and science is more than an example of personal sexism, it is a clue to why women have not been more fully accepted and integrated into the tenured faculty at Harvard since he has been president . . . The notion that women are innately inferior to men is simply archaic.  For decades, women have been making dramatic advances in science and technology fields while negotiating a minefield of gender stereotypes and obstacles created by ignorance.   It has been a rocky road, but women have risen to the challenge.  It’s time to remove the barriers, and one of them is Lawrence Summers.

Now, I have provided you with Summers’ remarks as well as Gandy’s reaction to Summers’ remarks.  Twice, Gandy asserted that Summers suggested that women are inferior to men.  Could Ms. Gandy please show me where in Summers’ remarks he ever stated that women were inferior to men?  She cannot.  Why?  Because Summers never said explicitly or implicitly that women were inferior to men.  He merely alluded to empirical data demonstrating these differences.  While he conceded that these tests might not be a reliable measure, Summers does not believe that it is grounds to not discuss the matter.  Are Summers’ points debatable?  Absolutely.  It is precisely what he wanted to happen. 

After all, earlier in his comments, he pointed out that “white men are very substantially underrepresented in the National Basketball Association.”  Did knobby kneed white men cry foul?  No.  Why?  Because Summers was merely stating a fact.  Indeed, if anyone watched the NBA All-Star Game in Denver last week one would have noticed only four Caucasian players were represented.  The Western Conference team had Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks, Steve Nash of the Phoenix Suns and Emanuel Ginobili of the San Antonio Spurs.  Zydrunas Ilgauskas of the Cleveland Cavaliers was the only Caucasian player on the Eastern Conference squad.  None of the four players were in the starting lineup (although Nash has emerged as the favorite to be named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player this season).  Interestingly, none of these players were born in the United States.  Nowitzki is German, Ilgauskas is Lithuanian and Ginobili is from Argentina.  Nash was born in South Africa but raised in Canada.  Summers never suggested that whites were inferior to blacks or were incapable of playing basketball, but only pointed out that they were less likely to do so.

But the Kim Gandys of the world are not interested in these debates.  Anyone who disagrees with the worldview of Kim Gandy is a bigot who must be expunged and never be heard from again.  The only mistake Summers has made in my estimation is that he has apologized for having said something that did not warrant an apology of any kind.  Instead of mollifying the feminists and the Harvard faculty, it has only stiffened their resolve to see him removed from his post.  At this point, the only two things that could save Summers would be for him to hang President Bush in effigy at Harvard Yard, or to open an on campus abortion clinic.

Granted, the text of Summer’s remarks were only recently released, but nonetheless Gandy ought not have commented on Summers’ remarks until after she actually read them.  But when one is the President of a major non-profit organization that backed the wrong horse during the Presidential election and needs to raise money, one will latch onto any given issue.  Never mind if the facts actually get in the way of the argument.  

Of course, Gandy is symptomatic of not only feminism but the Left in general, which views President Bush and Lawrence Summers as the greatest nemesis to women.  If one is to visit NOW’s website one can see plenty of Bush (The Truth About George) and a fair bit about Summers.  But what about the plight of women in Iran?

Earlier this week, I was sent a very disturbing e-mail.  There is a story from the BBC concerning a teenaged girl who was buried alive and lashed one hundred times in public.  Her crime?  Being raped.  The girl claimed that she had been raped by two men.  But the court did not believe her.  In addition to being buried alive and lashed, she has been sentenced to five years of hard labor.  To be fair, the accused rapists did not fare much better.  They have been sentenced to receive forty lashes and to have their legs amputated.  The girl, believe it or not, might be considered lucky because she could have been sentenced to death for having sex.

Now if this is not torture, if this is not cruel and unusual punishment, then perhaps there is no such thing.  So where is NOW on girls being buried alive, lashed and forced into hard labor for having been raped?  Nowhere to be found.

To be certain, NOW does comment on international affairs.  It is currently urging its members and supporters to tell President Bush to support women’s human rights worldwide by reaffirming the Beijing Platform for Action which was signed at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995.  The 49th UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) will be meeting in New York between February 28th and March 11th to reaffirm the Beijing Platform.  But NOW has expressed concerns that the United States will oppose the reaffirmation because of concerns about “sexual and reproductive rights and health of women and girls, the creation of any new human rights, and the use of quotas for ensuring women’s equal political participation.”

What will happen at CSW meeting remains to be seen.  However, one must consider where NOW’s priorities have been concerning the rights of women from an international perspective.  Much of their attention has been focussed upon Afghanistan and Iraq -- after their liberation from the Taliban and Saddam Hussein.   

In the Fall 2003 issue of the NOW National Times, an article titled, “Iraq: A Step Backwards for Women,” appeared to lament the overthrow of Saddam Hussein:

Contrary to public assumption, women in Iraq once enjoyed relative equality, frequently contributing to and benefiting from Iraq’s largely secular economy.  It was even common for Iraqi women to hold political office, and the UN ranked Iraq as the Arab country with the highest level of gender equity.  Prior to the 2003 invasion, women comprised more than 20% of the Iraqi workforce, holding a wide range of technical, professional, and governmental positions, including a full fifth of the country’s parliamentary seats.

When this article was written were they thinking about Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash?  Better known as the Five of Hearts in the deck of cards of the 55 most wanted Iraqis (she was captured by Coalition forces in May 2003), Ammash was the first woman elected to the Baath Party’s National Command Council and was reportedly involved with Iraq’s biological weapons programs.   Funny how they did not mention the rape rooms that were commonplace in Saddam’s Iraq.  What is also funny is how they have not mentioned that a quarter of the seats in the democratically Iraq National Assembly were set aside for women.

How can anyone take Kim Gandy and NOW seriously on the fate of Lawrence Summers when they declare that “women in Iraq once enjoyed relative equality” in Saddam’s Iraq?  What does NOW have to say about the Congolese girls who were forced to have sex with UN peacekeepers in exchange for food?  Nothing.   What does NOW have to say about the Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader of Burma, who has been under house arrest for nearly 15 years?  Nothing.  What does it say about NOW, some of the Harvard faculty and the Left in general that they are more concerned with a university president’s thoughts on standard deviation than they are about teenaged girls in Iran being buried alive, lashed and forced into hard labor?

If Kim Gandy and NOW are really concerned about the sexual freedom of women why won’t you speak up for that girl in Iran.  If Kim Gandy and NOW want women to be free from violence why won’t you speak for the girls in Congo?  If Kim Gandy and NOW want equal political participation for women why won’t you speak up for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi?  It is not too late for Kim Gandy and NOW.  But if not NOW, when?

Aaron Goldstein