"We are still all on the death list..."

I heard this broadcast and the interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the radio this morning.

Inter alia, she pointed out that the Social Democratic mayor of Amsterdam has not opened his mouth to criticize the oppression of women under Islam. Nor has he said anything critical of the Islamic community in general. But he is still on the death list!

Larry Summers on women

The latest thing I'm reading on some US/Canadian blogs is the view of Larry Summers (Clinton's Treasury Secretary) on women in science and engineering. Summers is President of Harvard, which one blogger mistakenly referred to as a 'PC' place. I mention the last point because I'm coming round to the view that we are going to have to fight all of the battles of the 1960s and '70s again - not just some of them.

Harvard's Economics Department was the scene of a massive battle at that time over whether such topics as 'poverty in America' or 'the economic consequences of the Vietnam War' were a legitimate subject of academic discourse. For the past 30 years we have come to take for granted that which we are now losing again.

Back to Summers. I believe that people who suggest that the relatively poor performance of women in maths and science may be due to biological differences are skating on extremely thin ice.

When you think about it, men and women are separated by a single chromosome. That's all. But let's accept, for the sake of argument, the assumption that this single chromosome programs our bodies in such a way that science and maths are male attributes and women are inferior at them. On the other hand, verbalization and what?... nurturing? are female attributes and men are inferior at them. It is certainly true that the huge majority of scientific and mathematical discoveries to date have been the product of the brains of males.

These male scientists and mathematicians consider that they have made discoveries about the universe. All of us can understand our world better as a result of the male ability in maths and science.

What if, I dare to suggest, these are not discoveries at all, but mere outputs of a brain structured in a particular way? All science is nothing more than the reflection of a set of neuronal impulses. (Structured, no doubt, in a random fashion through evolution or perhaps designed by a male god - depending on your "opinion").

If maths and science are no more than the outputs of a male brain, there is nothing at all available to validate them apart from the sheer prejudice that the male brain is superior to the female one.

Larry, tell me my female logic is f***ed!

(Personally, as an economist who is daily faced with the products of the male brain, I feel that a lot of so-called 'science' could well do with chucking out the window!)

Second, it occurred to President Larry that married women with children are unwilling to put in the 80-hour weeks that men in science and engineering are expected to put in.

Since I am an unmarried person, I can vouch for the fact that, were I to put in an 80-hour week on a regular basis I would need a wife or mother (though a servant would do just as well). Physical subsistence would become impossible otherwise.

Oh, but I forgot something. The female brain might be shown to be 'different'. Therefore, women who don't advance through the lack of wanting to work 80 hours in addition to looking after the kids, are merely demonstrating their "comparative advantage" in housework!

Come to my house Larry and see my comparative advantage in housework! (This is why I love economics, it has so much explanatory power!)