Women, men and mathematics

[finneco]

Oh boy.You may recall, back in 2005, some controversial statements from Harvard's President Laurence Summers on the issue of the underrepresentation of women among the faculty of hard science and mathematics departments in top tier research and higher education institutions. Most of the responses to this event were underinformed on the current

Comments

[platypus_herder]

Dodging all the psychology issues and going straight to point 4 of your list, the feminist in me rather likes
http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science

The future academic in me finds it rather depressing though. You have been warned.

[w1ldc47]

That article is incredibly depressing. On the other hand, it seems to have been written by someone with an immense amount of privilege. I'm not sure in what manner that would colour his opinions, but it seems certain to me that it must.

[platypus_herder]

Fair points. Note that while I find it personally depressing (because it stamps on some of my career aspirations), I don't think it globally depressing (inasmuch as it's saying that a certain population are responding rationally to a market incentive).

He certainly is very priviledged, and has his biases, but I'm reminded of an Oscar Wilde epigram about the validity of an opinion having nothing whatever to do with the sincerity (or in this case objectivity) of the man who expresses it.

[w1ldc47]

I read some more stuff by this guy and I'm starting to suspect he doesn't know nearly as much as he thinks he does. As someone who sits on the board of trustees of a not-for-profit organization, I have to say he's kind of full of shit on that topic. I'm starting to suspect that the reason I don't think he's full of shit on other topics is just that I don't know enough about them to realize it.

[platypus_herder]

A sound judgment, I think. Sadly, people who have been highly successful in one intellectual field do tend to acquire an inflated opinion of their own wisdom. French scientists used to be notorious for it.

There's a story I should look up from my first-year pseudo-science course about a historian and a physicist who were asked to examine some pseudo-scientific gobbledygook attempting to justify literal interpretation of the Old Testament (and other foundational stories, but mostly the Old Testament) as a description of actual natural disasters[1]. The historian opined that the documentary scholarship was bunk, but he found the physics interesting. The physicist said exactly the opposite.

[1] Not all such speculation is pseudo-scientific gobbledygook, but this was.

[w1ldc47]

U of T has a first year pseudo-science course? Really? As in a course about pseudo-science? Please tell me that's true. I will take it!

[platypus_herder]

At least when I went through the first-year Eng Scis all had to take a "philosophy" course entitled "Science and Pseudoscience" as part of their breadth requirements.

Note that, unlike Faculty of Arts and Science, Engineering doesn't generally let outsiders take classes that aren't part of their required curricula (because we have a prescribed program of courses in Engineering). It's a bit of a bee in Fred Wilson's bonnet though, so you might see if he's teaching any FAS courses with similar content.

[finneco]

I've had the horror of reading that article before, and while some of his points are good, it doesn't deal well with non-material motivations for career efforts. If all else fails, I'll run off to join a non-profit and be happily poor with more flexible working hours.

[platypus_herder]

And I can head off to Europe or a second-world country. Only then I won't be able to do the kind of physics my more ambitious self would like to do.

One good point he does make (and the one that stings the most, for me) is that the non-material motivations we care about now may not be the same ones that matter to our forty-year-old selves. We may sneer at their motivations, and they will shake their heads at ours.

[w1ldc47]

Be that as it may, we need to make decisions now based on the information we have now. I'm not going to choose a career that will make my current self miserable just on the chance they my future self will have different priorities. If my future self has different priorities, you know who will be a good person to handle that situation? Future me.

[platypus_herder]

A perfectly sound answer from someone who is in grad school because they enjoy being a grad student. Unfortunately I know a number of people whose non-material motivation for being in grad school is the hope of a career of discovery and scientific glory. They're the ones betting that, if and when they discover something cool and get the credit for it (and that's a bigger if than most people realize), it will have been worth all it took to get there for future them. They're the ones who get bitter. If that's not you then my comment absolutely doesn't apply to you.

[w1ldc47]

Hrm, that hadn't occurred to me. When you say "a career of discovery," what do you mean by that. I mean, sure, I would love to find a cure for AIDS and win a Nobel prize, but if I spend my life researching the evolution of pathogens in populations and the public health policies that can affect virulence in obscurity at some university or government office somewhere and never get my name in lights, that's still "discovery" and it's still better than being a plastic surgeon or psychiatrist, even if I will only make a tenth the money, you know?

[platypus_herder]

This doesn't seem to apply to you (good) and it should probably be hashed out viva voce, but I think what I'm getting at is that the budding academics who sneer at material motivations and look forward to a career of solving interesting and important problems often (sometimes unconsciously) judge what problems are important or interesting by peer recognition. Often they were intellectual/academic big fish in high school and undergrad. Consequently, they have little idea of how big the world really is (even just the world of their research field), how hard it is to fight (politically as well as scientifically) for a share of recognition and resources against such a large field of competitors, or how much it will hurt them to be obscure