Friday, May 06, 2005

Newsweek Article

I am a relatively new blogger and when I attempted to insert the link to the Newsweek article that summarizes gender differences, I failed. The article, The More Social Sex, is worth reading and references several books and studies.

I immediately ordered The Essential Difference, the Truth About the Male and Female Brain, and hungrily read every word.

It all made sense to me. The book described gender differences that could be observed in infants one week old. Babies of both genders were shown inanimate "mechanical" objects and human faces. The male babies stared for more seconds at the inanimate objects and the female babies stared for more seconds at the the human faces. The book does go on to interpolate that these preferences make men better at systems thinking and women better at nurturing professions. As I have always been good at math, I did not think the "human-focused" preference of females makes them less able to work in science or math. To me, it suggested that the interest and focus of the female brain is linked to the context of the intellectual inquiry: how the problem is "framed". For example, I was told that the engineering program at Cornell University offered a course "How to Design a Race Car". Year after year one or two women at most enrolled in this course. Then, using the same course material, the course was renamed "How to Design a Vehicle that Helps the Handicapped". The renamed course became gender balanced, attracting over fifty percent female students. For me (and I hypothesize many other women), it is all about context. I believe I can solve any problem. The question is, which problems are worth my time and energy. For me the important problems are the ones that have direct impact on how people feel.

I felt so validated to have a book that confirmed some of my feelings until I attended a program at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. This panel of women scientists discussed Impediments to Change: Revisiting the Women in Science Question. These women tore to shreds the book I felt has so validated my feelings. The sample was too small, the observer had known the sex of the babies being tested. The list of scientific impropriety went on and on.

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