Women vs. Men In Science

atif2

yes I am worried about my dwindling sperm count as well; see, it is this kind of worries that have restricted me from achieving my Nobel.

Urstruly # 17 - I hear you brother!

With women`s education level rising and men`s sperm count decreasing, God may once again have to intervene to keep the human race continuing. The last time He did that was when he fathered Jesus. And frankly, the last thing we need is a few million more ``God`s children`` roaming the world. Southern baptists already have their hands full deciphering the message of one such God`s child from 2005 years ago.

So women, there you have it: rising education levels or rising men. Take your pick. And frankly, with the level of stress running high amongst men, we may not get around to inventing artificial sperms for you to fulfill your genetic itch to get pregnant. So go back to barracks ...errr... houses. Take care of house affairs, chat with neigbours` wives etc. Let we men battle it out in the world.

You are warned.

Atif,

Uh...we picked about 30 years ago...which is why you and Urs are...single. :)

17,16, 18 you guys are great...the irony of it all is that it just might be true...still great to see you do have a sense of humour. ;-)

Actually Atif the reason mens sperm count is going down is that the rise of women chemists has led to good water management where the Oestrogen levels are increasing (infact there are supposed to far too many female fish around and as a result some species of fish are disappearing). This is the great conspiracy of the femisnits to have a truly female world.

So forget the next generation...there will be just clones of the feminists.

To me, the whole debate is about the opression that women have had to face for centuries. It`s really not about your dwindling sperm counts, and if it is true about the sperm count then you should really see a dr. because that cannot be healthy. and trust me if there were a big conspiracy going around against men, women would not stop at poisoning water to cause low sperm counts.
Anywho, for the more serious folks on this forum, I recently learnt about the Dr. Shazia Khalid case in Pakistan. The 32-year-old doctor was gang-raped by the military men. Despite the fact that the military involvement has made it a very high profile case, the case is still about a woman who was raped. Her father-in-law is suggesting that she should be killed since she has brought dishonor to the family. The investigators are insinuating that Dr. Khalid is actually a whore since they found condoms in her bedroom.
There are two things happening here. first, the victim is being even more victimized by the society. second, and i do say this with great hesitation, a woman, especially the educated one, is considered nothing but a whore in the eyes of the patriarchal south asian society. The attitude in the East is very discouraging towards women and their role as equal members of the society.

Being an engineer myself, I would like nothing more than to see more women in scientific/technical fields. That said, I think the debate about whether women can become good scientists/mathematicians/engineers is a moot one (at least for me). I have seen more than my fair share of brilliant women engineers and incompetent men. Treating an individual as a person first and a man/woman later would solve a lot of problems, but unfortunately making the venus/phallus distinction is too deeply wired in our heads.

That said, I think physiology is programmed to give men an unfair advantage in most professional endeavors. In response to Sommer`s remarks there was a short article published which gave a very tangible reason why women are not more visible among top research positions; families and children. To become a respected researcher you need to publish as much as possible, this usually takes place during the late 20s and 30s, precisely the time when women have babies. Given the choice, some women choose family over career. I don`t think that`s a bad choice. If not, men`s decreasing sperm count may not be the reason why the human race shrinks. And in any case, raising a family is in no way easier or less consequential than being a frontline researcher (and I think most mothers might say more satisfying and rewarding).

IF you go the Harvard website, you can read what Pres. Summers actually said. I don`t think his remarks are all that controversial; they are certainly unpalatable to quite a few people. Whatever happened to free speech, anyway?

From the NYT articel that Samina Shah posted, it seems that there are a heck of a lot more male geniuses and idiots than there are female geniuses and idiots. Exactly what Summers said.

What is really upsetting to women is the fact that Summers said that discrimination against women is NOT the reason why there aren`t thousands more women in the ranks of top scientists. Basically, what he said is what Irfan Hamid has said.

In a related context, Summers has this to say,
``To buttress conviction and theory with anecdote, a young woman who worked very closely with me at the Treasury and who has subsequently gone on to work at Google highly successfully, is a 1994 graduate of Harvard Business School. She reports that of her first year section, there were twenty-two women, of whom three are working full time at this point. That may, the dean of the Business School reports to me, that that is not an implausible observation given their experience with their alumnae. So I think in terms of positive understanding, the first very important reality is just what I would call the, who wants to do high-powered intense work?``

So there are 22 women in her section of the HBS class, of whom only 3 are now working full time. I recall reading another study that said that the best predictor of the number of women in CEO, COO and CFO positions in Fortune 500 firms now is the number of women in the HBS class 20 years ago. Hmmmm, so 3/22, or ~14% left in the running for top jobs. So if we don`t see the Fortune 500 ranks crawling with female CEOs, COOs, CFOs, its rank discrimination against women. It has nothing to do with women choosing the mommy track!

There is no glass ceiling after all, its just that women don`t want to work as hard/single-mindedly/obsessively as men do. Why not? Maybe because they want to have a life and a family. Check out this book, ``Why Men Earn More: The Startling Truth Behind the Pay Gap -- and What Women Can Do About It`` by Warren Farrell if you want more on this.

So, give up having a life and you too will succeed. IF you want a life and family, well guess what, ladies, you can`t have it all!

Re: # 21
Azra - precisely what I was thinking - it has less to do with gender and more to do with how gender is perceived. it`s a cumulative effect. In some schools today, they separate girls and boys for math and science classes because studies suggest that girls perform better when they dont have to pay attention to gender stereotypes. A significantly higher number of these girls go on to choose careers in science.

It is interesting that art and music are now consdered feminine when throughout the centuries men have dominated these fields because women were discouraged from participation. it`s only been a century or less (depending upon country - many still dont have it) since women have had equal opportunity after all.

Atif - according to some reports men are a dying breed. there`s something wrong with you lot genetically and nature is now trying to eliminate you all from the evolutionary pool. so your falling sperm count has a very good explanation, you see... :))
btw, feminists didnt come up with this idea. male scientists did! hehe

judging by the number of interacts so far it is painfully obvious that not too many people are interested in women and science ..........

........ so how about paris hilton ?

Speaking of controversial remarks on college campuses, here is one that is interesting:

``Bill O`Reilly on Fox News has stated his argument that Ward Churchill should be tried for treason or sedition. He states Churchill wants the government to be overthrown and is helping with his hate speech.``

Here is what a Univ. of Colorado professor, said in a article. I wonder what is going to happen to him.....

``In the quote below, Churchill asserts that some of the victims of the attack were not innocent:

As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let`s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America`s global financial empire – the ``mighty engine of profit`` to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly.[15] (http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/s11/churchill.html)

Perhaps the most controversial passage of all was the following, in which he is accused of justifying the attacks as an appropriate ``penalty``:

If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I`d really be interested in hearing about it.

In January 2005, attention was drawn to the essay after he was invited to speak at Hamilton College as a member of a panel titled ``Limits of Dissent``. In response to what he calls ``grossly inaccurate media coverage concerning [his] analysis of the September 11, 2001 attacks``, Churchill clarified his views:

I am not a ``defender`` of the September 11 attacks, but simply pointing out that if U.S. foreign policy results in massive death and destruction abroad, we cannot feign innocence when some of that destruction is returned. I have never said that people ``should`` engage in armed attacks on the United States, but that such attacks are a natural and unavoidable consequence of unlawful U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King, quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, ``Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.`` http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill

Apparently, Churchill has resigned (or been forced to resign) his position as chairman of the Ethnic Studies Department. He continues to hold a position as professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado.

Bill Moyer lost his popular show, ``Politically Incorrect,`` after saying that it took a lot of courage for the hijackers to hit the WTC (or something similar). No company was willing to put their ads on his show.............

Wonder what will happen to Summers....................Freedom of speech is allowed legally, but does have boundaries when it starts affecting finances of a school, TV show, etc........

Some more facts:

1. ``Fields Medal`` is considered as the Nobel Prize in Mathematics. There are no women recipients
2. ``Turing Award`` is considered the Nobel Prize`` in Computer Science. There are no women recipients.
3. Another example is that of ``Shannon Award`` by IEEE. Again there are no women recipients.

[Note: Both Turing and Shannon were epoch-making (male) mathematicians]

I personally think that in the days to come there will be more and more women in medicine, biology, chemistry, engineering, IT, business, law etc but there will be always acute shortage of women in the rarefied fields of hardcore mathematics. Excellence in abstract mathematics has little to do with the amount of time you devote. You either get it or you don`t. Newton invented the field of ``Variational Calculus`` in one evening. Einstein did a lot of his outstanding work when he was a glorified clerk at a patent department.
My point is that theoretical work can be done in minimal amount of time with minimal assistance and institutional set-up. There is only one catch: you have to have it in you. Few men have it and I guess even fewer women have it. I will be happy to be proven wrong but I strongly suspect that I am right.

Here`s what I think:

Pakistanis are incapable of understanding democracy. Ergo, there will and should never be a Pakistani American President of the United States of America, Inshallah.

Now, lets put billions and billions of dollars behind this so that we can actually ``prove`` this within the scientific community. We may begin with measure the head and brain sizes of all Pakistani-Americans, their capacity for making peace with India and Kashmir and their willingness to accept ``minority`` communities within Pakistan.

Hamid, here is your cue to begin a spiel about the donkey descending from the sky, the goat who ate our religious homework, why it is important to support Darwinism, etc, etc. etc. We in turn will lap your posts up like the Pavlovian dogs that we are, and you will once again be championed as the heir apparent ot Carlindom.

Next!

Re: # 24 (Amrita),

Spoiler: Wildly inflammatory and politically incorrect post.

The decline of the male breed can be attributed to the fact that millions of years of accumulated feminine wisdom on choosing a mate has been rendered rather useless in the past couple of hundred years or so. Allow me to explain; until very very recently (around 10,000 years ago) humanity was based on a rather simple hunter-gatherer society. He who hunted best was at the top of the social pecking order, thus, he had a high mate-value in the eyes of women, who saw him as having the best genes. Also, it was most probable that he would pass on these positive genetic traits to his offspring. All this calculation was done not conciously, but on a subliminal level, it was the `wisdom of the ages` passed on, there is a whole field called evolutionary psychology dedicated to this. Another way of stating this (much more scientifically) is that women who found the strong and rugged men attractive mated mostly with them, had children with them, who were protected and had a better chance of survival then the children of a weaker man and thus this preference was propagated generation to generation. What complicates matters here is that the percieved `alpha` male had a very undesirable trait, he was not amenable to attachment or to sticking around for the rearing of his young (he was the very first badboy). There are many many details I am skimming over, including the fact that women have an innate tendency to attach themselves to a man who is the `just right` mixture of dependable/nice guy (enter the sweet, sensitive guy who manages to finish last, and you`ll find out why soon enough) and then go behind his back and mate with a male of higher social standing while letting their partner believe all the while that it is his child that they are rearing. This way women ensured a moderate amount of support during the rather long rearing period of their young (12-15 years, longest among animals) while also making sure that their offspring had the best possible genes.

Here are some interesting facts:
- 66% of all married women who are unfaithful commit adultery while they are ovulating
- When presented with a collection of photographs of males with varying levels of testosterone content in their blood (more testosterone -> more `masculine`) women invariably chose males with testosterone levels in the range of slightly above average (the sensitive/nice guy)
- 3 men with different testosterone levels were each given a t-shirt and told to wear it continuously for 3 days. These 3 t-shirts were then given to 3 women who were ovulating, and they were asked to decide on the basis of smell alone which of the three men they would prefer to mate with. All 3 opted for the man with the highest testosterone count

Unfortunately, during the past few centuries, social dominance is decided more by material wealth and intelligence than by brawn. Today`s women value a Ferrari much more than the ability to run down a wild animal and kill it, similarly, most women would rather be seen with a fat guy in an Armani suit then with a sinewy Masai tribesman wearing an original bearskin loincloth (unless the loincloth comes from a designer outlet). So women`s legendary intuition is going haywire. To quote atif2`s post, the `hard men` are now no longer seen as having a high mate value. Thus, the sissies are reproducing like bunnies and diluting the gene pool, whereas the `real men` are either sitting idle or playing the left-handed tango with their schlongs. A sad state of affairs if there ever was one.

Irfan.

PS: This titillitating little tale of tantalizing transgressions is of makings not my own. I learned about this from a program on the Discovery Channel called The Science of Beauty, and then did some googling. By the way, compared to what men are historically capable of doing, this account reads like Mother Teresa`s biography.

............ i really shouldn`t say anything about women and science because i live rather precariously with three women ......... however, sometimes i do wonder why it is my job to change light bulbs, put gas in the cars, fix leaky faucets and operate complicated machinery like the can opener ...........

Re: # 25 Hamidm -

Quality not quantity! It`s been pretty entertaining so far....

Irfan - I love that theory. The revenge of the geekoid forsooth! I bet a geek came up with that - he`d have to be if he was working for discovery. I`m all for modern girlie men turning traditional hardy men into gigolos - makes everyone happy. :)

Irfan, Amrita,

The theory of the Alpha Male is very nice and all, but lets be honest-as Natalie Angier pointed out in one her books on sex among the species, very specific bird life is more accurate. The study cited observed that if a white bird wore a red hat, the female bird chose him over his red hatless peers. Hence, the Alpha Male theory is being challenged by the Red Hatted White Male Bird Theory....another argument for metrosexuality (what Urs, atif, etc code as ``sissies``) or at least men who know how to dress themselves and clip their toenails.