According to Natasha Walter, Larry Summers said this:
His "best guess", he
said, as to why there were so few women in the science and engineering
workforce, was "the general clash between people’s legitimate family
desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high
intensity". But "in the special case of science and engineering there
are issues of intrinsic aptitude".
My reading of the same remarks was subtly different. That the desire for high power and high intensity working led to underrepresentation of women with children in all jobs where such were desired…and that the intrinsic aptitude was restricted to science and engineering…that being based on the higher range of ability in males, not the average ability, meaning that if you were looking for the top 0.05% in certain fields you would end up with disproportionately males.
I guess there are some differences between men and women then, perhaps in the fields of reading comprehension and logic. Of course, I don’t know who’s right in this case, Natasha or myself…not clever enough to work it out you see.
Update: Corrected as to spelling as in the comment below.
Leave a Reply