January 30, 2005
Comment on Gender Differences in Scientific Achievement-BECKER
It is surely legitimate to raise the issue of biological differences in explaining the lower number of female than male scientists. But the issues are more complicated and to some extent different than the ones that are frequently stressed.
The basic question in this regard is: how much of the difference in numbers and achievements of male and female scientists is explained by biological factors compared to other factors? We would have been greatly mistaken if we concluded 40 years ago that the very small representation of women in law, medicine, business, engineering, and many other professions was mainly due to any limited aptitudes for these fields. For since then, the fraction of female students in medical, law, engineering, and business schools rose rapidly, and women are more represented than men in some very good graduate programs in these fields. Their biology did not change, but birth rates declined, and women’s education and labor force participation increased rapidly. These forces, combined with an assault on discriminatory barriers to entry in these fields, were clearly the major ones involved in the very rapid growth of women’s participation in these professions.
So what priority should be given to biological aptitude rather than time spent in child rearing, discrimination, social conditioning, and other non-biological factors in explaining the continuing under-representation of women among scientists, and even more among top scientists? No one knows for sure- which is why academic pressure against discussing possible biological difference in talents is disturbing. However, my own belief is that we can get a lot of explanatory power out of factors that do not rely on intrinsic gender difference in talents, including high-level talents.
The reasons behind this conclusion are simple. To be a top level scientist-indeed, to be tops in any challenging field- requires long hours of work and an intense commitment to discovery and the like. Yet as long as women continue to have the major responsibilities for child-rearing and other household activities, they will have to combine professional activities with a mother’s and other household duties. Inevitably, that will force most women to reduce their professional commitment.
These women will adjust either by lowering their scientific ambitions, or by electing not to enter these fields in the first place. Others will forego motherhood and even marriage to pursue their scientific careers, and some of these and a smaller fraction of the other women will become highly successful. But even without discrimination against women, the attempt to combine several quite different activities will continue to lower the fraction of top women scientists (or top CEO’s, lawyers, etc) compared to men.
The variance in the distributions of the required talents may well be greater among men than women-as suggested by Larry Summers and others- so that there are many more brilliant and very dumb men than women. Even so, one does not want to overestimate the importance of brilliance in explaining the so-far low representation of women among outstanding achievers, as measured by Nobel and other major prizes. For a large fraction of male high achievers are not brilliant-they are not an Einstein, Newton, Euler, or LaPlace, to name a few of the recognized geniuses in scientific accomplishment.
An outstanding Columbia University physicist, the late I. Rabi, years ago was supposedly asked at a gathering of Nobelists and other high achievers about how most of those present had achieved so much since they did not seem particularly brilliant. His brief answer: “hard work”. That is also my belief after being at many similar gatherings.
Women are likely to be at a much greater disadvantage in this regard, due to their child-rearing and other responsibilities, than in biological aptitude. While studies indicate that the total hours worked by women, including household “work”, are generally as high or even higher than the total hours worked by men, women’s work is less specialized toward professional and other business achievement. Moreover, they anticipate this lesser degree of specialization in determining their professional ambitions and time use at early ages.
For other reasons as well, it is difficult to infer biological differences from occupational choices. For example, biological factors could entirely explain occupational choices, and yet the lower representation of women among scientists would not imply that they have less scientific aptitude. The reason is that women could be better than men at all occupations, but would be underrepresented in science if any difference between men and women in scientific aptitudes were smaller than in non-scientific aptitudes.
In my book, A Treatise on the Family, I expressed a belief that the traditional gender division of labor between working in the marketplace and working in the household- that is, taking care of children, etc- is partly due to biological differences between men and women. However, I also stressed that this gender division of labor is consistent with women being superior to men at market activities too. Rather, it implies that differences in market “abilities” are less than at child rearing and the like. In economic jargon, observed data on occupational choices only reflects comparative advantage, not absolute advantage.
My conclusion is that the sharp differences in scientific and similar accomplishments between men and women may be partly due to differences in high-level aptitudes, but that such differences are less important than other forces. To be sure, scholarly studies of any biological differences between men and women should be welcomed. Still, I believe that studies of other influences on male-female differences in scientific and related achievements are likely to be highly productive.
Posted by becker at 06:01 PM | Comments (6) | TrackBack (1)
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Comments
Prof. Becker:
Your explanation is basically: women don't have enough time to do as well. But that relies on counterfactual unknowns. Maybe if women did have enough time, they'd still make different choices, or still get the same outomes. We don't know; there's no necessary reason that your explanation is correct. Though it's a very polite and courteous explanation.
Posted by John Smith at January 31, 2005 06:08 PM | direct link
Women have exactly the same amount of time men have (24 hours/day), the point is that they choose to spend more time in the home and less time in the labour market.
To say that we don't know what would happen if women worked more is kind of strange, clearly the rate of success goes up when you work more, for men and women alike. According to one study 49% of high-performing women i the US are childless, compared to 19% of the men (Hewlett, 2002). I doubt that is a mere coincidence.
What we don't know is if women would achieve *exactly* the same rate of success in the sciences if they made the same choises as men.
This seems unlikely to me, given the huge differences in tests scores.. However the fields where for example spatial ability matters are only a fraction of the scientific world, and there are plenty of fields where women probably could do as well or better than men.
Becker is however probably wrong when he writes that women work "as high or even higher" than men. If we believe the American Time Use Survey from the Bureau of Labour Statistics men work some 4% more than women do, even if we include work in the household and "caring for and helping household and non-household members" (maybe Becker uses other data).
Numbers are 6.5 hours/day vs. 6.23 hours for women.
Even if shopping is included completely as work men work slightly more than women. Women do spend more time in education, but the difference is clearly consumption as they use the education less in the labout market (I doubt it has much use in the household sector).
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.t01.htm
Beckers explanation is more helpful in some sense than Summers, if we belive that perception matters and that women need to be encouraged. Also I would guess women would be more receptive if you tell them they have different preferences than men compared to saying they have a biologically different distribution of IQ...
The feminists will hate both theories alike, one depends on biologi and the other on choice, two evil concepts in their world.
The unintellectual which hunt against Summers is completely disgraceful. It is sickening that he has to appolagise when he is completely right and the opponents are irrational fools, blinded by their flawed ideology. The NY-times was as objective as usual with their hit-peace on him last week. But on some level this is the price Suumers pays by hitching his wagon to the liberal left. What the heck did he expect?
Posted by Tino at January 31, 2005 08:03 PM | direct link
I agree that choice plays a large role in reducing the proportion who are female at the higher levels of science, but I believe there is a lot more explanatory power in the biologically based male variability of talent, or perhaps temperament, than you suggest by citing the growth of female representation in law, medicine. busness, and engineering. Consider law, where participation has surged but performance has not kept pace. In the days when women were less than ten percent of law students, they were an exceptionally selected set and their performance surpassed that of their male classmates in both LSAT scores at entry and grades at graduation.
Once women approached a more representative balance, in the 1980s, their exceptionalism evaporated and their relative performance as measured by proportions scoring in the top fifth or top tenth of the LSAT and proportions graduating in the top tenth of their class at ten top law schools such as Chicago sank below the male level. This is what one would expect where the male proportion increases in the top tail of the distribution of relevant talents.
I published this as an essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1999 and updated it a bit at http://darwin.baruch.cuny.edu/faculty/guyot. Since then I've been engrossed in a program of preparing impoverished Myanmar young people to win scholarships to foreign colleges, but partial soundings taken from out here confirm the persistence of female underperformance in the new millenium at Harvard, Chicago, Duke, and other schools.
Posted by james f. guyot at February 1, 2005 09:48 PM | direct link
Prof. Becker,
just a brief question: is it possible that the more time women devote to child rearing and household production is because of a comparative advantage they have in such activities? So that biological differences arises at the moment of choosing the activity where an individual is more productive?
thanks
Posted by Andrea at February 1, 2005 10:31 PM | direct link
I was under the impression that Tom Sowell sorted all these questions out years ago.
Posted by GMB at February 4, 2005 04:25 PM | direct link
The law is an extremely demanding profession, and requires long hours and a lot of intellectual and physical stamina, and often times, fierce competition.
In mate selection, it is advantegeous for the male to pursue hierarchical dominance often times regardless of thought outside the aims of that hierarchy; and often with the intention of being an attractive mate.
If you will allow me to point out the often times spontaneously erupting potential of male behavior, typically exclusive, of boys-only clubs, fraternities, gangs, hunting-parties and militias and that this was and is a claim made of law practice,
then it may be worth thinking that many women do not find this appealing for various reasons; despite intelligence and ability.
Of course, we cannot know how many given the constraints previously barring women from practicing law,but to operate law schools without handling that potential, we may invite other social difficulties, to which the law must then adapt as well.
Posted by Chris at July 6, 2005 05:12 PM | direct link
