Comment on the NAS Report on Women in Science and Engineering-BECKER

Posner makes excellent points, so I will fill in at a few places. First, it is common for National Academy of Science sponsored Reports on economic and social issues, such as this one, to have few members of the NAS on the report committees. Unfortunately, it is also common for Reports on these issues to be poorly executed, and to be driven more by wishful thinking than by scientific findings. The low quality of many NAS Reports on economic and social issues goes back at least to the first such report I evaluated in the 1970's at the request of a Vice-President of the Academy, just after I was elected to the Academy. The Report was on the future of energy resources, contained virtually no economics, and was filled with common prejudices about how fast the world was running out of oil and other energy sources. I have felt since then that the NAS should not lend its prestigious name to reports on such issues. Unfortunately, this NAS Report on women in science is no exception to the tendency of its Reports to be heavy on beliefs and weak on carefully documented analysis. To be sure, everyone who has seriously studied this question agrees that women in the past suffered greatly from discrimination in gaining entry into many professions, including but not limited to the sciences. In addition, however, there is also agreement that discrimination declined greatly over time, which is partly reflected in the data presented in this Report on the now substantial enrollments of women at technical schools such as MIT. How much discrimination remains? The evidence is still unclear, so considerable disagreement remains over the respective roles of discrimination in access to education and jobs, women's responsibilities for childcare and other household activities, social conditioning, genetic differences, and possibly other factors. The report does not advance our ability to discriminate among these explanations. An Appendix to the Report discusses in an uninspired way various theories of discrimination, including mine, but no clear-cut conclusion is reached about which theory, if any, is highly applicable to the realities of women's position in science. The summary of the Report says that it cannot be that women in academia, and sciences in particular, are now recipients of favoritism because affirmative action that selects candidates on the basis of race or sex is illegal. Well, legal or not, anyone who has sat in on academic departmental or divisional meetings, and my wife is also a professor, knows how often preference is given to candidates because they are women, even when male candidates have better records. Of course, not every professor or every department acts this way, but a strong and aggressive number of professors do, and deans and other university administrators frequently back their position. The Report dismisses the importance of women’s interest in child rearing and other family activities in limiting their scientific accomplishments by stating that "many women scientists and engineers persist in their pursuit of academic careers despite conflicts between their roles as parents and as scientists and engineers". No one would deny that statement, but the relevant question is whether the considerable time spent by most women in child rearing is an important factor in their generally less outstanding achievements as scientists and engineers. Common sense and many studies suggest that the many hours spent on child rearing at least makes it much harder for women to produce distinguished research. The Report recognizes that women take much more time off than men not only to take care of children after they are born, but also when children are sick, when a parent is needed to visit their children's school, and in other situations. The Report counters that over a lifetime men make up for this by taking more time off as sick leave. True, but women reduce their working time they could be spending on research at younger ages when scientific productivity peaks, while men generally become sick at older ages after productivity is on the decline. Larry Summers was forced to resign as President of Harvard in major part because of his well publicized comments on why relatively few women are in scientific positions at the best universities. He attributed this partly to discrimination and the difficulty of combining family responsibilities with research. No trouble there. He got into trouble with many women's groups when he raised the issue of whether women on average had as much capacity as men to make outstanding scientific contributions. The Report denies that there are "any significant biological differences between men and women in performing science and mathematics that can account for the lower representation of women in academic faculty and scientific leadership positions in these fields". Account fully or only partially? I am no expert on this evidence, and I do try in my own research to see how far I can go in understanding the different achievements of working men and women without assuming innate gender differences in capacities. Still, that is very different from claiming the evidence is fully persuasive on this point, or in more technical language in claiming that the variability in women's capacities is not less than the variability in men's, regardless of how their mean capacities compare. Sweden probably has the strongest commitment to gender equality of any country. It implements this commitment with a liberal system of childcare allowances and facilities, a generous system of government paid leaves open to both sexes-with men required to take some of the leave- and a strong anti-gender discrimination attitude. I cannot speak with authority about Swedish scientists, but I can say with confidence that while there are excellent female Swedish economists, yet at younger, middle, and older ages, the best of Swedish economists are very predominantly men, perhaps even more so than in the United States. To conclude, I have very strongly opposed discrimination against women in general and for academic positions in particular. While I am not sympathetic to strong government involvement in paid leaves for childbearing or for childcare facilities, I can see a possible case for some government actions along these lines. However, such attitudes on these issues do not justify a Report on women in science that does not really meet the fundamental criteria for a scientific Report. Instead, it provides further evidence on why the NAS should not be sponsoring Reports on economic and social issues.

Comments

[robert]

If one accepts Posner's and Becker's comments that the report itself is unworthy of the NAS, then I would submit that such a problem is greater than the supposed problem of bias/discrimination against women in the sciences.
To have an organization such as the NAS (which is purportedly dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology for the general welfare) produce such a report under its auspices suggests that science, the one field above all others in which truth and objective facts are parmount, may have become infected with politically correct notions substituting as legitimate research.
The scientist (or the student who wishes to pursue such a career) must adhere to rigorous standards of inquiry before hypothesis evolves into scientific fact. In such an environment, biases and prejudices hold no sway.
If the apparent application of non-objective ideas as evidenced by this report infects science itself, then the results would be potentialy catastrophic to both science and technology. In a worst case scenario, progress will become impacted. The comfort, control and convenience in our daily lives--something which we casually take for granted--will be lessened. Even worse, who is to say that such an impact won't start a "brain drain" by scientists to other countries? Or that the technological superiority enjoyed by the nation (another thing which we take for granted) won't be lost to a China or an India?
In the end, it is the ideas that are prominent in a culture which shape that culture. If the wrong ideas become prominent in the sciences, then we as a society will pay a price far greater than the loss of talented women due to alleged institutional discrimination.

[Muxec]

I can throw tens of models explaining discriminations just now and find hundreds more after thinking about this. But the 2 models neglecting child-care that I beleive the most are:

1. Science needs marketing (PR) to attract new scientists. It's market for people's time. We must examine scientific "advertising" to understand the nature of low female participation in sciences. "Marketing" of science comes from family and from mass media. For example one can be influenced by films about great scientists as child and modify his/her life-plan accordingly. Female sciensts rarely appear in popular culture, mass media, family talks. Take physics: Newton, Einstein, Feynman, Landau and, the only female in the list, Curie. Take economics: Marx, Smith, Keynes, Becker... The "advertising" is targeted and the role of targeting is huge (see Google banner exchange statistics for role of targeting in advertising).
To sum up: Current forms of scientific advertising are better at creating male image of "Myself in science" and much less successful when it comes to female version of "Myself in science" as seen by children and young adults.

2. Here analisis of market for time comes again. Simplified model. Suppose there are only 2 types of actions: science related actions and beauty related actions. Every person is provided with limited amount of time he/she can divide between two types of activities. Suppose that there are only 2 uncorrelated traits: intelligence and beauty. If each person divides time equally between 2 types of the activities than there is no correlation between beauty and scientific achievements. But people organize their time to equalize margnal utilities (expected). And people with higher beauty of the same intelligence will spend more time on the beauty-related actions while the ugly feels that the marginal utility of beauty-related actions falls rapidly. Here the competition between two types of actions creates negative correlation between beauty and scientific achievement without such correlation with scientific ability.
Culturally the value of female appearance (at least at the age of peak potential creativity and learning) is considered more valuable than male's beauty. I.e: subjectively females are cuter in average.
To sum up: females will spend less time (in average) on science due to higher competition from "market for beauty" caused by higher expected utility.
(This model can be easily extended to X traits and N types of time-spending)

[Matt Rognlie]

"In addition, however, there is also agreement that discrimination declined greatly over time, which is partly reflected in the data presented in this Report on the now substantial enrollments of women at technical schools such as MIT."

Are the authors of the report aware that MIT uses an "adjustment" system that treats the qualifications of male and female students differently in admissions? Caltech, the only comparable school, doesn't employ affirmative action of the same magnitude, and its male/female ratio is around 70/30.

[Alexander Zemlinsky]

With all respects Mr. Becker, just as a curiosity, I would like to know if you like classical music, specially the work of Gustav Mahler.
Thank you for this allways interesting blog.

[Ned]

I'm surprised there is almost no mention of gender difference in standard deviation of IQ as explanatory variable for underrepresentaion of women among top scientists etc. The first time I heard about this was more than twenty years ago, in a research by psychologist Hans Eisenck. Based on numbers that he mentioned for the differences of IQ sigmas between men and women, it is easy to calculate expected representations of two groups in MENSA (high-IQ society), for example, that is borne out by actual membership numbers (two to one ratio in favor of men). Further, by measuring or estimating average IQ of members of particular selective groups (Nobel prize winners, CEOs, members of US Senate (?)), one could find out what would be appropriate representation for women, ceteris paribus (no discrimination, 'level palying field' etc.). Then we'd know what is the strength of other possible explanatory factors.

The absence of such research (at least I haven't heard of any) is surprising as sigma would be failry easy to estimate from individual IQ test results. It is well known, for example, that men dominate the left tail of the IQ distribution (prison population, special education classes etc.).

[st]

Worked with many outstanding women scientists and engineers in the past, one thing stands out differ from the other half of the species: women will pursue for the excellence in work, however, will not as vigorously as men to fight for the credit (particularly, if it is going to impair their further pursue of the work in progress). Some men took advantage of such a "weakness" (actually, it is necessary compromise to channel the energy towards real work rather than politics... It might be in the genetic code, it might be in the role play as supporter, provider and nature leadership in the group by "design"... I do not mean "intelligent design", which the male ego exhibit at its maximum at recent event of "Have science found god"....). Madam Curie got pushed to the front when tragic happen, otherwise, she would not be notices as much by the world. Nobody besides few notice the Rosalind Franklin (DNA lady) until recently. Of course, the selected or elected few may not be the real inventors (or believed high IQ guy) in the field... Maurice Wilkins and Nikola Tesla rings a bell. NAS are special breed for sure. No disagreement here. (not surprise about the report at all)...Unless many of the women behind scene being noticed, it is pointless to discuss how much contribution or even evaluate the issue...case closed.

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