Blog 10
Mr. Summers,
The NBER conference speech that you recited was not only very demeaning and hurtful to women; it was complied on stereotypical and cultural biases with no facts, evidence, or quotes to back up your statements. Just because you “THINK� women do not want to work 80 days does not automatically mean that you are correct. Many women work hard. This is apparent with all of the women design college students who are in their studio for 80 + hours every single week. Women can work just as long and hard as men. After all once women are done working at their 40 hour a week job they come home and “work� with the family, cleaning, and stress.
I also want to reiterate the fact that you are a Harvard President and have no statistics to back up ANY of your sexist claims. Bublick makes a wonderful point that even if you tried to back up your claims that women lack the brain power, you would not logically and firmly be able to prove your point. Bublick explains the fact that “until we have made more progress toward eliminating social barriers to women’s entry into these fields, we can have no idea how much, if any of the gap biology explains�. The gap Bublick refers to is the difference of women vs. men’s brains in science. Also, Fausto-Sterling stresses the ridiculousness and biased factors of standardized tests and statistics that explain that men are smarter and math and science more than women. I find it very difficult to believe that women are not as smart as men solely due to the fact that in most colleges women outnumber men (and not only in creative, communication fields). First, I would appreciate if you do not stereotype women into a category of dumb, lazy, childbearing, unimportant beings. Secondly, I think it is important as well to consider every individual no matter the race, class, gender they belong to.