Blog Ten
Dear Mr. Summers,
I was extremely disappointed when I read your speech addressing the lack of women in scientific fields. As an Institute of Technology female student, I understand that there are not as many women in science as men, but that is not what upset me about your speech. I feel that your attempt to explain this was flawed and insulting to women. Your argument depended largely on your own opinion and interpretation, and as the President of Harvard, your words carry a heavy weight with them.
Part of the problem with your reasoning, as I said, is that it is based on your own individual interpretation, and you did not use reliable resources to make your case. As one of the criticisms of your speech by Bublick points out, your individual interpretation of your daughters coddling their trucks is not grounds for you to determine why women are not receiving tenured positions. Someone else’s interpretation could have been different, and it was an individual circumstance – unfortunately not enough to form grounds for cold, hard fact.
Fausto-Sterling also addresses the problem with facts and interpretation. Stats and information surrounding genders can be easily manipulated to form the basis for one argument or another, and these arguments, including yours, fail to take into account the social situations of the people these stats surround. For example, Fausto-Sterling reports that girls and boys have the same math levels until about seventh grade. I do not believe that girls suddenly are unable to understand after seventh grade, considering I’m taking calc. four my freshman year in college. Instead, I believe that encouragement and support at home and at school play a large role in this drop off.
You could easily argue that that is also just my opinion, but the fact is that there are considerable barriers against women still existing today, and you missed an opportunity to address them. Instead, you brushed them off and said it was because we didn’t want jobs that we think about for eighty hours a week. Maybe that’s because we’re too busy thinking about your stupid remarks.
I don’t think that you need to apologize for the lack of women in the scientific fields. I simply wish that you could have provided a more enlightening explanation, instead of one that was based off of patriarchy and your own false opinions.