Larry Summers Was Right

The other day, my youngest son had stuck a toy bus inside the cargo area of a toy truck. I told him I would fix it if he got me a knife. My game plan was to stick the knife in there and quickly pry the toy bus out. (I love to demonstrate my “manliness” with my boys.) But despite my surgical skill, the bus barely budged. As I was about to apply more pressure, my wife came to the rescue. She took the truck, got a screwdriver, unscrewed the cargo area of the truck, and handed the bus (unscathed) to my son.

When it comes to things mechanical, I am not the typical male. I don’t know screwdrivers from wrenches. My eyes glaze over at the mere mention of home repair projects. I’m much more comfortable inside a Barnes and Noble than in a Home Depot. I have a writer’s temperament and an unrelenting clumsiness with tools.

Providentially, my wife, who was a Phi Beta Kappa in college, is very handy. She can hang a mirror level, make minor faucet repairs, refinish furniture, and paint a room. While occasionally I think how nice it would be if I could do these “masculine” tasks, for the most part I am simply thankful that God put us together. Our gifts complement one another very well.

Yet the fact that we are not “average” when it comes to what is “typical” for men and women does not negate the fact that there are basic, inherent differences between the sexes. In these politically correct days, it can be dangerous to say so.

Harvard President Larry Summers, a former official in the Clinton administration, found that out recently. At a conference examining why women and minorities are underrepresented in science careers, Summers suggested three explanations for why there are such small numbers of women holding tenured math and science positions at elite universities.

First, Summers postulated, women with young children might not be willing or able to put in the grueling hours these positions require. Second, girls generally have lower scores on math and science tests than do boys, and these differences might be innate. Third, discrimination might be a factor.

A balanced assessment? Not to MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins, who walked out halfway through the speech and who later told reporters she felt “physically ill” when Summers mentioned basic sexual differences in the sciences. Hopkins said if she hadn’t left, “I would have blacked out or thrown up.”

Later, 100 Harvard professors took their president to task in an open letter that said such comments “serve to reinforce an institutional culture at Harvard that erects numerous barriers to improving the representation of women on the faculty.”

On the willingness of women to put in the hours required to reach the top in math and science at the expense of family, our era is becoming a disappointment to the bra-burning women of a generation ago. More and more women are choosing to stay home, regardless of their innate abilities. The Census Bureau reports that in 2003 about 5.4 million mothers with children 14 and under stayed home, an increase of a million since 1995. In 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a majority of women with kids under 6 worked only part time or not at all. Just 42 percent worked full time.

Stay-at-home moms are not just from America’s wealthier classes. Half of them come from households with a family income below $50,000. A 2003 CBS News/New York Times poll found that 61 percent of adults believe kids are better off if their mother stays at home instead of holding an outside job.

On innate differences in ability between men and women, 30 years of scientific studies show that men and women have different aptitudes. Men do better, generally, in mathematical reasoning, mechanical understanding, and spatial relationships. Women tend to do better in language, reading, and other verbal tasks. Even when women do as well as men in the hard sciences, they often choose to work in fields with a higher social component.

On whether discrimination holds some women back, doubtless that does still occur. However, judging from the heated reaction Summers received from Hopkins and from members of his own faculty, one has to wonder how widespread this is in academia. After all, if women really are in short supply in the hard sciences, one would reasonably presume that those qualified to compete at the highest levels would get every benefit of the doubt from those making the hiring decisions. After all, political correctness is a much bigger fact of life on campus than is political incorrectness.

So can women match or even excel what men can do in business, politics, on campus, or in the sciences? Yes (though not inevitably or always). Are men and women different? Yes, again. Is a woman only valuable for what she can produce in the work world? Thank God, no.

As a Duke sociologist told the New York Times, “The feminist literature of the ‘70s and ‘80s made marriage and childbearing sound like it was just drudgery. The truth is that a lot of people find having kids incredibly rewarding.”

I know one talented, intelligent wife and mother who would wholeheartedly agree.