In his remarks last month, Summers suggested three “broad hypotheses” to account for the dearth of women who study and take jobs in science and engineering.
“One is what I would call the...high-powered job hypothesis,” Summers said, explaining that familial obligations often prevent women from taking jobs that require too large a time commitment—as much as 80 hours a week in the case of scientists, Summers said.
A Crimson reporter yesterday verified the transcript provided by Summers’ office against an audiotape of the remarks. Only inconsequential false starts and repeated words were omitted.
The president’s second—and ultimately most controversial—hypothesis focused on what he referred to as “different availability of aptitude at the high end.”
Elaborating on that explanation, Summers said, “It does appear that on many, many different human attributes—height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability—there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means, which can be debated, there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population.”
He did not use the phrase “innate differences,” which emerged as key buzzwords in the ensuing controversy over his remarks. Summers used that phrase in later media interviews describing the speech.
Summers third hypothesis focused on “different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search,” a theory to which he bestowed relatively little importance.
“If there was really a pervasive pattern of discrimination that was leaving an extraordinary number of high-quality potential candidates behind,” Summers said, “one suspects that in the highly competitive academic marketplace, there would be more examples of institutions that succeeded substantially by working to fill the gap.”
‘Daddy Truck’
In the month of uproar over Summers’ remarks, critics have largely focused their outrage on his suggestion that gender differences might account for the underrepresentation of women in science.
“Particularly in some attributes that bear on engineering,” Summers said, “there is reasonably strong evidence of taste differences between little girls and little boys that are not easy to attribute to socialization.”
He added, “So, I think, while I would prefer to believe otherwise, I guess my experience with my two-and-a-half-year-old twin daughters who were not given dolls and who were given trucks, and found themselves saying to each other, ‘Look, daddy truck is carrying the baby truck,’ tells me something.”
Challenging his speech in a question-and-answer session that followed, Denice D. Denton, chancellor of the University of California-Santa Cruz, said, “You know, a lot of us would disagree with your hypothesis and your premises.”
“Fair enough,” replied Summers.
“So it’s not so clear,” Denton said.
