Comment by taysic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by taysic | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Honestly I don't think there is much fuel added on both sides. This argument is age old. Since I was in middle school boys were asserting to me that due to biological reasons I probably wasn't as capable as them as I was very competitive in math and science. When I went to college, we heard the same argument used by Larry Summers president of Harvard.

None of this is new, especially when I discuss it with my mother and grandmother. Same story, different colors.

What I hope is that other woman continue to do what I did- ignore those people. Youll never convince them because the biological argument is impossible to disprove. The statistics are on their side. Now are the statistics due to social conditions, expectations, belief patterns, and women who simply want to avoid these discussions and intimidations - or are they from biology?

There is no hesitation from my life experience that it is the former. First woman was allowed in Harvard in the 60s. This is only just getting started but expect more of the same.

You're completely misconstruing what Larry Summers and the memo's author said.

The memo's author outlined some gender differences, and offered suggestions based on these differences to make working at Google more appealing to women.

Here's the excerpt from Larry Summer's speech that the ignorant masses and agenda-driven feminists have misconstrued to confirm their biases and advance their agenda:

> "So my best guess, to provoke you, of what's behind all of this is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity, that in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination. I would like nothing better than to be proved wrong, because I would like nothing better than for these problems to be addressable simply by everybody understanding what they are, and working very hard to address them."

He is not saying that women are biologically less capable of pursuing math and science than men.

[1] http://www.harvard.edu/president/speeches/summers_2005/nber....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com