If the top academic posts in science and engineering are disproportionately occupied by men, there can only be one explanation: sexism. Christina Hoff Summers, in a long and fascinating article in The American, outlines the brave new world where gender equity trumps all other considerations:
On October 17, 2007, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Science and Technology convened to learn why women are “underrepresented” in academic professorships of science and engineering and to consider what the federal government should do about it.
As a rule, women tend to gravitate to fields such as education, English, psychology, biology, and art history, while men are much more numerous in physics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering. Why this is so is an interesting question—and the subject of a substantial empirical literature. The research on gender and vocation is complex, vibrant, and full of reasonable disagreements; there is no single, simple answer.
There were, however, no disagreements at the congressional hearing. All five expert witnesses, and all five congressmen, Democrat and Republican, were in complete accord. They attributed the dearth of women in university science to a single cause: sexism. And there was no dispute about the solution. All agreed on the need for a revolutionary transformation of American science itself. “Ultimately,” said Kathie Olsen, deputy director of the National Science Foundation, “our goal is to transform, institution by institution, the entire culture of science and engineering in America, and to be inclusive of all—for the good of all.”
And here’s one of the leading theoreticians of this “equity crusade”:
Virginia Valian, a psychologist at Hunter College, is one of the most cited authorities in the crusade to achieve equity for women in the sciences. Her book Why So Slow? (MIT Press, 1998) is indispensable to the movement because it offers a solution to a vexing problem: women’s seemingly free but actually self-defeating choices. Not only do fewer women than men choose to enter the physical sciences, but even those who do often give child care and family a higher priority than their male colleagues. How, in the face of women’s clear tendencies to choose other careers and more balanced lifestyles, can one reasonably attribute the scarcity of women in science and engineering to unconscious bias and sexist discrimination? Valian showed the way.
Her central claim is that our male-dominated society constructs and enforces “gender schemas.” A gender schema is an accepted system of beliefs about the ways men and women differ—a system that determines what suits each gender. Writes Valian: “In white, Western middle-class society, the gender schema for men includes being capable of independent, autonomous action…[and being] assertive, instrumental, and task-oriented. Men act. The gender schema for women is different; it includes being nurturant, expressive, communal, and concerned about others.”
Valian does not deny that gender schemas have a foundation in biology, but she insists that culture can intensify or diminish their power and effect. Our society, she says, pressures women to indulge their nurturing propensities while it encourages men to develop “a strong commitment to earning and prestige, great dedication to the job, and an intense desire for achievement.” All this inevitably results in a permanently unfair advantage for men.
To achieve a gender-fair society, Valian advocates a concerted attack on conventional gender schemas. This includes altering the way we raise our children. Consider the custom of encouraging girls to play with dolls. Such early socialization, she says, creates an association between being female and being nurturing. Valian concludes, “Egalitarian parents can bring up their children so that both boys and girls play with dolls and trucks…. From the standpoint of equality, nothing is more important.”
But what if our daughters are not especially interested in trucks, as almost any parent can attest (including me: when my son recently gave his daughter a toy train to play with, she placed it in a baby carriage and covered it with a blanket so it could get some sleep)? Not a problem, says Valian.
“We don’t accept biology as destiny…. We vaccinate, we inoculate, we medicate…. I propose we adopt the same attitude toward biological sex differences.” In other words, the ubiquitous female propensity to nurture should be treated as a kind of disorder or disease.
Valian is intent on radically transforming society to achieve her egalitarian ideals. She also wants to alter the behavior of successful scientists. Their obsessive work habits, single-minded dedication, and “intense desire for achievement,” not only marginalize women, but also may compromise good science. She writes, “If we continue to emphasize and reward always being on the job, we will never find out whether leading a balanced life leads to equally good or better scientific work.”
Valian may be a leader in the equity-in-science movement, but she is not an empirical thinker. A world where women (and resocialized men) earn Nobel Prizes on flextime has no relation to reality. Unfortunately, her outré worldview is not confined to women’s studies. It is a guiding light for some of the nation’s leading scientific institutions.
Valian’s book is trumpeted on the NSF/NAS “Top Research” list, and Valian herself has inspired the NSF’s ADVANCE gender-equity program. In 2001, the NSF awarded Valian and her Hunter colleagues $3.9 million to develop equity programs and workshops for the “scientific community at large.” Should Congress pass the Gender Bias Elimination Act, which mandates workshops for university department chairs, members of review panels, and agency program officers seeking federal funding, Valian will become one of the most prominent women in American scientific education.
So, if the world isn’t as you think it should be, then you force it into shape. I think we’ve been here before.
Mick Hartley 
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