Foolishly seeking gender equity in math and science.

• Author: Sommers, Christina Hoff
• Position: Science & Technology

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MATH 55 IS ADVERTISED in the Harvard University catalog as "'probably the most difficult undergraduate math class in the country." It is a notoriously difficult course their does not look like America. Each year, as many as 50 individuals sign up, but at least half drop out within a few weeks. As one former pupil told Tile Crimson newspaper in 2006, "We had 51 students the first day, 31 students the second day, 24 for the next four days, 23 for two more weeks, and then 21 for the rest of the first semester," Said another, "l guess you can say its an episode of "Survivor" with people voting themselves off." The final class roster, according to The Crimson: "45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, 100 percent male."

Why do women avoid classes like Math 55? Why, in fact, are there so few women in the high echelons of academic math and in the physical sciences? Women now earn 57% of bachelors degrees and 59% of masters degrees. According to the Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2006 was the fifth year in a row in which the majority of research Ph.D.s awarded to U.S. citizens went to women, who earn more Ph.D.s than men in the humanities, social sciences, education, and life sciences. Elsewhere, though, the figures are different. Women comprise just 19% of tenure-wack professors in math, 11% in physics, and 10% in computer science and electrical engineering. Moreover, the pipeline does not promise statistical parity anytime soon; women are earning 24% of the Ph.D.s in the physical sciences--way up from the four percent of the 1960s, but still far behind the rate they are winning doctorates in other fields. "The change is glacial," notes Debra Rolison, a physical chemist at the Naval Research Laboratory. Rolison and others want to apply Title IX to science education.

Title IX, the celebrated gender equity provision of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, so far has been applied mainly to college sports, but the measure is not limited to athletics. It provides, "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex ... be denied the benefits of ... any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance."

While Title IX has been effective in promoting women's participation in sports, it also has caused serious damage, in part because it has led to the adoption of a quota system. Over the years, judges, Department of Education officials, and college administrators have interpreted Title IX to mean that women are entitled to "statistical proportionality." That is to say, if a college's student body is 60% female, then 60% of the athletes should be female--even if far fewer women than men are interested in playing sports at that college. Yet, many athletic directors have been unable to attract the same proportion of women as men. To avoid government harassment, loss of funding, and lawsuits, they simply have eliminated men's teams. Although there are many factors affecting the evolution of men's and women's college sports, there is no question that Title IX has led to men's participation being calibrated to the level of women's interest. That kind of calibration could devastate academic science.

Unfortunately for academia, equity activists such as Rolison are not alone in their eagerness to apply Title IX to the sciences. On Oct. 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.

Why women tend to gravitate to fields such as education, English, psychology, and biology, while men are much more numerous in physics, mathematics, computer science, and engineering is an interesting question--and the subject of a substantial amount of empirical literature. Yet, there were no disagreements on the matter at the congressional heating. 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: pervasive sexism. There was no dispute about the solution, either. All agreed on the need for a revolutionary transformation of American science itself. "Ultimately," notes Kathie Olsen, deputy director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), "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."

The first witness was Donna Shalala. She had chaired the "Committee on Maximizing the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering," organized by several leading scientific organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. In 2006, the committee released a report, "Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering," that claimed to find "pervasive unexamined gender bias." It received lavish media attention and has become the standard reference work for the "STEM" gender-equity movement (the acronym stands for science, technology, engineering, and math).

A hostile climate

At the hearing, Shalala warned that strong measures would...