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CHAPTER 6

Achievement

... there is reasonably strong evidence of taste differences between little girls and little
boys that are not easy to attribute to socialization....Iguess 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.

D

o you recognize this quote? The person who shared this anecdote? This is a story

that was told by Larry Summers, at the time president of Harvard University,

who was trying to explain to a conference aimed at diversifying the science and

engineering workforce why he thought there were gender disparities (Summers, 2005).

Summers implied that there was a basic biological difference between men and women

that accounted for the disparity, and he dismissed socialization and discrimination as hav-

ing a minimal impact. He made these remarks in January 2005, tried to clarify them a few

days later, and outright apologized one month later. During the intervening month, he

was educated about much of the research that you read in Chapters 4 and 5 and some of

what you will read in Chapter 6. It was too late, though. He inspired the furor of women’s

groups all over the country as well as the faculty of Harvard. One year later he resigned. It

probably didn’t help that the number of women faculty who had received tenure during

his five years of administration had declined (Bombardieri, 2005). Yes, this is the same

Mr. Summers who was appointed by President Obama in 2008 to be the Assistant to the

President for Economic Policy and Director of the National Economic Council.

Is there any truth to Summers’s statement? Are sex differences in math and sci-

ence achievement due to biological differences between women and men? Biology

has typically been dismissed as a compelling explanation because sex differences in

achievement have changed dramatically over the 20th century, because women’s

math scores have increased (recall Chapter 4), and because sex differences in math

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