18.05.2005 21:10

I haven't read this (via preposterous) and I admit in advance that I am completely biased. But have you ever thought about, why those people claiming that female underrepresentation in science is due to a inherent cognitive difference in male and female brains are themselves mostly men?
The reason for that might of course be an inherent cognitive difference between mal and female brains. Women just aren't capable of thinking something like this. This thought is incomprehensible to them.
Seriously, I believe, that some men just don't like the idea that their personal behaviour could be under attack. They just don't want to be criticised. This is not malice I guess, it's just laziness. It's a behavioural topos all over, if there is a fact which threatens your self-conceptions, you try to do away with it by finding an explanation for it which you can't influence. The less people participate in a game the less competition you face. Now, science is already very competitive. So, just imagine, if all these smart women out there would come and join...
Maybe men feel offended by the claim that there is a gender bias in science because they don't intend to discriminate against women. The thought a girl might be less apt to do science than they are just because she is a girl never came to their mind. This is fine. Personally I never met any such kind of obvious discrimination except for maybe one case, but this person is by herself so unimportant that I didn't care. But what might really make women turn away from science is the completely male dominated environment you have to face every day. The way people treat each other is just more rude than women, at least myself, would choose to do. And there is another point: man tend to be less humble on what concerns their skills than women are (again at least myself). So sometimes you find yourself surrounded by a bunch of moderate intelligent men acting up like hell. This is ennoying.

This brain-difference- stuff is really completely silly. Come on, face it, most of the scientists out there just are no Einsteins, no Newtons, no Noethers and no Curies. What at least 90% of all scientists do in their daily life can be done by any reasonably intelligent person.
Most of my fellow students are male, (since I study physics in Germany, which is at the lower buttom of any female physicist's statistics.) A few of them are more intelligent than I am but most of them aren't. They just aren't and that's not because I am a Einstein or a Noether or something, I am just a reasonably intelligent person.

Please don't get me wrong, I know some very intelligent physicists who are very nice and decent persons and whom I highly appreciate. And, of course, they are all men, because I hardly know any female grown up physicist. And I get along quite well, although I often try to show off, despite of myself, which aswell is very tiring.