THE X FACTOR...

In January, Harvard's President Lawrence Summers made a statement that landed him in a controversial cascade, when he said that genetic differences may account for the poorer performance of women in academia.
While this statement is quite unsubstantiated, and Summers is admittedly not qualified to say something like this (he is an economist, who earlier was secretary of the treasury), the issue again raises the ever simmering question about the representation of women in academia, especially in the sciences, and in various avenues in the world in general. The issue is very complex, and I have here, only a few musings and questions, mostly questions...

Let us take India. As far as I can remember, in general, girls were always better than boys in school, and in college, when it came to academics. They were simply smarter, harder, and more sincere workers. This is a fact which is reiterated, year after year, in the 10th and 12th standard merit lists. In fact, girls outnumber boys, both in number and largely in quality, even in the engineering and medicine courses, and also the humanities and science courses. If this is the case, I always ask, why don't we find a larger proportion of women on faculties in top universities in India? Why don't we find women making groundbreaking scientific discoveries in places like the India Institute of Science, for example? Why don't we find women authoring textbooks, in both the sciences and humanities? Why don't we find more women lending their expertise to Government and private committees?

I really can speak primarily for the sciences. A recent survey showed that women equalled men, and in fields like biology, even outnumbered men, until about the PhD. level, which approaches in the mid 20s. After that, there is a steady and steep decline in their number, until you find very few women in the files of researchers and teachers among the postdocs and beyond. Clearly, I think this indicates that the pressures of marriage and family do not allow them to spend as much time as is necessary on scientific research, especially a field which requires unusual devotion, time, and patience to one's interests and work.
I believe that even today, women are not truly encouraged by Indian society as a whole to pursue a career that would largely require them to work on their interests, any interests, with abandon. I don't know what is the "solution", if any to this problem, because, as parents, both of the sexes being completely engrossed in their work is definitely detrimental to the well-being of the children, as is proven by scores of cases in the Western world. Whether we like it or not, even today, we have to agree that when there comes a time to truly make a choice, it is almost always the woman who gracefully bows out and decides to shoulder the lion's share of the household responsibility. Why she does so is by itself an interesting question worth exploring. Is it again the social forces that unknowingly prod her in taking this stance, or could it be due to a fundamentally ingrained genetic mother's and caretaker's instinct? (which would put a completely different and unexpected, and in many ways an opposite, spin on Summers's argument)
What surprises me is that even in the US, the number of women who are top researchers, writers, and science administrators is comparatively small (I say this paying due respect to Linda Buck, who won last year's Nobel Prize in Medicine, and whose work forms an inspirational part of my own seminar :-). Why should it be so in a country that hardly is lacking in opportunities for anyone, irrespective of their sex? Again, I don't know the answer.

I would like to relate an observation I made. While this may sound politically incorrect, it is surely not meant to be so, simply an observation. All my life, I have met many intelligent girls and women (my mother, sister and grandmother being the foremost ones of course ;-). However, I can confidently say that I have hardly met any intellectual girls. I remember girls who used to stand first in the class all the time, but had never heard of Karl Marx, or who could not not talk about the basic tenets of Darwin's theory of Evolution (except by reciting the points in the textbook by rote, which was necessary for the final exam). Later on, I went to Ferguson, where surely some of the better students in India (at least in Pune, which in the first place is, I believe, a true educational hub in India) study. I found the same trend. Many very intelligent girls, hardly any intellectual girls. To this day, I am at a loss to explain why this is so. One paradoxical reason I can think of is that the very social forces that encourage girls to receive higher education also channel their resources and talent to meet the traditional and conservative needs of society. For example, do middle class parents encourage and groom their daughter to become well-educated, largely because they think that that's the most likely way she would get a commensurately well-educated husband? I mean, this instinct definitely plays a role; the question is, how much? To get a good husband, perhaps they also think that their daughter should not be a non-conformist when it comes to studies. Maybe that's why they make sure that their daughter focuses only on those things that are well-recognised as good and intelligent by the establishment. In such a case, a girl studying in 12th standard would do anything but not focus on 'getting good marks'.
This plausible hypothesis could also be the explanation for why this same ardor and dedication to excellence rarely continues for many girls, after they finish up with college (engineering, medicine etc.) Apparently, now they have reached the pantheon of suitability that their parents had dreamt up for them since they were born. Now, all that remains to be done is for them to get married to a successful man, get a good job that would allow them to devote enough time to their family, and have children whom they could be proud of; if it's daughters, they would continue on the instilled tradition. I understand that this is not a policy which is forced on their daughters by authoritarian parents (although in some manifest cases, it definitely is). But I wonder, and sometimes believe, if it is part of the social atmosphere of the middle class, a well-meaning gesture which nonethless has the potential to tip the balance of gender opportunites in the overall scenario. It is not so much of an issue of 'getting a good husband' as it is of conforming to the traditional woman's psyche which has been around for hundreds of years, especially in a patriarchal society like India.

Another observation I made in Ferguson; when it comes to the 'real' humanities like sociology, psychology, languages etc., girls in general are definitely better than boys. For example, in Ferguson, for many years now, girls form more than 90% of the group that majors in psychology. I am sure it's similar elsewhere. Again, the same question arises. If that is the case, why aren't there more top women psychologists working as counselors, teachers, and writers?
However, I am at a loss to explain why girls never shone in the sciences, at least in the limited scenario I have witnessed. Note again that I am not talking about 'getting good marks'. That, many do. What I am talking about is engaging in serious intellectual scientific debate, and making scientific arguments that demonstrate wide knowledge and critical thinking. I am sorry to say this, but I don't remember meeting a girl quite like that. In fact, even among the very bright girls who were in my class in 12th std, I don't remember any outstanding girl who could be classified as an intellectual. Why is that so? Again and again, I made the same observation about most girls; intelligent, yes; intellectual, no.

Even in the humanities, it is very surprising to see that there are no women who have won Nobel Prizes in Economics, very few who have won prizes for Literature and Peace, and hardly anyone who have made fundamental advances in social theories, or even authored outstanding textbooks. In fact, when it comes to Nobel Prizes, there are women in the sciences, more outstanding than any male scientist I have ever come across, who have made fundamental discoveries. They managed to balance family with research, and even managed to stay happily married to the same man all their lives! That was simply extraordinary.

One thing I always contend is that I believe women are emotionally more intelligent than men, and they are much more competent at understanding, as well as resolving human emotional and organizational conflict. In spite of this, how many women are CEO's of top companies in the world, or head major administrative Government committees on public policy? Here, I think that it is because many of these women are simply not as aggressive and assertive as their male counterparts. I think they should be.

In the last few years, I have come across some very intelligent ladies, some of them through blogging :-)
They are as well-read, intelligent and intellectual as the smartest guy I know.
But I keep on wondering about the dearth of truly exceptional intellectual women in my college and university days, and in the world in general. While Summers's claim is unsubstantiated, in the long term, I think that it is absurd to see this as a battle of the sexes. If there are many outstanding women in the world, and if the sheer, unconscious, and subtle constraints of a male dominated society are holding back their talent, then not only is it a great injustice to them, but a fantastic missed out opportunity to tap the general pool of human knowledge and ability, that leads to progress. In a world that already has more than it's fair share of general problems of every kind and variety, the last thing we need is gender bias that would in any possible way predispose women towards not being effective contributors to society.
Sans the ravings of the authors of "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" etc. I think that if it's really going to uncover beneficial truths, this is a question worth exploring and conducting research into.
Is it really nature or nurture??!