Exploring Nature and Nurture of Women in Science
Are gender disparities in the STEM fields a matter of nature or nurture? A panel of experts explored the ways in which these two seemingly opposing viewpoints interact.
Published September 2, 2005
By David Berreby
In 1993, the makers of the Talking Barbie doll included, among its 270 recorded phrases, the sentence “Math class is tough!” Did they do this because girls don’t like math as much as boys? Or do girls not like math because of influences that include Barbie dolls?
That’s the issue for policymakers contemplating the absence of women from the rosters of some scientific fields. Do we perceive gender differences, and act upon them, because men and women are biologically different? (If so, then women may never be represented in some fields in the same numbers as men.) Or is it that we have trained ourselves to see those differences? (In which case, our beliefs are holding talented people back.)
Are gender disparities, in other words, a matter of nature or nurture?
To those dilemmas, most scientists agree, there is only one good response: those are the wrong questions. Gender differences are obviously a matter of both nature and nurture. This was one rare point of agreement among panelists at an April 14, 2005, discussion on women in science held at the Cooper Union, sponsored by the Women Investigators Network and the Ensemble Studio Theatre/Sloan Project’s First Light Festival, and moderated by former New York Times science editor Cornelia Dean. It’s absurd, the speakers agreed, to choose one side or the other. The real problem is to figure out how nature and nurture interact.
The State of Current Knowledge
In that quest, the essential controversy is over the state of current knowledge. Some argue that today’s science is good enough to speak of certain gender differences as facts, and to tell which are innate and which are not. Others believe we don’t yet know enough to tease nature and nurture apart and note that one era’s “facts” about men and women have a way of looking like prejudice to later generations.
The Cooper Union session had its roots in remarks made on January 14, 2005, by a former Harvard University president to a meeting of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Saying he wanted to “provoke” his listeners, he took a side on the basic underlying question: is today’s science good enough to speak with confidence about the biological differences between men and women?
He thinks it might be, arguing that it is reasonable to ask if one reason for the paucity of women in top-level academic science jobs might be innate differences in the ways male and female minds work. He also mentioned two other factors he thought merited consideration: the demands of family life and the hindrances posed by convention and prejudice. However, his remarks about innateness got the most attention, in part because a number of attendees were so offended they walked out.
One was Nancy Hopkins, who led MIT’s Study of Women Faculty in Science, an inquiry launched in 1995 to determine why women were underrepresented among MIT professors. At the Cooper Union Hopkins argued that if we don’t yet know how nature and nurture combine to shape people’s lives, the very act of claiming certainty can breed prejudices and stereotypes.
Increase in Representation at MIT
Pointing out that women went from comprising 2% of MIT’s student body to more than 40% in the 20th century, she noted that such an upsurge was unlikely to be due to a fundamental change in the biology of women’s brains. Overconfident belief that women weren’t suited to her field, biology, once kept talented people out, she said. Now women are well represented in biology, but the same beliefs obstruct their progress in mathematics.
Linda Gottfredson, professor in the School of Education and affiliated faculty in the University Honors Program at the University of Delaware, however, argued that innate gender differences are very clear—so clear, in fact, that a goal of gender parity in all professions seems unrealistic. Specifically, she said, male minds show a bias toward interest in things, while female minds are interested in people, creating what she called a genetic “tilt” that affects the types of careers they choose. In this light, supporting an idea of infinite human malleability “ignores both women’s own preferences and the huge challenges they face when committed to having both children and careers.”
Richard Haier, who studies the neurobiology of intelligence, consciousness, and personality at the University of California, Irvine, also argued for the innateness of intelligence. He explained that while bell curves of male and female scores of general intelligence “essentially completely overlap,” more men tend to be found at the extreme high end of the scale for a few specific cognitive abilities like mathematical reasoning. Using imaging technology, he found that different parts of men’s and women’s brains are related to general intelligence in one study and to mathematical reasoning in another.
Gender Differences in Cognitive Traits
Diane Halpern, past-president of the American Psychological Association and professor of psychology at Claremont McKenna College, agrees that there is significant evidence to suggest that gender differences in cognitive traits exist. However, the observation that some differences may be due to innate traits does not mean those differences are immutable. This is because even innate aspects of a person interact with an environment, and environments can change.
Or as Halpern said, “The word innate does not mean forever.” In assessing male and female performance on tests and career tracks, she argued, it is important to remember that the academic world “has been devised as a very male, very heterosexual world,” and the fact that “the biological clock and tenure clocks run in the same time zone” has been bad for women in academia.
New York University’s Joshua Aronson acknowledged the importance and relevance of studies on biological gender differences, but also warned against too much stress on innateness as an explanation. He looks at how people, cultural animals that they are, respond to cultural notions. Cognition, he argued, is affected by a phenomenon called stereotype threat, “an apprehension arising from the awareness of a negative stereotype or personal reputation in a situation where you can confirm that stereotype with your behavior or the way you look.” Citing various studies that he and his colleagues have conducted, he said that changes in the environment in which high-achieving women navigate cognitive tests can affect their performance.
Are Sex Differences in Intelligence Innate?
None of this was abstract theory for the panelists or their audience at The Cooper Union. As scientists were both the investigators and the subjects of research about such issues, the talks and subsequent questions produced an unusual mix of passion, autobiography, and political debate. The panel was sharply split on the question of whether we have sufficient knowledge to say that sex differences in intelligence are innate. As is usually the case when scientific controversies mix with political disputes, some on each side accused the other of seeking to cut off debate and suppress inconvenient facts. And some speakers of both schools of thought stated that the other approach was actively harmful to young women.
Women should not be pushed to do things against their nature, said one of the innatists. Women should not be told that their ambitions aren’t natural, said one of the environmentalists. Though no speaker bolted (and the tone of the talks, questions, and reception stayed civil), there was no disguising the profound philosophical, political, and scientific disagreement at the heart of this question.
Also read: Strategies from Successful Women Scientists
About the Author
David Berreby has written for the New York Times Science Section, The New York Times Magazine, The Sciences, Discover, Smithsonian, Slate, The New Republic, and many other publications
