January 27, 2005
Last week (as I'm sure many know) there was a big news story about how the President of Harvard University, Laurence H. Summers, gave a provocative speech at an Economics conference about why there are so few women in "top positions" in science and technology. His remarks were not on the record, but he allegedly offered the hypothesis that perhaps there are "innate differences" between men's and women's brains, and that there are "extraordinary commitments of time and energy" at "top positions", and that "few married women with children were willing to make such sacrifices". (I'm quoting from Ken Dillon's article in the New York Times on January 18, not from Summers whose words were not recorded).
When I first read this over breakfast I was dumbfounded by the quotes--the "innate differences" issue was so completely absurd and has been time and again disproven that I didn't even bother to get annoyed about it. It was the second comment that literally blew my mind. If you stop to think about it, who knows more about sacrifices, and extraordinary commitments of time and energy, than parents of young children? But we figure out a way to make these sacrifices and not lose the core of who we are. If we're successful, our demanding young children slowly turn into actual people with their own lives and interests. My 7 year-old is already much less demanding than my 4-year-old, and unless I hang out with my 20-month-old nephew, 
I forget how much easier my 4-year-old has become. If we're even more successful, we survive the ordeal having learned something--time management at the least, and usually a hell of a lot more.
The statement Summers is quoted as saying implies that once you are a mother of a young child (which lasts maybe a decade), that defines what you can achieve in your professional life (which lasts how long, 4 decades?). And strangely enough, men who are fathers of young children suffer the opposite problem: they are never thought of as fathers, no matter how young their children are!
If I thought these were only the ramblings of someone trying to be provocative in an absurd way, then I wouldn't be writing about it here. But in the past week's flurry of reactions to Summer's speech, the focus has been on the absurd claim that men and women have different "innate abilities", and almost none attack the monstrous double standard that was described for "married women with young children".
The simple truth is that women (and men!) with young children can be nuts about their kids and want to raise them the best they know how, while still being driven to answer the questions their research is asking. And if the "top positions" can't accomodate those people, then they can hardly be called "top positions"!
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