Kathy Paur, a doctoral student in mathematics at Harvard University, challenged Harvard President Lawrence Summers' comments about discrepancies between men and women in the sciences during a luncheon sponsored by the Center for Women and Gender in Tindle Lounge Thursday. Paur also criticized the Harvard math department for a lack of female representation and scolded Summers for making assertions that are contradicted by international test scores.
Harvard currently has no tenured female math professors, whereas other schools in the Ivy League employ tenured female math professors -- there are three at Dartmouth. Since Summers' 2001 appointment, there has been a steady decrease in the number of female faculty in the math department at Harvard, Paur said. Under President Neil Rudenstine, Summers' predecessor, there were spikes and drops in the number of females, but never a steady decrease.
Paur later added that the Harvard math department offered tenure to five female professors, but all five turned it down.
"People usually don't say no to the Harvard math department, but all five women said no," she said.
Although she said she does not know why the women turned down the tenure offer, Paur thinks it is a pattern that indicates how the department treats women and thinks that the department needs to be more "friendly" towards women.
"The Harvard math department has a climate that women actively eschew; our female post-docs describe it as not friendly."
After Summers' comments this past January about discrepancies between men and women in the sciences, Paur set out to study the differences between men's and women's abilities. Due to the impossibility of measuring "intrinsic" abilities, she studied test scores instead. Paur found that, in the United States, men do slightly better on math tests than women, but also found that this was not the case in other countries. In nine countries men performed better than women, but in nine other countries, the opposite was true. In 29 countries, men and women performed equally on math tests. In all countries tested, women performed slightly better than men on reading tests.
By 2000, 60 percent of doctorates awarded in the fields of social and psychological sciences were awarded to women. Additionally, over 60 percent of National Science Foundation fellowships awarded between 2000 and 2004 in the areas of life, social and psychological sciences were awarded to women, and the percentage is on the rise.
"I don't know what's going on there, but I definitely think it's a refutation of women not being as good at science as men," Paur said.
While she is happy that President Summers' comments stimulated her and her peers to research the different abilities of men and women, Paur said she thinks Harvard has a long way to go before a difference is felt. Last fall, Paur looked at Harvard's six-year archive to see who had spoken at past math colloquiums. Out of 60 speakers from the last six years, none were women.
"I'll believe that Harvard has changed when the math department tenures some women, which they have yet to do," she said. "But at least a woman spoke at our April math colloquium."
