It doesn't take much to reignite the gender wars, if indeed, there has ever been a cease-fire.
Lawrence H. Summers, president of Harvard University, is the latest to do so by saying, according to the Boston Globe on Jan. 17, that innate differences between men and women might be one reason fewer women succeed in science and math careers. What an uproar!
Everyone from George Will to Click and Clack, the “car guys” have weighed in on the subject. Some believe that research in behavioral genetics might find that some characteristics (math and science proficiency, for instance), which we have believed influenced by socialization and conditioning, might have other causes. George Will, syndicated columnist, wrote, “There is a vast and growing scientific literature on possible gender differences in cognition” (the act of knowing).
As I was thinking about these gender issues, I opened the Gazette's Life & Arts section on Jan. 24 to a large headline and an excellent photo taken at the Mohawk Club in honor of Italian General Gaetano Vecchiotti on Feb. 16, 1936. Schenectady's Italian Community is greeting Italy's visiting consul general. More than 60 men, spiffily attired in tuxedos, sat at tables with wine bottles at every place.
Were there no women in the “Italian community” of that day? Were none of them interested in the affairs of men – politics, engineering, science and math?
Similar gatherings of other ethnic groups, employee groups, groups of religious leaders or city dignitaries would show similar absences. It would have required unimaginable courage and tenacity to forsake all that was safe and expected of good Italian wives and daughters to follow one of those unconventional paths. A few did; most did not.
Contrast that with what is happening nearby on the Union College campus today. Discussing the Summers statements at lunch one day with Christina Sorum, Vice President for Academic Affairs/Dean of Faculty, we learned that Union's chemistry faculty has reached parity, with five of the 10 faculty members being women. Other science departments show an encouraging growth in numbers of female faculty members.
I called Sorum later and she said, “We aren't there yet, but we are working hard on it.” She suggested I look at the gender breakdown in students majoring in math at Union today. Of the majors in pure mathematics, there are five more women than men, and the chairman of the mathematics department is a woman. The under-representation of women in math and science may soon be a thing of the past.
Writing a century ago, Emile Durkheim, in the “Division of Labor,” spoke of the “mammalian gender staying with the young that it bears” while the other gender, having greater muscle mass, goes forth to slay dragons. “One of the sexes takes care of the affective functions and the other of intellectual functions,” he writes. Charles Kingsley, in 1851 wrote, “For men must work, and women must weep.” Biology is destiny.
MAKING CHANGES
We have traveled a long way from those beliefs, and it has been important for women to establish a strong presence in academia, corporate life, government and the arts. A longer lifespan and labor-saving technology have led women to do outside-the-home, meaningful work for the greater part of their adult lives. Their contributions have subtly changed the way in which we perceive work.
As a more egalitarian society emerges, however, one persistent question niggles at my mind: “Who will care for our young and our elderly?” Why has no one turned the Harvard president's question on its head? Do “innate differences” make men less able to be caregivers? Will the equal ability of men and women to achieve in fields where earning power is typically the highest create an even greater crisis in the care giving fields?
Many businesses are grappling with these questions. I have known two men who successfully raised their children on their own even before accommodations were made in the workplace for family care giving. As a '50s housewife who spent about the same number of years raising children as having a career, I believe the former occupation is of greater importance than the latter.
If we are going to depend on hired help to care for the young and particularly the elderly, higher standards need to be set, and the pay scale should reflect how much we value our most helpless family members. This might have been a better topic for President Summers to address as he spoke to at the Economic Research Bureau in Cambridge.
MARK WILSON/FOR THE SUNDAY GAZETTE