Yahoo! News – Harvard President Issues an Apology for Remarks.

I’ve been loosely following this story as well. Apparently the president of Harvard made some comments speculating that innate ability may be a partial explanation as to why women tend to not pursue (or not excel in) science and math careers.

From what I understand, he also speculated that many women are unwilling to work the long hours needed to rise to the top of their profession once they have children.

I don’t know what the statistics are, but this is what I see from my own experience. I’m a woman in a technical job (programmer), and it’s true that most of the technical people where I work (about 350 people total) are men.  Men do make up the vast majority of the upper-level developers as well.

Why?

I can’t answer that, but I can speculate. (I know, look where it got Harvard’s president!)

I suspect that he may be partially right, that many times women aren’t willing to wrok long hours because of family responsibility. However, I can say the same for many men. That may explain why any one individual doesn’t advance, but I don’t think it would make a significant difference when comparing the sexes.

I think part of it may be cultural. I wasn’t encouraged to do math and science in school, and I didn’t have a computer to experiment with until I was grown. I think more men tend to spend time just experimenting than women do, and that may explain part of the discrepancy. I hope that changes as more games are designed with girls and women in mind and as computers become more ever-present in our lives.

Here’s where I’ll get in trouble. I wouldn’t rul out innate tendencies as part of the explanation. Perhaps women tend to prefer careers that involve high levels of human interaction. That certainly isn’t something you get sitting behind a computer. That certainly doesn’t mean woman aren’t as bright or as capable.

When does having a different set of abilites make you less capable? As a writer, I’d argue that working with language is every bit as challenging as working with a computer. It certainly takes different skills, but that doesn’t mean that either skill set is inherently better.