Angela Saini is a science journalist and broadcaster. Her latest book is Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong – and the New Research That’s Rewriting the Story. At The Guardian, she writes—Silicon Valley’s weapon of choice against women: shoddy science
Sexism has long been recognised as a problem in Silicon Valley. But a lengthy memo written by a Google software engineer, and leaked online, has laid bare the ugly underbelly of how some in this male-dominated world think about women. The “manifesto” (which at the time of writing remains anonymous) uses scientific evidence in an attempt to explain that women are, on average, biologically different from men, in ways that make them less likely to work in the same jobs. “Women generally have a stronger interest in people rather than things,” the software engineer writes.
A portion of his argument is indeed based on published science. In particular, there is a school of neuroscience that tries to popularise the notion that male and female brains are distinct. It claims that female brains are typically hardwired for empathy, while male brains are built to analyse systems, such as computers and cars. This all hinges on the idea that autism represents an extreme form of the male brain, caused by exposure to higher than usual testosterone levels in the womb. Yet recent experiments have repeatedly failed to find a direct link between foetal testosterone levels alone and autism.
Indeed, psychological studies show that there are only the tiniest gaps, if any, between the sexes, including areas such as mathematical ability and verbal fluency. Navigating this complicated field for my latest book, Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong, I was told by a prominent American researcher into sex difference that he no longer refers to brains as sexually dimorphic, because the science simply doesn’t support this. There isn’t a neuroscientist alive who can say with confidence which sex any given brain belongs to.
The science cited in the Google engineer’s memo is flawed. But since it was published at the weekend, there has been a groundswell of support for it on social media. Reportedly, some Google staffers have also quietly agreed with it. The journalist Toby Young personally informed me on Twitter: “Evolutionary psychology tells us there are genetically based psychological differences between men and women.” [...]
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—We Can’t Wait for Bipartisan Solutions:
"We need a consensus."
This is what Joe Biden said a little while ago, when asked by Keith Olbermann if he would appoint a Republican to head up the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security. I don’t have the exact language, but he seemed to imply that nothing would work unless it had significant support from Republicans.
I was floored.
If there is anything that has been apparent since the Democratic takeover of Congress, it’s that many and probably most of the current Republican members of Congress will NEVER work with Democrats for the good of the country. Since the rise of Newt Gingrich, the majority of Republicans in Congress have demonstrated that they don’t care about the good of the country. Grover Norquist is inadvertently one of the most honest of conservatives, and when he referred to bipartisanship as date rape, he wasn’t revealing just his own personal view, he was describing the mindset of much of the Republican Congressional caucus and its allies in think tanks, among campaign hacks and activists, and in a sizable chunk of its electoral base.
It’s a realization many of us had come to long ago. It’s one of the reasons many of us ended up at Daily Kos, the knowledge that George W. Bush, his allies in Congress and the people who push them in to power will use unscrupulous means to attain, maintain and exercise power. They know they have to conceal their unscrupulousness from the public.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin gamely works around our 1st station break, rounding up a heavily Trump-tainted news cycle. Gop scrambles for more filibuster-proof vehicles. AG caught in collusion scandal! (In SC.) KXL may “collapse under its own weight” before Obamacare.
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