Author: Roy F. Baumeister, Ph.D.
In January 2005, Lawrence Summers, at the time the president of Harvard University, ignited a national controversy by speculating about why there were more men than women among the tenured professors in the natural sciences departments at Harvard. As far as I can tell, he didn’t actually say anything that constituted oppression or discrimination, nor did anyone accuse him of having been biased against women in his policies. His crimes were crimes of thought. He expressed some ideas that aren’t permitted to be thought. He wondered whether there were more men than women at the highest levels of intellectual ability.
What followed has been described as a heated debate, though “debate” implies an exchange of views between two sides, and most of what was said was simply critical of him and his right to say what he did. “Scandal” would be a more appropriate word than “debate” or “controversy,” because nobody was saying he was right. The only debate was as to how severely he should be punished for thinking and saying that there might be more men than women with the high level of innate ability required for making major breakthroughs in the natural sciences.
Summers was forced to back down and apologize and, not long after, he resigned, though the resignation was forced by multiple factors in the institutional politics of the university. Before he resigned, he had to go beyond apology and pledge to spend 50 million of Harvard’s dollars to help solve the problem of the lack of women scientists. This was pledged in the name of “diversity,” though as various pundits drily pointed out, it clearly wasn’t for promoting diversity of opinion. On the contrary, the episode suggested that diversity of opinion is not welcome at Harvard. Rather, the money was essentially to provide funding for women scientists and feminist administrators to analyze what is wrong with Harvard to cause it to have fewer women than men among its top scientists.
What do the data actually say? Summers’ critics do have data to which they can point. To be precisely fair, there is a small difference between average male and female scores on math and science aptitude tests, with males scoring slightly higher. But it is hardly enough to explain the severe gender imbalance in Harvard physicists or Nobel Prize winners.
The main research finding toward which his detractors can point, I believe, is that on average, women and men are equally intelligent. Average IQ scores are about the same in men as in women. (Throughout childhood, girls score higher than boys, and then the boys catch up and move very slightly ahead in adulthood.) Anyone who says that on average men are meaningfully smarter than women overall is wrong. Depending on which studies you cite and how small a difference you will accept, there is either no difference at all or such a small difference that it is meaningless for practical purposes.
Everybody agreed, of course, that there are in actual fact more men than women among Harvard’s tenured professors in natural sciences. In this, Harvard is similar to most other places. Among top scientists all over the world, men outnumber the women.
But Summers did not actually say that men are smarter than women. Nor did he say men are better at math and science than women are.
Math and science ability, like intelligence generally, is distributed along a continuum, with plenty of average people in the middle and small numbers scattered at the extremes. What Dr. Summers said was that at the high end—where the math and science genius-level intellects are found—there are more men than women.
This doesn’t mean that men are on average smarter than women, though it could have meant that. After all, if men and women are found in roughly equal numbers all along the distribution except at the genius level, then the male average IQ would be higher.
But a surplus of men at the high end could also mean that there are more men at both extremes. It is possible to have more male than female geniuses even if the average IQ for men and women were exactly the same to the tenth decimal place—provided there are also more men than women at the other extreme, that is, with very low intelligence. In other words, it is statistically possible that there are more super-smart men than women, if there are also more hugely stupid men than women.
The crucial test case, therefore, is to look at the extreme low end. No one in the Summers debate brought this up or even asked whether there are more males at the bottom of the IQ distribution.
The data about low intelligence are indisputable, and far more definite than the data on genius, simply because researchers study mental retardation far more than they study giftedness.
There are more mentally retarded boys than girls. No matter what test or population you study, there are always more males.
There’s no way around it. At the extreme low end of intelligence, males outnumber females.
In fact, as you move from the mildly retarded levels to the most severely retarded, the gender difference gets bigger—further evidence that it’s a real effect. And, crucially, that is the same pattern found with genius: as you go from mild to moderate to extreme, there are fewer and fewer girls relative to the number of boys. Super-genius and severely retarded are both mostly boys’ clubs, though a few exceptional girls do show up too.
All those retarded boys are not the handiwork of patriarchy! There is no conspiracy by men to make each other’s sons mentally retarded. Somehow it just happens that there are more retarded boys than girls.
Nor is it some unlucky stereotype or the product of biased socialization. Nobody tries to bring up their children to be retarded. No parent wants to have a mentally handicapped child, whether a son or a daughter. The familiar litany of social causes, from expectations to selective pressures and socialization, hardly seems likely to be at work in producing all those boys who lack the ability to think, reason, and understand at a normal level. But more parents of sons than of daughters end up with a retarded child.
If the oversupply of retarded boys is not the result of men defending patriarchy, then quite likely the oversupply of genius boys isn’t either. The most likely explanation is that some strong influence of Mother Nature produces both extremes. Something in the biology of maleness produces more cases at both extremes.
Now, let’s not overstate the case. There are plenty of female geniuses, just like there are plenty of mentally retarded females. Women can be found across the entire spectrum of intelligence, from the very top to the very bottom. But, in general, women cluster more in the middle, whereas men are spread out a little more to the extremes.
On this, Dr. Summers was quite right, at least in the sense of having a solid scientific basis for what he said.
Put another way, the average man and the average woman are almost exactly equal in intelligence. But across the population, men are both a little stupider and a little smarter than women. If you look only at the most and least intelligent people, you will find men outnumber women in both groups.
In January 2005, Lawrence Summers, at the time the president of Harvard University, ignited a national controversy by speculating about why there were more men than women among the tenured professors in the natural sciences departments at Harvard. As far as I can tell, he didn’t actually say anything that constituted oppression or discrimination, nor did anyone accuse him of having been biased against women in his policies. His crimes were crimes of thought. He expressed some ideas that aren’t permitted to be thought. He wondered whether there were more men than women at the highest levels of intellectual ability.
What followed has been described as a heated debate, though “debate” implies an exchange of views between two sides, and most of what was said was simply critical of him and his right to say what he did. “Scandal” would be a more appropriate word than “debate” or “controversy,” because nobody was saying he was right. The only debate was as to how severely he should be punished for thinking and saying that there might be more men than women with the high level of innate ability required for making major breakthroughs in the natural sciences.
Summers was forced to back down and apologize and, not long after, he resigned, though the resignation was forced by multiple factors in the institutional politics of the university. Before he resigned, he had to go beyond apology and pledge to spend 50 million of Harvard’s dollars to help solve the problem of the lack of women scientists. This was pledged in the name of “diversity,” though as various pundits drily pointed out, it clearly wasn’t for promoting diversity of opinion. On the contrary, the episode suggested that diversity of opinion is not welcome at Harvard. Rather, the money was essentially to provide funding for women scientists and feminist administrators to analyze what is wrong with Harvard to cause it to have fewer women than men among its top scientists.
What do the data actually say? Summers’ critics do have data to which they can point. To be precisely fair, there is a small difference between average male and female scores on math and science aptitude tests, with males scoring slightly higher. But it is hardly enough to explain the severe gender imbalance in Harvard physicists or Nobel Prize winners.
The main research finding toward which his detractors can point, I believe, is that on average, women and men are equally intelligent. Average IQ scores are about the same in men as in women. (Throughout childhood, girls score higher than boys, and then the boys catch up and move very slightly ahead in adulthood.) Anyone who says that on average men are meaningfully smarter than women overall is wrong. Depending on which studies you cite and how small a difference you will accept, there is either no difference at all or such a small difference that it is meaningless for practical purposes.
Everybody agreed, of course, that there are in actual fact more men than women among Harvard’s tenured professors in natural sciences. In this, Harvard is similar to most other places. Among top scientists all over the world, men outnumber the women.
But Summers did not actually say that men are smarter than women. Nor did he say men are better at math and science than women are.
Math and science ability, like intelligence generally, is distributed along a continuum, with plenty of average people in the middle and small numbers scattered at the extremes. What Dr. Summers said was that at the high end—where the math and science genius-level intellects are found—there are more men than women.
This doesn’t mean that men are on average smarter than women, though it could have meant that. After all, if men and women are found in roughly equal numbers all along the distribution except at the genius level, then the male average IQ would be higher.
But a surplus of men at the high end could also mean that there are more men at both extremes. It is possible to have more male than female geniuses even if the average IQ for men and women were exactly the same to the tenth decimal place—provided there are also more men than women at the other extreme, that is, with very low intelligence. In other words, it is statistically possible that there are more super-smart men than women, if there are also more hugely stupid men than women.
The crucial test case, therefore, is to look at the extreme low end. No one in the Summers debate brought this up or even asked whether there are more males at the bottom of the IQ distribution.
The data about low intelligence are indisputable, and far more definite than the data on genius, simply because researchers study mental retardation far more than they study giftedness.
There are more mentally retarded boys than girls. No matter what test or population you study, there are always more males.
There’s no way around it. At the extreme low end of intelligence, males outnumber females.
In fact, as you move from the mildly retarded levels to the most severely retarded, the gender difference gets bigger—further evidence that it’s a real effect. And, crucially, that is the same pattern found with genius: as you go from mild to moderate to extreme, there are fewer and fewer girls relative to the number of boys. Super-genius and severely retarded are both mostly boys’ clubs, though a few exceptional girls do show up too.
All those retarded boys are not the handiwork of patriarchy! There is no conspiracy by men to make each other’s sons mentally retarded. Somehow it just happens that there are more retarded boys than girls.
Nor is it some unlucky stereotype or the product of biased socialization. Nobody tries to bring up their children to be retarded. No parent wants to have a mentally handicapped child, whether a son or a daughter. The familiar litany of social causes, from expectations to selective pressures and socialization, hardly seems likely to be at work in producing all those boys who lack the ability to think, reason, and understand at a normal level. But more parents of sons than of daughters end up with a retarded child.
If the oversupply of retarded boys is not the result of men defending patriarchy, then quite likely the oversupply of genius boys isn’t either. The most likely explanation is that some strong influence of Mother Nature produces both extremes. Something in the biology of maleness produces more cases at both extremes.
Now, let’s not overstate the case. There are plenty of female geniuses, just like there are plenty of mentally retarded females. Women can be found across the entire spectrum of intelligence, from the very top to the very bottom. But, in general, women cluster more in the middle, whereas men are spread out a little more to the extremes.
On this, Dr. Summers was quite right, at least in the sense of having a solid scientific basis for what he said.
Put another way, the average man and the average woman are almost exactly equal in intelligence. But across the population, men are both a little stupider and a little smarter than women. If you look only at the most and least intelligent people, you will find men outnumber women in both groups.
