One of my daughters is an engineer. Many of the the men in her engineering class understood higher math quicker than she did and she had to work harder than many of them on the math. But once she understood it, they were at parity. However, she does much better at communicating than most of the total math jocks.
This has shown me that we should allow women to learn math in a different way than men. They might need more time to absorb the concepts, but once they get them it is about even. Their verbal skills being better than men makes a big difference in moving on to management level jobs. My daughter makes big bucks now because of the differences between men and women.
It disturbs me greatly that political correctness has taken many subjects off the table and has caused our society to make absurd and costly false equalities.
The most obvious example that comes to my mind was during the Clinton years when all of the Armed Forces – except for the Marines – were required to reduce their physical standards so that women could meet them. The men were no longer challenged. Notably, all of the services – except the Marines – had difficulty meeting their recruitment goals.
In a related example, whereas it used to take 2 men to carry a stretcher in the battlefield – now regulations call for 4 – because women do not have the same upper body strength.
That is a false equality.
I had many friends who worked in the fire department in San Antonio. They love and respect women – but frankly were quite concerned how they would be able to handle the situation of pulling a 300 lb man out of a second story building. That is understandable. The police department had a similar concern about the weight of the belts they must carry. And sure enough, the first police woman to try to swim a river after a suspect drowned.
Certainly there are women who are strong enough to carry a belt, a stretcher, pry a large man out a window or meet the previous physical standards for the military. These should not be held back. OTOH, it is a burden to the taxpayer to force a false equity.
Jeepers, we don’t do it on sports teams or in entertainment. Where a particular ethnicity or gender excels in a sport, they will dominate by the numbers because it is all about winning. False equality seems to be less important than winning. Likewise, if the role calls for a woman – a man is not cast and so on. But then Hollywood has always enjoyed an exemption from the political correctness it demands of others.
I’m not yet convinced – though I could be persuaded – that superiority of German engineering, Asian mathematics and the like is genetic. The social structures and methods of education are quite different and would need to be shown as not relevant to their apparent superiority in certain disciplines.
All of which brings me back to men and women and math.
There are obvious genetic differences between the sexes. But as with the examples in the military – there are also notable exceptions. Lisa Randall stands out as a prime example.
IMHO, the wrong approach would be to lower the standards of math education to level the playing field and create a ‘false equality’ as was done by Clinton’s administration wrt the military.
I am one of those women who are drawn to mathematics – in particular, geometric physics. Condescension would be insulting, thus I greatly appreciate it when tortoise and Doctor Stochastic battle it out with me toe-to-toe.
tortoise and I have an ongoing dispute on algorithmic information theory. For those who are deeply involved in that field, it has the keys of a mathematical ‘theory of everything’. and evidently therein exists a tendency to think of AIT as preeminent to all other disciplines.
Though I readily agree to the “unreasonable effectiveness of math” - I beg to differ as to preeminence. IMHO, preeminence goes to geometry from which mathematics and the physical laws arise. IOW, mathematical structures (though existing beyond it) apply to and because of, space/time. I believe that Einstein (pure marble of geometry), Vafa, Randall, Barrow and Tegmark would be more in my ballpark than tortoise's - but then tortoise is speaking of pure math.
IOW, the argument may well reduce to a point of view - mathematics alone or mathematical physics.
Likewise, Doctor Stochastic and I have an ongoing dispute over randomness. In his corner are random number generators (he has authored many), Brownian motion and the ilk. In my corner are physical causation, Wolfram’s pseudo-randomness and the ilk.
These disputes are great fun for those of us who are actually interested in them. And we share a great mutual respect as we stand there toe-to-toe and assert our contrary views.
But it would be a mistake to presume that I must be wrong because I am a woman and they are not …
"It disturbs me greatly that political correctness has taken many subjects off the table and has caused our society to make absurd and costly false equalities."
PC is destroying our country.
"The most obvious example that comes to my mind was during the Clinton years when all of the Armed Forces – except for the Marines – were required to reduce their physical standards so that women could meet them. The men were no longer challenged. Notably, all of the services – except the Marines – had difficulty meeting their recruitment goals."
Women should be in separate status like they were in WWII.
The main problem with women in combat is it is too distracting to the men. We don't like to see women get hurt. Acclimatizing men to watching women get blown up is a bad idea. I am a combat vet. If my ship had gone out of port with a bunch of women on it, my wife would have burned down the Naval base. ;-)
"In a related example, whereas it used to take 2 men to carry a stretcher in the battlefield – now regulations call for 4 – because women do not have the same upper body strength."
Woman should not be in combat. It would be ok for them to be in radar planes, intell and other support. But we should not have them anywhere close to ground combat. The Navy shouldn't have them on board either. Putting a bunch of teenagers on a boat together is like having a naked coed sleepover. ;-)
"That is a false equality."
Agreed
"tortoise and I have an ongoing dispute on algorithmic information theory"
I am as ignorant of AIT as creationists are of biology.
"These disputes are great fun for those of us who are actually interested in them. And we share a great mutual respect as we stand there toe-to-toe and assert our contrary views."
Yeah, I don't have any problem with honest debate. What bothers me are the so called "christians" who keep posting the same fraudulent arguments as if they had any merit.
"But it would be a mistake to presume that I must be wrong because I am a woman and they are not … "
What I have learned in over 35 years of marriage is that woman are always right. ;-) (At least if you don't want the sofa for a bed for a few days.)
I really like that ad where the wife comes out in a new dress and asks if she looks fat in it. The guy says, "You betcha".