The MIT Discrimination Report: "Junk Science"?

In March 1999, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a report 
(available on the Web at http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html ) admitting 
that MIT had discriminated against female faculty members.  In December 1999, 
an organization called the Independent Women's Forum published a report by
psychology professor Judith Kleinfeld of the University of Alaska criticizing
the MIT report as "junk science."  (Kleinfeld's report, too, is available on
the Web, at http://www.uaf.edu/northern/mitstudy/ ).  Kleinfeld's charges
gave rise to Part 1 of the following discussion on WMST-L in December 1999. 
Part 2 deals with a later challenge to the MIT Report, again from the
Independent Women's Forum. This one (and the IWF) was discussed
briefly on WMST-L in February 2001. For additional WMST-L files now
available on the Web, see the WMST-L File Collection.

PAGE 1 OF 2

Not to start up the standard of proof and feminist methodology argument
again, but ...

(Aside: If the IWF is "independent," then my butt is upholstered in
paisley plush velvet)

             "Flame is its own reflection." -- Silver Apples
           ckile  @  mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu || www.tulane.edu/~wc


---------- Forwarded message ----------

This story from The Chronicle of Higher Education
(http://chronicle.com) was forwarded to you from: ckile  @  mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu

  Wednesday, December 15, 1999

  Professor Disputes Scientific Validity of Report on Sex Bias
  at MIT

  By ROBIN WILSON

  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology shocked academe and
  won national recognition when it issued a report this year
  admitting that it had discriminated against female faculty
  members. Now, a psychology professor at the University of
  Alaska at Fairbanks is casting doubt on the M.I.T. report,
  saying it was based on a scientifically flawed study that does
  not prove that discrimination exists at M.I.T.

  The Independent Women's Forum, a non-profit organization in
  Washington, D.C., has published a report by the professor,
  Judith S. Kleinfeld, called "M.I.T. Tarnishes Its Reputation
  With Gender Junk Science." In the 23-page document, Ms.
  Kleinfeld says the M.I.T. report was used to give salary
  increases, more laboratory space, and other rewards to female
  professors in the name of equity, even though it offers no
  hard data to support its claims of discrimination. She
  dismisses the report as a "political manifesto masquerading as
  science."

  Senior female professors at M.I.T. who complained about
  discrimination wrote the report based on their own viewpoints,
  not on scientifically collected data, charges Ms. Kleinfeld.
  And administrators who agreed to redress their claims of
  discrimination simply wanted to pacify the women, she
  contends. Robert J. Birgeneau, the dean of science at M.I.T.
  who has just been named president of the University of
  Toronto, did not return telephone calls Tuesday, but he has
  told reporters in the past that the M.I.T. study was "data
  driven."

  Ms. Kleinfeld says M.I.T. should release empirical evidence of
  discrimination, if there is any. "They have the obligation to
  present the data to the scientific community for debate, and
  they haven't done this," Ms. Kleinfeld said in an interview.

  The M.I.T. report, which was released in March, said that a
  study on the campus had found that senior female scientists
  earned less money, had smaller laboratories, and were less
  likely to serve on prominent committees than their male
  colleagues. The M.I.T. report and administrators' reaction to
  it have reverberated around the country, attracting the
  attention of women on other campuses who hope to duplicate the
  study. (See a story from The Chronicle, December 3.)

  Nancy Hopkins, a professor of biology at M.I.T. who
  spearheaded the effort, acknowledges that the report her
  committee issued does not include data. But she says that is
  not because the data do not exist. Women on the committee, she
  says, wanted the information to remain confidential because
  they feared they would be retaliated against for publicizing
  their personal situations in detail. For its part, M.I.T.
  agreed to make the study public only if details of the
  discrimination were omitted.

  People on other campuses wouldn't have reacted to the study
  the way they have if it hadn't touched a nerve, maintains Ms.
  Hopkins. "I don't think you can have a response which is so
  immediate and so vast unless you're saying what people already
  know," she said in an interview. "There's a truth here which,
  by M.I.T. saying it's true, gave it validity."

  But Ms. Kleinfeld says the only statistic the report offers as
  evidence of discrimination -- that there are vastly fewer
  female scientists at M.I.T. than male scientists -- doesn't
  prove anything. Fewer women than men may receive Ph.D.'s in
  the hard sciences and pursue careers in those fields because
  they simply prefer not to, not because they've been
  discriminated against, she writes. "Most women earning
  advanced degrees prefer the professions and sciences dealing
  with people and living things -- not the physical sciences,"
  writes Ms. Kleinfeld. Studies show that men, by contrast, take
  "great delight in abstract intellectual inquiry," she writes.

  Ms. Hopkins says that's ridiculous. On every campus she has
  visited to talk about the M.I.T. report, she says, female
  graduate students and postdoctoral candidates speak to her
  about discrimination they've faced in pursuing careers in the
  sciences. "Their No. 1 question," she says, "is 'Should I
  speak out against unequal treatment I see and risk damage to
  my career, or should I be quiet?'"


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But Ms. Kleinfeld says the only statistic the report offers as
   evidence of discrimination -- that there are vastly fewer
   female scientists at M.I.T. than male scientists -- doesn't
   prove anything. Fewer women than men may receive Ph.D.'s in
   the hard sciences and pursue careers in those fields because
   they simply prefer not to, not because they've been
   discriminated against, she writes. "Most women earning
   advanced degrees prefer the professions and sciences dealing
   with people and living things -- not the physical sciences,"
   writes Ms. Kleinfeld. Studies show that men, by contrast, take
   "great delight in abstract intellectual inquiry," she writes.

Isn't this commentary, at least in part, a twin of the chicken and egg debate?
 To claim that women are not discriminated against and that they choose to be in
 disciplines which deal with "people and living things" rather than perform
 "abstract intellectual inquiry" is an example of the way in which women are
 shunted into such routes and then told that we "freely" chose them.  It also
 reflects the mind-men/body-women binary when you look at the language used.
 Women aren't being 'intellectual' in the humanities, apparently.... Bah humbug.

Alyson Buckman
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
Illinois College

I would like to know what the hard data are in the MIT case, and I see
nothing wrong in someone asking that they be released instead of inviting
us to assume that claims and charges equal facts and biases.  Also, I'm
struck by the fact that Kleinfeld's hypotheses about why women and men
enter scientific fields at different rates somewhat resemble many feminist
assertions--e.g., Women's Ways of Knowing, and its argument for "connected
learning," or Carol Gilligan's work and the many other women's studies
books that indeed see women and men as different in their learning styles,
intellectual interests, and even moral development.  That all this--if it's
true--might result in different career choices isn't surprising.
---------------------------------
daphne.patai  @  spanport.umass.edu

Dear WMST-L:

>>"Most women earning
>>  advanced degrees prefer the professions and sciences dealing
>>  with people and living things -- not the physical sciences,"
>>  writes Ms. Kleinfeld. Studies show that men, by contrast, take
>>  "great delight in abstract intellectual inquiry," she writes.

How in the world could I see Ms. Kleinfeld as an objective observer
when she makes such patriarchal statements?  Anyone who says that
"men, by contrast, take great delight in abstract intellectual inquiry"
obviously thinks the male is superior to the female.  Kleinfeld obviously
hasn't been in a biology, psychology, sociology,
linguistics, or medical science class, for all of these fields offer
plenty of abstract intellectual inquiry.

Indeed, I wonder what she'd say about poststructuralist feminists like Luce
Irigaray, who seem addicted to abstract intellectual inquiry.

Kleinfeld probably thinks software engineering is a field of "abstract
intellectual inquiry"; however, it's still not considered a true
engineering discipline.  "Like musket making before Eli Whitney", said
a pundit in a Scientific American article a few years ago.  But since
most software engineers are men, we would have to link it to those
superior male minds reveling in "abstract intellectual inquiry."

There is one area where I would probably agree with Kleinfeld.  I do
think the MIT leaders were trying to placate women.  If they were
REALLY interested in gender justice, they would have taken an Intro
to Women's Studies class, read books like Johnson's "The Gender Knot"
and  Lerner's "The Creation of Patriarchy" and "The Creation of Feminist
Consciousness", joined feminist organizations, challenged other men's
sexism, etc.  They would have taken the initiative of asking, "How does MIT
perpetuate patriarchy?  And how can we start being part of the solution,
instead of part of the problem?"  They
would have put their wives' careers first and become full-time
househusbands.

Kathleen Trigiani
ktrig246  @  airmail.net


*********************************************
"Out of the Cave:  Exploring Gray's Anatomy"
http://web2.airmail.net/ktrig246/out_of_cave/
You Don't Have to Settle For Mars&Venus!

In a message dated 99-12-15 16:39:09 EST, you write:

<< books that indeed see women and men as different in their learning styles,
 intellectual interests, and even moral development.  That all this--if it's
 true--might result in different career choices isn't surprising. >>

Am I slow?  Are we saying that you can only do math one way, for example?
That the *boys-way* is the right way and that only a few girls will do it
that way????
Women who program computers may have alternative approaches to the problem
solving work but we (I still consider myself in that sorority also) happen to
think that our way has considerable advantages.

One of the premises in my work, my experience and in my book is that these
are demonstrably unfounded.  There's not only more than one way to do math,
there's more math subjects than currently included in curricula.  If you take
the definition of math as the science of pattern then it's clear that we have
in math the same situation that we have in arts -- fine is what one sex does
and craft is the other...

This leads to the situation that the entrance to the halls of the elite are
guarded by those who define math to be what *they* do... precisely why it's
time to adopt the newer math curricula which acknowledges that math is not a
*pipeline*

Just as "women's history" is a sidelight of the *real* history courses!!!
Jeanette
<A HREF="Dectire'">http://members.aol.com/dectire/">Dectire' Publishing &
Quantification</A>

In case it hasn't been posted before, here is the URL for the MIT study:
http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html

The Kleinfeld/IWF report is here:
http://www.uaf.edu/northern/mitstudy/

I've only had time to intensively skim them this morning, but, IMHO, these
would make good reading/discussion assignments in a variety of
wmst classes.

Since it's been taken up as this entity ("The MIT Report"), the MIT report
certainly begs scrutiny and discussion. However, Kleinfeld's reduction of
the issue to gender parity in departments (and the future of parity in the
physical sciences) seems really strange -- but I guess not since the the
low numbers of women faculty is the only "evidence" she accepts. Her/The
IWF report seems mostly a rehash/repackaging of her earlier "why schools
don't shortchange girls" work.

CK

P.S.: I got a laugh from Kleinfeld's intro:

"My father, an MIT scholarship boy, took great pride in his Class of 33
ring. The "Brass Rat," as the ring is affectionately called, was never off
his finger. The beaver, natures engineer, stands in the center and MITs
Great Dome, patterned on the Pantheon, juts out from the sides. His ring
is mine now, resized to fit my finger.

"My father was fond of a maxim, which he learned at MIT and which he
impressed on me: "The truth will out and the truth is best."


            "Flame is its own reflection." -- Silver Apples
           ckile  @  mailhost.tcs.tulane.edu || www.tulane.edu/~wc

One of the explanations for women's underrepresentation in academia is
the "pipeline" argument, which suggests that women are underrepresented
because they do not earn PhDs at the same rates as men do -- and that as
women make their way through the education "pipeline" any
underrepresentation will fade away. This is the basic argument that
appears in Kleinfeld's article, as reported by the Chronicle:
 
>   But Ms. Kleinfeld says the only statistic the report offers as
>   evidence of discrimination -- that there are vastly fewer
>   female scientists at M.I.T. than male scientists -- doesn't
>   prove anything. Fewer women than men may receive Ph.D.'s in
>   the hard sciences and pursue careers in those fields because
>   they simply prefer not to, not because they've been
>   discriminated against, she writes. "Most women earning
>   advanced degrees prefer the professions and sciences dealing
>   with people and living things -- not the physical sciences,"
>   writes Ms. Kleinfeld. Studies show that men, by contrast, take
>   "great delight in abstract intellectual inquiry," she writes.
 
As others have noted, this argument is flawed, as discrimination against
girls/women at different stages in their careers can help explain these
lower levels of participation.
 
In addition, I think it's important to note that *many* studies have
suggested that the pipeline model doesn't explain why women are
underrepresented even compared to their levels of earning doctorates. At
every level, there is a drop-off in women -- women are less likely to
get academic jobs, to earn tenure, to be promoted, to stay in academia.
This is true even in disciplines in the humanities and social sciences
that produce *more* women PhDs than men PhDs. The competing explanation
offered by many of these empirical studies is that women may face an
accumulation of disadvantage in their careers.
 
I haven't read the Kleinfeld study yet, but I do think it's important
that it be placed in the context of a large literature on women and
minorities in science and academia. The work of scholars such as
Jonathan Cole, Mary Frank Fox, Linda Grant & Kathryn Ward, J. Scott
Long, Gerhard Sonnert, Virginia Valian, and Harriet Zuckerman all shed
light on these issues (there are many other excellent studies as well).
For anyone looking for a readable introduction to this topic, I'd
suggest Virginia Valian's Why So Slow? The Advancement of Women
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).
 
Joya Misra
 
********************************************************************
Joya Misra
Assistant Professor of Sociology and Public Policy
SADRI -- W34A Machmer Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA  01003-4830
 
(413) 545-5969
Fax (413) 545-0746
 
misra  @  soc.umass.edu

Pardon me for the length of this post, but hopefully
list members will find something of interest, and perhaps
even of use for discussions with others, in these musings.
 
Daphne Patai suggested that it's not surprising women
might make different career choices than men, if theories
about women's ways of knowing and connected learning
are true.  Even if women do have different ways of
knowing (all women? in all times and places?) and are more
interested in connected learning or more responsive to it,
as a scientist and engineer I must protest against the apparent
assumption that there is no room in the "hard" sciences or
engineering for connection and multiple ways of knowing.
 
I also think it's a bit hasty, not to say foolish, to assume that
IF women do think and learn and know differently, they would
NOT be interested in applying those different ways of knowing
in ALL SORTS of fields.  From what I understand, Belenky et al.
and Gilligan are talking about different ways of seeing the
world - not about different choices in careers or different interests
in subject matter.  One can apply a methodology, an approach,
an interest, a way of making connections or knowing things,
in a wide range of areas.  Let us distinguish between how an
individual may approach problem solving or investigation, versus
what subject area they want to apply their approach to.
 
If, for example, intuition and connection have no place in the
"hard" sciences, and furthermore, these are ways of knowing
that are solely limited to women, then what do we make of
August Kekule, who was inspired by imagery in a dream to
propose the structure for the benzene molecule, and who talked
about dancing atoms, and the importance of dreams and visions
in arriving at his profound contributions to organic chemistry?
(In his own words:  "Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, and then
perhaps we shall learn the truth.")
One could propose that, based on Kekule's recommendation,
women ought to make BETTER scientists than men.
But this would be just as silly as many other assumptions
people seem compelled to rush to when they start talking
about women in science and engineering.
 
For example, Judith Kleinfeld makes several assumptions as
reported in the Chronicle article for which she offers little support.
She says women (again, that monolithic notion) prefer professions
dealing with people and living things, while men (all men?) delight in abstract
intellectual inquiry.  What do we make of all the men who are
not out there pursuing careers in the physical sciences and
engineering?  How did they get sidetracked from their love
of abstract intellectual inquiry?  How is it that abstract intellectual
inquiry is limited only to the physical sciences? (It's not.)  Are there no
women who delight in such things, whether in or outside
of the physical sciences?  (There are, inside and out.)
 
Kleinfeld calls for release of the data on which the MIT study is
based, but judges the study as scientifically flawed without
having first examined the data she calls for.  Now THAT'S
bad science!  She says MIT has an obligation to release the
data to the scientific community for debate, but this is
arguable.  MIT conducted an internal study for purposes
of evaluating the situation of women faculty at MIT and used
the results of that study to make decisions about resource
allocation at MIT.  This is not the same as receiving public
funding for a research study, where one does have some
obligation to share the results of the study with the scientific
community at large. I can't see that MIT is under obligation to
release this data to anyone for any purpose, especially given
that it is a private institution.  What MIT did do is release the
general conclusions and the actions MIT is taking based on
those conclusions, and it's nice they shared that with the
world.  It would be even nicer if we saw more of the data,
but they may have their own valid reasons for not doing so,
e.g., to protect the privacy of the women involved, or to protect
MIT by not letting out data about just exactly how they have been 
treating women faculty.
 
A central theme of Kleinfeld's argument, and one that
Patai picks up on, is that supposedly fewer women receive
PhD's in the "hard" sciences and pursue careers in those
fields simply because they prefer not to.  Leaving aside the
question of WHY they might prefer not to (and as a scientist,
if I saw such a skewed distribution in any set of data from
any set of experiments I was conducting, I would surely
recognize it as abnormal and want to know what was causing
it - there's a reason why we use the term normal distribution!),
leaving aside that question and saying for the sake of argument
that truly fewer women prefer careers in the sciences than
do men because that's just the way it is - it is STILL possible that
those few women who do prefer such careers and ended up at MIT,
could be discriminated against in resource allocation compared to 
their male colleagues.
 
And THIS is what the MIT study is talking about.
NOT about why women choose to go into science, or whether most
women prefer warm fuzzy topics while most men prefer hard
abstract concepts, or whether Carol Gilligan's theory proves that
there's nothing you can do to increase the numbers of women in
science since they prefer to be connected, or whether Belenky et al.'s 
study shows that women's brains just work differently and so they 
simply aren't suited to science even if they wanted to do it.
The MIT study doesn't even talk about whether science is a place
where only abstract intellectual approaches are useful, and connected
knowing has no place.  It simply talks about, for women and men who
have chosen for whatever reasons to practice what we call science,
that there seem to be some differences in the way resource allocations
have been carried out at one particular institution in one particular
period of time, and those differences appear to have resulted because
of discriminatory practices.  Now, this study may lead to discussions 
of all the other topics listed above, but it can't be used to prove or 
disprove much about any of those theories.  And to cite those theories 
as reasons why the study should be dismissed is, well, once again, 
bad science!
 
Finally, if men are so well suited to abstract intellectual inquiry, and
so in love with the hard sciences and data, and if (as is true) men
are overwhelmingly the ones occupying positions of power at MIT,
and the MIT women faculty are just whining and making up inequities
in order to get stuff they don't deserve - how is it that these women,
with their soft connected fuzzy data-less study, managed to overwhelm
the hard abstract intellectual defenses of men in power and wrest
from their control more money and office and lab space?
If I were a man at MIT who was involved in making decisions about
resource allocation and had been involved in the response to this
study, I would be profoundly insulted by implications that I had caved in
to and wanted to placate a few weak fuzzy powerless not-as-good whining
women scientists who had no compelling data and who had low salaries and 
little office space because that's what they deserved.  Not to mention 
that I would be wondering what was the supposed compelling reason
for my wanting to placate them and cave in.
If I were a hard, abstract, data-loving man at MIT, and whining
women scientists with no data presented me with a flawed
study, I'd just ignore them.
 
But that's not what happened, is it?  So, either the male administrators
at MIT, that bastion of science and engineering excellence, don't
care much for abstraction and data and hardness, and are really
quite lousy scientists - or there was some substance to the
study that they responded to.  Those are two possible theories
that fit the facts we have at hand.   If they are lousy scientists
and make stupid decisions about resource allocation, then they
will probably go out of business soon and we won't need to trouble
ourselves about them much longer.  If we do not think they are
lousy scientists we might conclude that it's just possible that they may
have made some rational decisions.
 
If MIT released a report on conclusions from a study that had been
done at MIT on something else - some recognizably hard topic,
like, say, physicist discovers new subatomic particle, I wonder if
we would hear a chorus of "This is just charge and conjecture!
Where's the data?  I can't believe this physicist has discovered
a new particle until I see the actual data!  I think they're just 
making it up to get more attention as a scientist and grab more resources!"
No, we'd just assume the physicist knew what he/she was talking about,
especially since he/she was at MIT.  You may say, the data would
be out there in the scientific literature.  I ask, how many of us who
are not physicists (and most of us aren't) could look at that data
and determine whether the physicist was telling the truth or not?
We take the word of MIT, and the scientific establishment, because
we trust that MIT and physicists will not lie to us about subatomic
particles.  Yet we are not willing to concede that same trust to
MIT's process for making decisions about allocation of resources.
We respect and worship MIT for its production of hard science,
yet assume that MIT is incapable of objectively assessing the
situation of women faculty and making reasonable decisions.
How can MIT be such a great scientific institution yet so stupid
with money decisions?  That's not a scientifically reasonable
proposition, and anyone who seriously contends that MIT can be
overwhelmed by whining women scientists who have no data,
either is not capable of thinking logically, or really means to say,
that they don't believe women ever have been or are discriminated
against and should not be listened to when they say they are.
 
Suzanne E. Franks, PhD   sefranks  @  ksu.edu
Director, Women in Engineering and Science Program, Kansas State University

At 06:40 PM 12/16/99 -0500, you wrote:
 
>One of the premises in my work, my experience and in my book is that these
>are demonstrably unfounded.  There's not only more than one way to do math,
>there's more math subjects than currently included in curricula.  If you take
>the definition of math as the science of pattern then it's clear that we have
>in math the same situation that we have in arts -- fine is what one sex does
>and craft is the other...
 
I am sorry that I have not had a chance to read your book.  I will be
moving back to the US next year and will enjoy having access to libraries
where I will be able to find the books I have been waiting to read.
However, I learned that there is more than one way to do math from life
experience.  My children, in their traditional (francophone) Belgian
school, have learned math in ways that are so different from the way I
learned it in US schools that I can barely help them.  For instance, in the
first 2 1/2 years of elementary school, children are forbidden to do the
more complicated math problems on paper.  They must do them all in their
heads.  Special techniques are taught.  Throughout elementary school they
are also taught mathematical theory, whereas in the US math education is
centered on the practical.  Throughout their secondary school education the
sciences and math have been considered to be integrative, whereas in the US
they are divided into distinct categories.  I do not mean that my sons are
not taking a separate physics, chemistry, or math class, just that the
approach to sciences and math seems to be more holistic here than in the US.
 
I know that there are some subscribers to this list from France.  Perhaps
they might like to compare their experiences with math and science
education.  Perhaps the distinction I am making is general for the
French-speaking world.
 
At any rate, certainly how one learns math and science is culturally and
socially constructed.
 
Loni Bramson