The Third Bit

File Under “Really Not Getting It”

The New York Times ran a piece today on the under-representation of women in the sciences—in the Fashion and Style section, of course, because hey, women don’t read the business pages, do they? *sigh*

Later: a friend pointed me at this piece in the Boston Globe, titled “The Freedom to Say No”. Its basic thrust is that women are scarce in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) because they’d rather do other things. There’s acknowledgment of “rampant sexism” (the article, quoting a study), but most of the article is based on “men like things, women like people, so self-selection explains the imbalance”. It’s a pity its author appears not to have read Ceci and Williams, or s/he might have realized just how many holes there are in that argument.