Biology and Culture: Reasoning as to Why Women Are Under-Represented in Math and Science

In 2005, January 14, Lawrence H. Summers, ex-President of Harvard, made a speech on the under-representation of women in careers involving science and mathematics. He ignited an uproar when he said, among other hypotheses, that innate differences in math ability between men and women might be one reason as to why fewer women succeed in these fields. One of his main points was that women do not have the same innate ability as men in certain fields and this sparked a massive controversy. In his defense he told the media that he sought to be provocative yet he must have underestimated how the public would react toward his provocative speech. The question is, is there a scientific biological component explaining the under-representation of women in math and science? A person who supports Summers 's view is Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker (2005) who provides a more thorough and coherent analysis, compared to Summer 's, on the issue of under-representation of women in higher fields of science and mathematics. He begins by stating that the proportion of women in science has increased exponentially over the past decades. He then transitions to Summers 's speech, noting that it was his book that partly gave Summer 's speech support. He reinstates his agreement with Summers 's that gender differences, discrimination, and the difficulty of raising a family while working for a high powered job is partly responsible for the lack of women in these specific fields. Pinker explains that because of these situations these fields do not appeal to women as much as they do to men. He states that there are scientific studies that show differences between men and women in the brain. According to these studies men are better at "mental rotation and mathematical word problems, whereas women are better at remembering locations and at mathematical calculations." Pinker tells us that men show greater variance than women, and are "disproportionately found at both the low and high ends of

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