In “Sex, Math and Science”, the professors Spelke and Grace have proven that women are influenced by the discrimination in math and science field, which leads to fewer women in science. In fact, this passage uses the similar way in passage one, which is that raising the prevalent opinions about the questions and then uses the data and experiments to discuss the opinions. This is definitely a good way to prove things.

Here comes a question: is there any difference in cognitive abilities between men and women? From the passage we can see that the author uses great experiments about the infants to show that there has no primary difference between male and female babies. And also there has a great variability when they grow up. This definitely shows that when we were born, we were the same in cognitive abilities. So there must have another factor which comes after our births to explain for the great variability. What is the factor? It’s the discrimination caused by the gender schema. From the three examples from parents we can see that the gender label deeply influences the parents and forces them to believe that men are stronger and more gifted at math and science, though it is not true. So the gender label passes to the children’s minds, thus influencing them unconsciously. This passed gender label influences generation by generation, making the whole society to think like that. Also, the knowledge of a person’s gender influences faculty members’ assessment of women. When judging women’s honors, people always think that women don’t pay as many efforts as men, and even think that women don’t do the work by themselves when the work is brilliant. Because of this bias which means that they have to pay more efforts to overcome the accumulated disadvantages, fewer women choose to work in science and math. So the truly reason is not the cognitive differences but the gender discrimination.

Although I believe that men and women have no cognitive difference, they are definitely good at different aspects of cognitive abilities. Women are better in verbal problems, while men are better in spatial problems. And the reason for this difference, I think, is the difference in sex hormone mentioned in passage two, since from recent researches, prenatal androgen levels are almost certainly a major factor in the level of adult spatial ability. But the difference matters nothing about the whole cognitive difference and the grades in math and science, because in math and science, both verbal and spatial abilities are very important in solving problems. There is nothing to say the one is better than the other. What’s more, these two abilities can be trained through efforts. Because these two abilities are both important in math, the brilliant scientists in math must have both abilities. So if women are born with better in verbal problems, they can practice to do spatial problems well.

Is there any difference in motivation? It’s true that women are more likely to balance the work and family, but this is not the reason. In Chapter one, we can see that women with children who have to pay more attention to families have published as many professional articles in math and science as those women without children. The truly reason is the discrimination. Men and women may have equal desires for work and family, but they fact unequal chances and difficulties of realizing both desires. This definitely discourages them from choosing math and science.

Passage one, two and four all mention the statistics from SAT-M, but is it a useful data to prove something? From the SAT-M, we can see that male get higher scores on the exam, and in passage two, this leads to the conclusion that women and men have cognitive difference. But the statistic itself needs to be questioned. First, we don’t know the proportion of men and women who get high scores. Maybe the attendance of women is less than that of men due to the gender schema, which makes the number of women in high scores less than men. Second, as I mentioned above, women are better in solving verbal problems than solving spatial problems. So if the distribution of questions in the exam is that the number of the verbal problems is less than the number of the spatial problems, this will definitely show lower grades in women. But this doesn’t show the cognitive difference.

Do you know who build up the system of math? I don’t know the exact person, but the whole groups of people who build up the system of math are definitely men. This is because at that time, women are not allowed to get access to higher education and then cannot take part in the work. Because math is build by men, there may have something that prefers men, though we don’t know. So what will happen if we break the system of math but build another system such as hexadecimal system? Maybe more women scientists will emerge in this system.

All in all, there are so many outer reasons, so it’s impossible to say that men and women have innate differences such as cognitive difference before we keep away all the outer perspectives.

Reference:

Women at the Top in Science–and Elsewhere   by Virgnia Valina

Underrepresentation or Misrepresentation     by Doreen Kimura

Sex, Math and Science              by Elizabeth S. Spelke and Ariel D. Grace