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Only in baby-making do sex differences really matter Date published: 2/13/2005
IN 1964, the world record for the women's marathon was around 3 hours, 30 minutes, and the men's record was around 2:10. At the time, most people believed that this huge performance difference was based on biological differences between the sexes. Fast forward to 2005. The women's world record (2:15.25) is still slower than the men's (2:05.38). But in the past 40 years, the best-performing woman has trimmed an hour and 15 minutes off her time. The best-performing man, less than 10 minutes. What appeared in 1964 to have been a robust sex difference turns out to be minuscule, and who is to say that some talented woman might not someday eclipse the men's record? Recently, Harvard President Lawrence Summers caused an uproar by suggesting that the lack of women in the sciences at Harvard might be due to biological differences between the sexes. Reading between the lines of his statement, I think he was saying something like this: a) The world is a fair place with equal opportunities for men and women; b) Harvard is a gender-neutral institution that judges people only according to merit and has no sexist prejudices whatsoever; c) Harvard never makes a mistake; and d) Women are inferior. I will leave you to construct counterarguments at each step. Summers called for research into the "innate differences" between males and females in science and mathematics. Apparently, he was not aware that there is at least 35 years of research comparing the sexes on a wide variety of dimensions. With very few exceptions, it has not panned out into much more than a footnote in gender studies. At one time, there was a small difference in mathematics performance. But like the discrepancies in the marathon records, it has virtually disappeared. The marathon story contains valuable lessons for sex comparison and parallels the findings in mathematics and sciences. First, there are enormous variations within each sex. I ran the marathon in 1986, and by the time I had finished, both the men's and the women's winner could have gone home, taken a shower, had lunch, and settled halfway into a long afternoon nap. Men are all different from one another, and so are women.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
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