I don't understand why so many people willing to jump to defend people who work 80 hours a week, but don't jump to the defense of women who want to raise their kids and work and still be successful. I doubt that the only way to be successful is to work 80 hours a week.
Perhaps some people need that much time to feel like they have accomplished something. Vera, who pointed out that she does not want to have kids said:
People who spend 80 hours a week in the lab are going to get more research done. Smart people who spend 80 hours a week in the lab are going to get even more done.You might get a lot of work done in the lab 80 hours a week, but that is not the only way. Smart women--smart people--with excellent time-management skills can get things done and still have time to go to the park, to build towers with blocks, and read books with their kids.
Ben added:
It's also an empirical fact that women are less inclined to work that hard. I don't think anybody, even hardline proponts of the position Summers alluded to, would say that this means women are somehow generally less worthy. But it does mean they are less apt at doing one of the big things that makes you a good academic.This is a ridiculous statement. Women work hard! At home, at the office, women rarely ever stop working. Even in relationships where both partners work and consider each other equals, much of the domestic work gets dropped on the women. If we assume that you are just talking about working in an office or in a lab, consider that people who spend 80 hours a week in the lab are also more likely to get burned out much quicker, thus shorteing the life-span of their ability to do research.
I don't think anyone would argue that more women than men leave their careers to make children a priority (although there is a small, but growing trend of dads who choose to leave their jobs to raise their kids). But parents leave their jobs because there are not many options to stay connected to work while also raising kids. Especially if the other alternative is putting the kids in daycare full-time.
"Things don't need to be black and white," said Nicole who is currently on maternity leave from her high-tech job in Southern California and trying to pen an arrangement with her employer to work her job on part-time basis. Unfortunately, when it comes to moms and work, it is sad that they so often are.
The later comments that are coming in as a result of my post are still focusing on whether women are better at being home and raising kids or better at being at work. You are all missing the point. Women can be successful at both, but our socieity has evolved in such a a way that makes it nearly impossible to be working at raising kids without giving up on one or the other in some ways.
I agree with you Suzanne and posted a long comment to that effect. Our society values more work, whether it's productive or not. It's just not healthy for anyone to work that many hours. If I felt that all those scientists slaving away in those labs were finding a cure for cancer or discovering the secrets of the universe, I'd say, fine, you're benefiting society (and some of them might be), but most of them are slaving away to get tenure. I've no doubt they're all making some contribution, but it seems to me they could make just as much of a contribution working a more reasonable schedule.
ReplyDeleteAmazing! Some of the comments to your post are so far out. 80 hour weeks are nothing to stay at home Moms, and then you have someone claiming that women work less hard!?! Only our US culture would defend an 80 hour week, where is the life in that, or have we lost the ability to have a life out side of work?
ReplyDeleteBTW, Summer has seen fit to defend himself three times now, but I have not seen any mention of his defending the 80 hour thing!
Where to start, where to start. I want to address a couple things so I apologize for any incohesiveness.
ReplyDeleteAs for 80 hour weeks. I understand that many people can be quite accomplished while working less than 80 hours per week, and that insane hours are not necessarily for a feeling of success. I have no doubt that women are just as capable and willing to work long as hours as men. (Although if some new study was done in an appropriately controlled manner showing the opposite, I wouldn't be offended...) I have nothing but respect for women who choose to make their children first priority; that is something I could never do, and it's important that other people do. None of this is the point. The point is that some people want to work 80 hour weeks doing scientific research. That's what I meant by driven in my first comment. They enjoy nothing more than putting in an extra hour and finding out something new. I've never met a successful scientist who wasn't obviously excited about his or her work and would go on animatedly until kingdom come about their research if given the chance. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with people wanting to devote their lives to that (although I'm glad not everyone in the world does - thank heavens for diversity of interests). I'm really surprised that someone would reduce this kind of passion to scientists slaving away in labs to get tenure, and call it unhealthy. Please speak to some researchers at Harvard/Princeton/MIT/Caltech/etc sometime, that is very clearly not the case, these are very happy people excited by their work, and anything that causes such enjoyment and feeling of accomplishment I would definitely not call unhealthy.
In any case, these are the kinds of people who are successful in science and who are employed at places like Harvard. If women are less inclined, on average, to devote their entire life to their work, there will be fewer, on average, women excelling in scientific research.
As for discrimination. First of all, if you would please refer to the countless news articles covering the speech, Summers was intentionally being provocative. He was saying that this is a violently contended area of research and deserves further scientific attention. He said that discrimination and biology are both potentially important factors. He never said that women in particular are incapable of being good scientists. He said that it's an important scientific question to investigate to what extent discrimination and biology both cause the gender divide.
My comments asserting that there were biological differences that cause women to excel, on average, less in math and science is my personal scientific opinion. It's certainly not closed to debate. It is based on what I've read about studies of children being raised in gender neutral environments, my knowledge of evolution, and my own observations. While discrimination is certainly a factor, I do not think it is the only factor, also because of those things listed above and my own experiences growing up. I'm sure women in previous generations were pressured into pursuing certain fields, and I'm sure that some girls are more suceptible to peer pressure than others, but I think that societal pressure of that sort has decreased, even reversed, enough to say that at least one generation of girls has been raised with complete freedom to choose their career. I have been a math and science lover for as long as I can remember. There was never any question that those were my strong subjects and that's what I wanted to do with my life. And yet it never even occurred to me that being a girl had anything to do with that in the least, until I was in 11th and 12th grade, attending a math and science high school, and suddenly I was the target of countless speeches to the effect of "Don't not pursue your passion because you're female, girls are just as capable as boys at being great scientists." I was extremely puzzled by this. Well duh, of course girls can be scientists. Then I noticed that in my higher level physics and math and computer science classes, I was one of only one or two girls. And it wasn't because girls felt pressured not to do math and science because it wasn't cool, or they thought they wouldn't be good at it. They just wanted to study biology and chemistry instead, fields that are observational and diagnostic instead of analytical and abstract. These girls certainly weren't pressured into not doing science, they were doing science, just not particular fields of science. And it wasn't a universal thing at all, several girls excelled in physics and math. The point is it's statistically clear that women prefer fields that require a different kind of thinking than very mathematical fields.
Just as women more often than men prefer to raise children, women more often than men prefer to study biology and chemistry and psychology (and, outside of science, humanities - look at the gender gap in liberal arts schools, it's basically reversed from tech schools.) I also think that the same mechanism that dictates preference dictates ability (on average, of course - you can basically insert that phrase after every sentence); after all people usually like what they are good at. I perceive overwhelming evidence in support of these things. If someone wants to prove me wrong, with well-controlled scientific experiment and explanatory theory, please tell me, I'm quite interested, and I promise to be open-minded. That's what science is all about.