Thursday, September 19, 2013
Larry's explanation of gender inequality
The race is over. Last Sunday, Larry Summers sent President Obama a letter withdrawing his name from consideration to be the next chairman of the Federal Reserve. Summers, a former Harvard President who served in the Obama White House as director of the National Economic Council until 2010, was the front-runner to succeed Ben Bernanke at the Federal Reserve Board. Until Sunday.
One of the critical factors that explain his withdrawal was an old speech he made at the 2005 National Bureau of Economic Research conference. Summers provided there an explanation for the underrepresentation of female scientists at top universities, namely, the natural differences between men and women. Here is a small fragment of his controversial comments (clicking here you access the full version)
"(...) It does appear that on many, many different human attributes—height, weight, propensity for criminality, overall IQ, mathematical ability, scientific ability—there is relatively clear evidence that whatever the difference in means—which can be debated—there is a difference in the standard deviation, and variability of a male and a female population."
The storm surrounding Summers' hypothesis lead to his resignation from Harvard in 2006. And now that he was running for the Federal Reserve, these words made at least five Democrats on the Senate Banking Committee say they would vote against even bringing Summers's nomination to the floor. A coalition of progressive groups spearheaded by the National Organization for Women and Ultraviolent pushed hard against his nomination, and more than 450 economists signed onto a letter to support his rival, Janet Yellen, currently vice-chair of the Fed.
Other economists do not disagree with Summers's assertion, though. Watch the clip above. Featuring Steve Levitt, Distinguished Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago.
Anyway, we will keep talking about Summers this semester. Here we have a kick-off piece to begin the conversation on inequalities, their explanations, and (possible) moral justifications. Enjoy it!
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In my opinion, it did not seem like Steven Levitt agreed with Larry Summers' conclusions about gender inequality. Levitt seemed like he was simply defending the merits of his colleague from an economical and empirical perspective. It may have been logically conclusive under the experiments and results of the experiments that Summers conducted to assert what he did. Although I personally I do not endorse Summers' conclusion, I do not think that one should frame a negative perspective of Summers solely on his conclusions to his observations. There have been many bright and important figures in science, philosophy, and other fields of study who have voiced contrarian views on topics conventionally uncontroversial.
ReplyDeleteWith that being said, I do believe that it was the right choice for Summers to withdraw from Fed chairman consideration. I think if he were to succeed Bernanke as chairman, the American approval rate of federal officials would decline, due to his past contrarian views.
Thank you for your comment, Anthony. Just a couple of clarifications about my post:
Delete1. What I wrote is that economists like Steve Levitt "does not disagree" with Summers's claim. Levitt did not say that he disagree with Summers. Can we be "neutral" about the supposed intellectual differences between men and woman?
2. Summers did not conduct any experiment about his explanation for gender inequality... it is just bad science. Most if not all biologists believe that such claims are simply false. Indeed, it is alleged that he was forced to resign as Harvard President not because of the allegations of sexism but for careless scholarship (those of you interested in this topic may want to read "Delusions of Gender", an excellent book by Cornelia Fine).
In any case, our focus is on inequality in general and gender inequality in particular. This will be the focus of next Tuesday's session.
Thank you again for your contribution.
Just this week my investment and securities professor mentioned what a "hot head" Larry Summers was. How his actions and words would not be suitable for the chairman of the Fed as he would give away to much to the public. Seeing this I understood a little more about what my professor was on about.
ReplyDeleteFor Larry Summers to comment on the female gender in such away goes against Rawl's theory of the "veil of ignorance". That in order to act justly we must be ignorant of discriminatory principles. Moreover, it is just in bad taste especially when he had no facts or science to back him up. His assumption that females are the weaker sex can only be concluded by his own prejudices and opinions on the matter. From a moral standpoint the economist Steve Levitt was uncomfortable to completely agree with Summers. I think his reluctancy is best reflected by the Kantian ethics "act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or that of another, always as an end and never as a means only". Levitt is somewhat consciously aware that he must show respect to the female gender. He shows his uneasiness with the situation by stuttering and telling the interviewer "you're trying to get me into trouble".
I think this shows what an uncomfortable topic gender inequality is for most people. Some like Summers may have no fear of voicing his opinions of females in the workplace. Whereas others like Levitt (to some extent) are uneasy to fully support their professional beliefs of women inferiority in comparison to men.
In terms of justification, I do think Levitt attempts to justify Summers hypothesis by adopting it as an "economist" point of view or ideal. This is a lame attempt to get the heat off Summers for his comments. Does it make his comments acceptable by saying that it is a belief of the economic profession? I'm not fully convinced and have to agree with Rawl that we must treat and think about people the same, not letting discriminatory factors cloud our thoughts.
As an economist, Larry Summers is a respected individual. I think he did not mean to offend anyone by bringing up this sensitive issue of gender equality/inequality. He was merely stating his observation on the topic. To judge a person based solely on one statement made is objectionable. This goes to show how one minor mistake can lead to a person’s career being changed immensely.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Levitt’s comments on Larry Summers, I think that he is trying to stay out of the issue. Levitt obviously respects Larry, but he does not want to make the same career altering statement as Larry did. Political correctness in today’s world has become highly oversensitive. People need to be careful of what they say in public, especially if you have a high status such as Larry Summers did.
As an economist, Larry Summers is a respected individual. I think he did not mean to offend anyone by bringing up this sensitive issue of gender equality/inequality. He was merely stating his observation on the topic. To judge a person based solely on one statement made is objectionable. This goes to show how one minor mistake can lead to a person’s career being changed immensely.
ReplyDeleteAs far as Levitt’s comments on Larry Summers, I think that he is trying to stay out of the issue. Levitt obviously respects Larry, but he does not want to make the same career altering statement as Larry did. Political correctness in today’s world has become highly oversensitive. People need to be careful of what they say in public, especially if you have a high status such as Larry Summers did.
Larry Summers probably might not have meant to mention gender equality. Any person with tact, even if he would believe it to be true, wouldn't say it in front of such an audience. It can be imagined that it slipped out and that severely damaged his career and life. It seemed to me Levitt agreed, but tried to implement tact in order to save face, as well as his own career, which is a very wise move.
ReplyDeleteLarry Summers probably might not have meant to mention gender equality. Any person with tact, even if he would believe it to be true, wouldn't say it in front of such an audience. It can be imagined that it slipped out and that severely damaged his career and life. It seemed to me Levitt agreed, but tried to implement tact in order to save face, as well as his own career, which is a very wise move.
ReplyDeleteIn my statisctics class we actually discussed Mr. Summers statments. He was basing his argument off of not a difference in average IQ between men and women but a difference in the variance of IQs between men and women. Summers believes that men have a more wide variance meaning that there are more extremely smart men, but also more extremely dumb men at the same time. Summers does not try to challenge the average IQ of the two genders and believes them to be equally smart, on average. His theory is supposed to explain why there are often more men in advanced math and science related positions than women.
ReplyDeleteMr. Summers is a very intelligent economist though, I believe he would've made a decent chairman of the Fed but I definitely think there would have been a lot of controversy over him taking the position and as someone above mentioned, a further disapproval of an already weakly trusted government.
Larry Summers seems to be an honored individual in the field of economics so I don't think his comments on gender inequality were meant to offend anyone. With that being said, Mr. Summers has to realize that we live in a society today where our privacy is sometimes taken away from us and where the public can see everything we do. I'm not suggesting that the media is a bad thing but often is the case where comments can be misconstrued and taken out of context. Mr. Summers also must acknowledge that he holds a position that is seen in the public eye so every action and comment he makes will most likely end up being praised or scrutinized.
ReplyDelete