For instance, boys tend to perform better than girls at a test called the Mental Rotation Test. The examiner shows someone two shapes and asks whether they are mirror images of each other. This ability to visualize a shape even when rotated in space helps in a whole variety of other skills, including building things from plans, interpreting schematic drawings, tying knots or reading maps.
I got a personal demonstration of this fact in 2003, right around the time I first encountered Dr. Baron-Cohen’s book. I was looking at an architectural drawing of our neighborhood, illustrating a plan-view of the streets and the layouts of the houses. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. I was turning it all around, trying to get myself oriented. My eleven year old foster son peeked over my shoulder at the map, which was now upside down. Mind you, this particular boy was not an exceptional genius. He was an ordinary boy, who as a matter of fact, had been functionally illiterate when he moved into our family. He immediately pointed to one spot on the map and said, "Look, Mrs. Morse: that’s Wyatt’s house."
He was right. The little stinker.
I have a doctorate in economics, hardly a hard science, but certainly the hardest of the social sciences. The first requirement of science is to respect the facts. I have to recognize that statistical disparities do exist between men and women’s math and science abilities and aptitudes. It is no threat to my own self-esteem, or denial of my analytical capacity, to say so.
I was attracted to economics because I loved the crisp logic of the discipline. But after I had my doctorate, I found I was more attracted to the humanistic than the statistical side of the discipline. I’d rather spend my days thinking about "what it all means," than staring at tables of numbers. (Although, I have to admit, there are still graphs and tables that can make my heart beat fast.) I was happier when I admitted my own preferences. It was a relief when I quit trying to "win one for the girls’ team," by proving I could compete with the guys. It was a statement of self-confidence when I finally decided I no longer needed to prove anything.
We can tie ourselves in knots trying to pretend we don’t know that men and women have different preferences and abilities. We’ll just make ourselves miserable. We can hamstring math and science departments, in an effort to jam them into our ideology of gender equality. Denying scientific fact is too high a price to pay to get more women into science.
The "gender stereo-types" we have been taught to disdain actually have some foundation in fact. Most of us know this from experience. Scientists know it from research. It is time for us to speak out, before some political hack declares an Equality Jihad on math and science departments.
We don’t can’t afford to keep paying lip service to the Myth of gender equality.
Editor's Note: Jennifer Roback Morse will debate NARAL’s Cristina Page this week on the impact of contraception on society. Tune in at http://www.marriagedebate.com/mdblog.php.