Women under-represented on snow removal teams
Harvard president Lawrence Summers stormed out of a closed-door emergency session on snow removal at the University on Monday afternoon. While a transcript of the session is not available, it appears that a disagreement arose after Summers discovered that over 90% of those performing snow removal at Harvard were male.
Summers calls for more women in Snow Jobs
When asked to explain the imbalance Jeffery Smith, Harvard’s Director of Facilities Maintenance, suggested that many factors might be involved. He offered three possible explanations, in declining order of importance, for the small number of women in snow removal positions. The first was the reluctance or inability of women who have children to work 18-hour shifts during snow emergencies when schools are cancelled.
His second point was that fewer girls than boys have high skills in operating power equipment. ''I said no one really understands why this is, and it's an area of ferment in social science," Smith said in an interview later. ''Research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialization weren't" due to socialization after all.
This was the point that most angered Summers. Several at the meeting reported that Smith said that women do not have the same ''innate ability" or ''natural ability" as men in some fields. Asked about this, Smith said, ''It's possible I made some reference to innate differences. . . I did say that you have to be careful in attributing things to socialization. . . That's what we would prefer to believe, but these are things that need to be studied."
Keep your hand on the snowplow
In his response, according to several participants, Smith also used as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two snowplows in an effort at gender-neutral parenting. Yet she treated them almost like dolls, naming one of them ''daddy plow," and one ''baby plow."
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
nature or nurture, always at issue, time to check out the cinematic last word on the subject: Trading Places.
Thanks Harry, very clever, nice job!
2 - Eric Berlin
Be sure to include a $1.00 wager for sure (a la Trading Places...)
3 - Eric Olsen
I actually just found this on DVD for $5.50 in the bargain bin at Wal-mart - not as great as I remembered but still packs a punch nonetheless.
Al Franken's greatest cinematic line: "Welcome"
4 - Eric Berlin
Trading Places is just about the best comedy of all time, in my humble opinion. Eddie Murphy at his peak, great story, great writing, and really interesting look at race and class in America.
$5.50 is a steal of a lifetime, my friend. I need to get me to a Wal-Mart.
5 - Harry Forbes
The quotations are all 100% real, but the speakers have been swapped as in TRADING PLACES.
6 - Eric Olsen
excellent Harry, puts it in different relief
7 - Harry Forbes
Truth is stranger than fiction. See this.
8 - JR
Trading Places comes down pretty definitively on the nurture side, no?
Great movie, but not a better comedy than Dr. Strangelove or Blazing Saddles (which is a bit more interesting on the issue of nature vs. nurture).
9 - Eric Olsen
JR, yes, but the circumstances are so extreme that the question is left pretty open. Bonfire of the Vanities takes the Aykroyd character even farther down the road
10 - Mark Saleski
...fewer girls than boys have high skills in operating power equipment
i like it when a woman puts her hands on my husqvarna.
11 - DrPat
Harry, this was brilliant! It took me nearly two sentences to recognise the nature of your post - essential in satire to capture the tone of the work being spoofed!
12 - Gotham Image
Sugar & Spice is more powerful that fission and fusion.
Everyone knows that woman's intition trumps the average man's ability to fractal math.
That being said, Nancy Hopkins replies on my blog and I will post some more of her comments later this week.
13 - Angela Chen Shui
Wonderful piece, Harry. Thanks for the laugh, the pic and the later link!