Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, had no idea what he was getting into when he made very ill-advised remarks about the mathematical ability of women. At the eye of a storm of indignation, Summers has since explained, justified, backtracked on and apologised for his comments several times over. The reaction was particularly sharp from women who have careers in the maths and sciences.
Much of the discussion has degenerated into a ?my-study-versus-yours? conflict over gender differences in the brain. I?m not sure how useful this is. One recent Canadian study, for instance, concludes that the male brain might have synapses that fire four per cent faster than the female brain ? but that for a control group of adolescents, this might be reversed, as in the female teenage brain might be ?faster? than the male! Another study suggests that while the male brain and the female brain react differently in states of hostility or aggressiveness, this difference disappears under the influence of nicotine.
The most interesting research in the brain recently hasn?t concerned gender differences so much as other wiring ? it?s far more fascinating to examine whether there is such a thing as a ?God? centre that stimulates religious impulses and feelings such as awe!
What Summers? remarks actually illuminates is a very old phenomenon. Confronted with a difference in performance between the sexes, it?s always easier to seek an ?absolute? explanation than to examine the issue of how far social pressure, upbringing, and encouragement can make a difference. It lets someone like Summers, president of an institution that didn?t see fit to give women professors in the physics department tenure until as late as 1992, off the hook if he can persuade himself and his colleagues that they would support women mathematicians, honest, if only there were more of them. Why don?t women do well in maths and hard sciences? Oh, it?s in the brain, it?s wired like that ?what can we do about it?
So it?s all society?s fault? Perhaps it is. Chess and bridge require different but equally complex levels of analysis and mathematical ability. Until recently, there were few women grandmasters in chess. The three legendary Polgar sisters, Zsuzsa, Zsofia and Judit, who have performed at the level of their male counterparts in chess? top 20, were taught how to play at the age of two and had significant family support. The earlier you learn to play chess, and the more you play, the better you?re likely to be ? women discovered this far later. Bridge, by contrast, is a game that can be successfully learned at any age, and that is seen as socially acceptable for women. Perhaps not coincidentally, women have excelled at bridge.
If you have any doubts about this, express them with the greatest care to a certain friend of mine who?s been playing for 20 years in Delhi. She?s likely to either thrash you in fair competition, or if you question her mathematical ability, to employ the four legs of the bridge table in such a manner that the argument will end very quickly.
