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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Lawrence Summers was right about one thing: There are innate differences between males and females. And if we want everyone to succeed, we shouldn't dismiss them.
Mar 2, 2005 | Others besides me have noticed that most whistle-blowers of late have been women -- former Enron vice president Sherron Watkins, retired FBI agent Coleen Rowley and former WorldCom audit executive Cynthia Cooper. To underscore the point, Time made these three its Persons of the Year in 2002. Recently, HealthSouth financial executive Diana Henze joined the ranks of female whistle-blowers.
Could it be that women generally are more ethical than men? Yes, wrote Harvard University's Carol Gilligan more than two decades ago in the book "In a Different Voice." While some hemmed and hawed, Gilligan's argument was largely embraced by feminists. Now others are saying that women are more likely to be the straight shooters who cry foul when they see their corporate companions jiggering the books. "Women Are More Likely to Blow Whistle" announced a 2002 headline in the Los Angeles Times.
"Women see things in a much bigger context than do men," says Judith Rosener, a professor at the University of California at Irvine. In "Ways Women Lead," a 2002 Harvard Business School e-book, Rosener proclaims that a woman's way of leading -- interactive, cooperative, inclusive and personal -- is profoundly different from the traditional male way of leading, which she calls "command and control." She goes on to say that women consider the larger implications of their actions when making a business decision, while men focus on the immediate: that is, how much money they're going to make, or whether they're likely to get caught.
Rosener's statements barely caused a ripple, and women generally nodded in agreement. In contrast, all hell broke loose when Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, said that one reason women don't ascend to the highest positions in science might be due to the "intrinsic aptitude" of men in this area. Incidentally, Summers also listed old-fashioned gender discrimination and the lower likelihood that women will take jobs requiring incredibly long hours as other reasons women do not get the top jobs in the sciences, which has been largely overlooked in the firestorm following his comments. (This isn't the first time Summers has been in the hot seat. Previous comments about other matters also provoked controversy, and his "imperious, abrasive" leadership style has become part of the discussion about whether he should stay or go.)
All this happened back in mid-January, but the issue is still blazing in practically every major media outlet. Yet where was the fury when some saw in the ranks of the women whistle-blowers not only a greater willingness to come forward than shown by their male peers, but also a difference in style -- and yes, morality? There was none.
We generally agree that women are more likely to consider how their actions affect others, thus making them more collegial than men in their work habits. And no one doubts that women are more in touch with their feelings, are better able to express them and, consequently, have better interpersonal skills. A woman prefers to share how she feels, while her mate would rather debate whether Barry Bonds' steroid-fueled records ought to have an asterisk after them.
The root of this touchy-feely stuff can be traced to a specific section of the brain, the limbic system. Females have a larger, deeper limbic system than males do -- which is believed to make women more empathic than men, and better caretakers to boot. The upshot of this is that, by and large, moms, more than dads, want to stay home with the kids and to not work killer hours once they do go to work, regardless of the rewards.
Whether the seat of women's empathy developed over centuries in the cave, when men were out hunting and women were gathering and taking care of the babies, is immaterial. The Human Genome Project found that the differences between the races is minuscule (one-hundredth of 1 percent) compared with the difference between the sexes (a whopping 1 to 2 percent). The difference is there, and today we have to deal with what is, not with what we wish for.
