The trouble with my engaging such posts even this far, is that it may draw claims that Summers banned books in the Harvard Library, shoots undergrads from helicopters, and has a tattoo. I should not have bit on the farmers and investment bankers.

You’re only repeating your quotations of Summers instead of responding directly to my analysis and examples. His conclusions are wrong because he fails to grasp basic facts about the very jobs, people, and institutions that he is trying to use for his arguments. I already cited such instances.

Now I’d like to get past the repetitions by at least finishing with a couple of fresh observations.

Summers himself is one of those employers to whom he ascribes “a desire for high power and high intensity” in his staff. Typical of a supply-side corporatist– and reminiscent also of Barack Obama’s pretense at being a blameless bystander instead of the active participant in bigotry against women– he makes excuses for his own discriminatory leadership decisions by deflecting causation, in an ever so pragmatic tone, onto “lifestyle” choices of everybody else, except of course Summers and the elites in his circle.

It’s bad enough that in the Corporatist-Militaristic-Theocratic Peckerarchy, pregnancy is defined as a disability for purposes of company medical coverage and days off. Summers seems to define Womanhood as a disability too!

Some mention also should be made of a big flaw in the arguments by Summers as well as the aforementioned Steven Pinker [OK, I'll give the link again]…

“The Science of Gender and Science – Pinker vs. Spelke: A Debate”
http://www.edge.org/3rd_cultur.....index.html

… which is their virtual addiction to standardized tests, or more precisely, the scores.

Though Summers claims to be [ahem] concerned about the quality of education at Harvard and other U.S. universities, he again is overlooking this major factor directly under his eyes and control. Standardized testing is a sham and a scam. Testing is a big money-maker for some but costs the rest of society billions of dollars yearly and far more in terms of educating future generations to make their vital contributions to our country.

Originally, standardized tests were supposedly intended to create a fair and level playing field where students of any Race and Class (though excluding Gender) could demonstrate their knowledge. Then tests such as the SAT, LSAT, GRE, ACT etc. were promoted as must-have tools for predicting how a senior-year student might perform at the next undergrad or graduate level.

But the standardized tests have failed on both counts. As predictors of performance, they simply don’t measure up to the consistently high scores of more reliable and flexible tools– a student’s grades, class papers, research, school and community volunteer activities, independent projects, application essay and recommendation letters.

Besides Gender and Race, standardized tests do function as predictors of income above all other variables. But a quick glance at a student’s financial records would give that kind of info anyway, especially if rich students were the ones desired by the university.

If Summers had been truly dedicated to reforming and improving Harvard, he could have looked past his nose for a second and brought real hope & change by exposing the tests for the fraud they are. Such a bold decision would have been a slap in the face to Harvard’s presumed rival, Princeton University. Ah, but maybe the real rivalry is between entirely different groups, and the only changes will be in the same old bad directions.

No surprise today that the Gender Income Gap is increasing. If & when somebody ever gets around to clearing up and correcting the distorted Media Income tables devised during the Dubya regime, maybe we’ll see that the median income for women is half that of men– slightly better [i.e. maybe 51 or 52%] for women in the gov’s so-called Asian category, somewhat worse [maybe 48%] for African American women. The oft-quoted “70-something percent” average for women-vs-men is a fraud. I seethe ‘n’ spit each time I see that simple-average-factoid so I grabbed this chance to at least take a stab at it.

See yaz.

” We would like to believe that you can take a year off, or two years off, or three years off, or be half-time for five years, and it affects your productivity during the time, but that it really doesn’t have any fundamental effect on the career path. [However] in fields where the average papers cited had been written nine months ago, women had a much harder time than in fields where the average thing cited had been written ten years ago. “

“The largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people’s legitimate family desires and employers’ current desire for high power and high intensity.” Speaking of “high-powered professions” inside and outside academia, Summers said: “[T]he relatively few women who are in the highest ranking places are disproportionately either unmarried or without children.” [Even among white American males] “it surprisingly hard to get Americans rather than immigrants or the children of immigrants to be cardiac surgeons. Cardiac surgeon is about prestigious, certain kind of prestige as you can be, fact is that people want control of their lifestyles, people want flexibility, they don’t want to do it, and it’s disproportionately [first generation] immigrants that want to do some of the careers that are most demanding in terms of time and most interfering with your lifestyle”

“The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search.”
“And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.”

Within a few days, information received in response to this talk led Summers to give ‘discrimination’ more importance.

“Summers cited farming and investment
banking as cases we might learn from,
not as areas of concern.”

Problem 1: Granted that farming and banking really are not his fields of expertise and interest, but the underlying problem is that his conclusions are predicated on incorrect examples and assumptions. He is the one who has not learned.

Problem 2: WRT concerns, I’ve tried to carefully express my own, along with examples. Again, his *lack* of concern is a major problem.

“Of course many low-brow jobs have
grueling schedules; people take those
because they need to live. People do
not choose to become cardiac surgeons
to keep warm.”

Ugh and Ouch in response to your sigh.

“Low-brow” jobs!?” Good thing all of us wit’ low-brow jobs dont have nuff time and no munny to spend blawgging at no damn wimmen’s agenda internetsites. Dont have big enuff forheads to becum millionaires like your “cardiac surgeons” choose to.

OK. Basta! Enough!

Farming is NOT a menial or [your term] “low-brow” job nor is it performed without considerable knowledge of both [Summers' terms] “soft” and “hard” science. Farmers are [here's my short list] a Liberal Arts Blend of accountants, investors, biologists, zoologists, technicians, mechanics, engineers, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, doctors and psychologists all rolled into one.

Summers’ illogical point was that women can’t hack the grueling hours/schedules of a tenure-track position. He also tried to extrapolate to other, non-academic fields. I easily proved him wrong with a single yet crucial example. Nurses provide a similar case, as well as quite a contrast to your surgeons.

Nurses put in the hours. Nurses save lives. Nurses have extensive academic training. Yet they are underpaid and underappreciated. Why? It isn’t about low-brow this or how-brow that. It’s not about the frontal lobes of the brain.

Even Kim Gandy would get this one.

fsteele – Your last statement is so brilliant, poetic, chilling…it sounds like it could be the start of a great book (hint).

Of course many low-brow jobs have grueling schedules; people take those because they need to live. People do not choose to become cardiac surgeons to keep warm.

I’ll resist the temptation to dig up more links [been there, done it, seen it] and try instead to wrap up my pov on Summers in one more posting here.

Btw Anna, put your dukes down. Sis is citing Summers himself when she witticizes,
“Summers is concerned about all inequalities.
Musn’t lose perspective. Afterall, there
aren’t many Jews as farmers…”

I get a kick out of Summers’ use of language; his words are such bright reflections of his archaic assumptions. He denigrates social sciences as “soft” and suggests women can’t or won’t meet the long, grueling schedules that men are expected to handle for a tenured position. He even extends his assumption to women & jobs in a more general sense.

I’m a city hick who has lived amid the “green acres” of the country’s hills and valleys, so I’ve seen dairy, fruit and vegetable farmers hangin’ on, through 15-hour and longer workdays, while their husbands [think about it] contributed a second income as everything from truckers and carpenters to musicians and engineers.

I daresay, I’ve known some Jews and Muslims too among those great women who have worked so hard to feed their families and the rest of us.

But my own concern– warning, this might sound like something Lisa Douglas would say– is that I can’t see many farmers as farmers. Only a couple of hundred thousand real farmers are farming today. Most agricultural land is owned by Tyson, Cargill, ADM and their many subsidiaries and partners. Their religion is Corporatism and their favourite school of economics is the “Supply Side” kind, of which Larry Summers is a chief proponent.

Now you have yet another old school tie that binds Obama to Reagan.

Sis continues quoting Summers,
“… or Catholics in investment banking.”

Whuht, the Vatican Bank doesn’t count!? That’s not what Pope John Paul *the 1st* said, before he must’ve noticed that funny taste in his mouth, right before he collapsed…. Oops, that would be an OT rant.

Re: your comment:

“…there aren’t many Jews as farmers, or Catholics in investment banking.”

Is there a subtext to your message, or is it just my imagination? You made two rather specific choices and I trust my red flag when it goes up.

By the way, make sure you know from what you speak before buying into stereotypes. There have been, and are indeed, many Jewish farmers. And, as you must know, throughout history including not so long ago, Jews were prohibited from participating in a multitude of professions/jobs, leaving Jewish communities with a tiny handful of choices as to what they were allowed to do to earn money.

I will end my post here.

fSteele you’re beginning to be embarrassing.