Gender Bias by the Supposedly Rational

The National Academies, America’s “honorific society of distinguished scholars” (the equivalent of the UK’s Royal Society) has just published a report, “Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering” (but it will cost you if you want to read the whole thing). The New York Times paraphrases the report:

Women in science and engineering are hindered not by lack of ability but by bias and “outmoded institutional structures” in academia, an expert panel reported today….

Their real problems, it says, are unconscious but pervasive bias, “arbitrary and subjective” evaluation processes, and a work environment in which “anyone lacking the work and family support traditionally provided by a ‘wife’ is at a serious disadvantage.”

This is welcome, but will probably not quite be believed by most of us academics (such as the infamous Lawrence Summers, ex-President of Harvard, who put forward the possibility that the lack of women in the highest echelons of science was due to innate differences. Yes, he was just “putting forth the hypothesis”. But this wasn’t a case of a maverick speaking truth to power; it was power trying to shore itself up. And anyway, as this report apparently makes plain, he was wrong…) who believe that we’re too rational, too enlightened, and yes, too progressive/liberal/left to be biased. If only…