« BACK  |  PRINT

RS

FRONT PAGE CONTRIBUTOR

Central Planning Watch: Applying Title IX to Guarantee ‘Equality of Outcomes’ in Science and Engineering

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  April 19th, 2009 at 11:33 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

H/T GlobalWarming.org. Kowalski’s gonna love this.

From a Washington Post article by Christina Hoff Summers:

What’s good for women’s basketball will be good for nuclear physics.

To most Americans, that statement will sound odd. To President Obama, it apparently does not. In an October letter to women’s advocacy groups, he declared that Title IX, the law that requires universities to give equal funding to men’s and women’s athletics, had made “an enormous impact on women’s opportunities and participation in sports.” If pursued with “necessary attention and enforcement,” the same law could make “similar, striking advances” for women in science and engineering. …

[To quote from the President's letter,] Title IX must be pursued with “necessary attention and enforcement” in the sciences. This is nearly certain to happen. But the president should note the level of partisanship in the groups monitoring the enforcement. For example, in a 2008 briefing statement, the American Association of University Women, one of the more combative advocacy groups and a leader in the Title IX movement, issued a warning to “adversaries” who get in the way of its equity initiatives:

“Our adversaries know that AAUW is a force to be reckoned with. . . . We are issuing fair warning — we ARE breaking through barriers. We mean it; we’ve done it before; and we are ‘coming after them’ again . . . and again and again, if we have to! All of us, all the time.”


Title IX was never intended to be a tool to enforce quotas in education, but that’s sure how the courts have interpreted it in the realm of athletics. Historical programs in men’s sports like wrestling and baseball have fallen by the wayside to be replaced by women’s crew and bowling, which in large measure are more about compliance than they are about athletic competition.

Athletics are one thing, but science and engineering are a matter of national security and economic competitiveness. Just as they do with the military, the Left’s approach to the subject is more about social engineering and demographics and less about the collective good. Women constitute the majority enrollment in higher education, and their participation in science and engineering programs is more a reflection of interest than discrimination.

African Americans are a tiny fraction of graduates in science and engineering. Shall we apply the same kind of quota system on a racial basis? The only way to meet racial and gender goals would be to actively discriminate against Caucasian, and especially Asian males in enrollment.

Does anyone think this is a good idea?

Full disclosure: I am the father of two daughters, both of whom are pursuing their educational goals. I am also an engineer. One daughter is a grad student in marketing. Her younger sister is an undergraduate student in the sciences. She will be a success on her own and without Obama’s help. She deserves to succeed without the taint or suggestion that she benefited from any kind of EEOC help.

Tags: , , ,

COMMENTS

POSTING RULES  |  LOGIN TO COMMENT  |  REGISTER TODAY
  • JadedByPolitics

    I work with Engineers and I can tell you the difference in thought between men and women is obvious….women are good in the Environmental area but the men excel in the Geotechnical area! I recognize as a woman that HECK YEAH there are differences in men and women and to SHOVE more women into an area they do not excel in is a setup to failure! NOW if women WANT TO PERSUE this area of expertise then of course they should!

    • zsmvf6

      goes back to the feminist idea that men and women are the same except for reproductive structures. I have a younger sister, and even though we have a lot in common, I don’t understand her or my mother a lot of the time. Instead of this Title IX crap, we need to encourage them to pursue their passion in life.

      I had to do this with my sister, because she was trying to emulate my very heavy course load in high school and becoming very frustrated. It’s not that she wasn’t capable of it (she makes ‘your mom’ jokes out of quantum mechanics principles), but that’s not her drive/gifts in life.

      • robmikpet

        engineering students in the 40′s, oh wait to be more specific women engineers in the 40′s. Given the debate today I was surprised they were allowed to take these classes. One women interviewed said “yes it was tough but it was something I loved”

        It seems we live in a society where if you are not a millionaire singer or a movie star or CEO life is unfair and you need someone to help you and there is the Dems and Obama coincidently waiting with a government program, funny how that works.

        I have gotten to the point in my life where I am beginning to LOATHE social engineers who think they are smart enough to construct a perfect utopia on earth. I just want to yell LEAVE US ALONE! I see politicians like Chuck Schumer, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank telling me how to live my life and I just think “who the hell are you to tell me” How men like this rise to the “elite” level of politics is beyond my comprehension.

      • Praying

        I graduated from college in 1980, and marched in step with women all across the country in reaching my “feminist awareness”. I thought that it was my role, my duty, to have a high powered successful career. I went to graduate school, obtaining a M.S. in geology. I worked for Shell for a few years (I hated it, and left before I could be fired) then I worked for a geophysical service company (I hated it), then I was the director for the teaching labs at LSU Medical Center in New Orleans(liked the job, hated New Orleans). Along the way I had two children, who I dutifully put in day care so I could continue my quest to be “successful”. We moved to Tennessee, where I work as a consultant for a company that does mostly environmental engineering work. I was not pursuing my dreams, I was pursuing the dreams I assumed someone else had for me. I was miserable! Sure, I could “do” the work – but I HATED it! What I really wanted to do was to be a mom, to volunteer in the community, and now I discover, to write. I was quite lucky – in the same company, I managed to get involved with a project doing plain language translations for CDC and OSH – a completely different line of work, and now I write, work less than full time so that I am involved in my community, and I am happy.

        Don’t define your success by what someone else says you should do or someone else’s definition of “success”. Celebrate your feminist side – if you truly love science and math – cool – we especially need more scientists and engineers – I hope both my sons become engineers! But do it for YOU, not for someone else, especially not for the government! Find your own unique gifts and talents. And screw Title IX!

    • 6eorge Jetson

      between males and females in science and engineering.

      Only a fool would assert that there are no differences in athletics. Hence, while I don’t think Title IX gets it quite right*, part of the premise is that women would find their participation extremely limited against larger and faster males if there was only one gender-neutral team per sport.

      The last time I checked, I didn’t see any colleges offering “men’s physics classes” and “women’s physics classes” similar to the “men’s basketball team” and the “women’s basketball team.”

      Either Obama believes, that like in athletics, women face a severe disadvantage in science or engineering. Or perhaps, schools that would push Title IX in classes recognize that their academic programs are crap and unrelated to future economic outcomes. “All of our students are going pro in something other than their field of study.” because we suck and it’s all a charade.)

      * At the very least I think the revenue-producing sports should be excluded from the ratios examined in both the participants and dollar numerators and denominators. But I can understand someone trying to advance the basic premise that the subsidies of money-losing sports shouldn’t show a heavy favoritism to one gender over the other.

  • David123

    Think that would break whatever barriers are left in the glass ceiling?

    You Betcha!

    • vettepilot

      as the NAACP/CBC worked to support Alan Keyes… :)

  • itrytobenice

    what makes the morons think it will work for actual sciences? Idiots.

  • vettepilot

    …with this that it’s hard to determine where to begin. But this is a good place:
    http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind02/c2/c2s2.htm

    Of course, I’m sure it will all be rewritten to support whatever conclusions the current administration wants to come to, but I’ll give my take on it. But first, I’ll include a disclaimer similar to Vladimir’s. My wife and I both have engineering degrees; she has an MS in ChemE and I have a BS in CompE, so we both know what it’s like to survive an engineering program. Oh, and she’s smarter than me. :)

    Success in an engineering program requires the student to have a solid mathematical foundation to work off of. Overall SAT math scores have continuously increased from 1991 through 2004, regardless of gender, which should indicate a better preparedness for college bound engineering students.

    http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d06/tables/dt06_132.asp

    If it was purely ability that was keeping females out of engineering, one would expect that as their mathematical talent increased, so would their application to Science and Engineering programs. Instead, the number of degrees obtained by females in the Natural and Social/Behavioral Sciences has dramatically increased while engineering enrollment has fallen (latest data from Society of Women Engineers shows a 3% drop).

    It’s fairly clear that there is no gender aptitude gap keeping females out of engineer, so why are they not pursuing the degree? One way of learning more is to instead analyze what females do when they DO decide to undertake an engineering education. It is an unbelievably cluttered chart, but the following link does provide some insights:

    http://www.engtrends.com/IEE/0703B.php

    Even when females enroll in engineering, their discipline selection greatly skews towards the Natural/non-Physical Applied sciences; Chemical, Environmental, Industrial, and Bioengineering are top disciplines for female engineers, while the guys tend to pick Mechanical, Electrical/Computer, Civil, and Aerospace. Females generally appear to be predisposed to choosing Behavioral, Social, and Natural Sciences when they choose to pursue a curriculum in the sciences at all. This appears to be consistent with the increased percentage of female applicants in US medical schools over the last decade, as well.

    To me, any talk of implementing Title IX in academics amounts to government mandating college student’s degree choices. As my wife said, boys like Tonkas and girls like Barbies. This would essentially force the girls to like Tonkas…

  • DONTREADONME

    Particle, Nulcear, Astro, Optical/Laser and solid state physics are dominated by men, forcing participation by females in these physics curriculums will only serve to press more and more males out and greatly continue the dumbing-down of our nation due to forced mediocrity.

  • vettepilot

    Didn’t mean to slight the non-engineers. Most of the statistics include the Sciences as well, so you’re absolutely right that all of the same stuff applies.

    I just can’t believe that these idiots see any parallels between athletics and academics. Generally, colleges and universities can find enough willing participants to soak up the athletic spots because the populations on campus are so much larger that you can almost always find someone to play a sport. The same cannot be said for academics… What position are academic administrators going to be put in when they can’t get enough interested female students to apply to science/engineering? My guess? They’ll be forced to reduce the overall enrollment numbers to be in-line with the required ratios, which will kill science/engineering permanently in the US…