by Rose O’Malley, Program Assistant,
National Women's Law Center
It seems like every couple of months someone feels compelled to write an article, an op-ed or ill-conceived paper on the evils of Title IX. Aren’t you just so sick of them? I know I am.
Unfortunately for all of us, however, Christina Hoff Sommers, with little to no regard for our exhaustion with this particular meme, has written a charming op-ed for the Washington Post on the “threat” of having Title IX enforced in the areas of science and engineering by the Administration in a more concerted and organized fashion.
None of her points are particularly original: She concludes (erroneously, of course) that Title IX’s success in the area of athletics has gravely hurt male students by forcing schools to cut male sports, she assumes (as is her wont) that gender disparities in the sciences are nothing but the result of natural biological sex differences, and she implies, vaguely and without any supporting evidence that I could find, that Title IX will hurt science.
That last point is familiar, of course, but it never fails to baffle me. How exactly is enforcing a law prohibiting sex discrimination a threat to science? Are women just that bad at math that having them participate equally in the subject will slow down all progress in the field? Will their soft little brains somehow reverse years of scientific breakthroughs? Surely, no thinking person could think that that’s the case, right? And yet, this point keeps coming up. I may not be a scientist or an engineer, but I fail to see how sex discrimination is somehow vital to research and discovery.
Running through this entire piece is also a strange and pervasive concern that women’s groups are simply drunk with power. You have to stretch pretty hard to see a warning that these groups are “breaking through barriers” as a threat to anything other than those barriers, but Christina Hoff Sommers tries her best to cast it in an ominous light. After all what could be scarier than women’s groups pursuing equality for women?
It’s clear that Ms. Hoff Sommers honestly believes that Title IX will lead to terrible things. But her fear, and the fear of many others with similar concerns, is either based on a complete lack of understanding or total misrepresentation of the purposes, policies, and benefits surrounding Title IX, or a personal attachment to the tradition of ignoring institutionalized discrimination. To people like that, I suppose Title IX can seem very threatening indeed.
Unlike liberal arts, engineering deals with cold, hard facts. 2+2=4. Say otherwise and you fail.
Students should be accepted into the program because they can solve mathematical problems, not because of their gender.
Meritocracy, trumps gender preference.
Posted by: Petrov | May 23, 2009 at 05:38 AM