SIVACRACY.NET: Stone Court on Summers' Views Of Women

See the whole thing here, excerpt below:

According to the Boston Globe, the first point Summers touched on was the reluctance or inability of women who have children to work 80-hour weeks. The second point was that fewer girls than boys have top scores on science and math tests in late high school years. Summers' third point addressed discrimination. Summers noted that if discrimination was the main factor limiting the advancement of women in science and engineering, then a school that does not discriminate would gain an advantage by hiring away the top women who were discriminated against elsewhere.

Because that doesn't seem to be a widespread phenomenon, Summers said, according to the Globe, "the real issue is the overall size of the pool, and it's less clear how much the size of the pool was held down by discrimination."

Let's see if I follow that reasoning. Widespread discrimination against women in the sciences cannot exist, because economic theory says it would be inefficient, and someone would exploit those inefficiencies, making it go away. That's a familiar theory that you'll hear from someone who's finished Econ. 101 and now understands everything, but it's not what you'd expect from the President of Harvard. The problem with that theory is that, if you believe it, it would prove that there's never been discrimination against anyone, anywhere, which is clearly not the case, and as I understand economics you have to change your theory when it doesn't explain the data. Or you can just make up data. From the Boston Globe piece:

In his talk, according to several participants, Summers also used as an example one of his daughters, who as a child was given two trucks in an effort at gender-neutral parenting. Yet she treated them almost like dolls, naming one of them "daddy truck," and one "baby truck."

Oh, OK, well that settles it, doesn't it? Summers taught macroenomics back in the day -- but I bet he didn't know that my eight year old would rather have $1.00 today than $1.10 in a year, so I hope he isn't still wasting his breath on the time value of money.