By now, you have probably heard about the controversy regarding Harvard University President Lawrence Sumners’s remarks that there may be fundamental biological factors that account for why women are underrepresented in math and science fields. For many people, the mere mention that there may be other factors besides socialization and discrimination to account for women’s underrepresentation is blaphemous. Many of his critics have also used Sumner’s latest public incident to highlight his course leadership style and that his continuing leadership is not in Harvard’s best interests.

My personal take is that the overwhelming majority of studies and research on this topic clearly points to differences in how men and women are socialized differently throughout their educational career, starting from preschool through graduate/professional school and well into their professional careers, that benefit men’s advancement in science and math, while disadvantaging women. In other words, unequal treatment and discrimination explains almost all of the current gender disparities.

At the same time, there is solid, valid research to show that there are indeed basic differences in how men’s and women’s brains function. As this ABC News article points out, Sumner’s remarks aren’t really that controversial among many biologists and psychologists:

Male brains also contain a greater proportion of gray matter, the part of the brain responsible for computation, while women have relatively more white matter, which specializes in making connections between brain cells. . . So men and women appear to use their brains differently in some situations. Does that make any difference in how smart they are? The short answer is no. Average IQ is the same among men and women.

But it’s the long answer, which considers different kinds of cognitive ability and speculates about how they are distributed among individuals in the two sexes, that has been raised in support of Summers’ remarks. Intelligence tests have found that men, on average, perform better on spatial tasks that require mentally rotating or otherwise manipulating objects. Men also do better on tests of mathematical reasoning. Women tend to do better than men on tasks requiring verbal memory and distinguishing whether objects are similar or different.

The relative strengths even out, so on average the sexes are of equal intelligence. Some studies also have suggested that the IQ distribution is more spread out among men. If that is true, then there are proportionately more men at the extremely brilliant end of the IQ scale and the dull end as well.

In other words, there is at least the possibility that there may be some biological factors that may influence men’s and women’s analytical processes. However, that is not to say that these biological factors are paramount in determining differences among men and women in terms of overall professional achievement. On that count, social factors clearly prevail over any supposed biological differences, as the article mentions a little later.

My point is, I think the criticism that Sumners has gotten is a little extreme. As far as I know, he did not say that biological factors are the only or even the most important reasons why women are underrepresented in math and science -- just that the academic community needs to explore all possible factors that may influence this underrepresentation.

On that count, we cannot arbitrarily discount biological research -- we owe it to the fundamental principles of academic inquiry to look at all possibilities and to confirm that although men’s and women’s brains may work a little differently, there are plenty of social and cultural factors that have much more direct and significant influences on why women are underrepresented in the sciences.