Gender Differences
jstemwedel | June 8, 2010The title of John Tierney's recent column in the New York Times, "Daring to Discuss Women's Potential in Science", suggests that Tierney thinks there's something dangerous about even raising the subject:
The House of Representatives has passed what I like to think of as Larry's Law. The official title of this legislation is "Fulfilling the potential of women in academic science and engineering," but nothing did more to empower its advocates than the controversy over a speech by Lawrence H. Summers when he was president of Harvard.
This proposed law, if passed by the Senate, would require the…
cwilcox | April 12, 2009Whether we want to admit to it or not, women, on average, get paid less than men do. Women make only about $0.75 for every dollar made by men, and even if you factor out pregnancies and children, single, never-married women still only make $0.90 on the man's dollar. Why do women make so much less? We can point fingers and call sexism all we want, but part of it is that they simply don't hold as many positions in the highest levels of management. Thus women don't have as many of the highest paying jobs, despite having the same ambition, qualifications, and desire as the men who do. And why,…
cwilcox | January 21, 2009Everyone knows that dieting and losing weight is hard, especially for women. It's like our bodies are hard-wired to fail - and, perhaps they are. At least that is one interpretation of a new study coming out of the Brookhaven National Laboratory this week, set to be published in PNAS shortly.
The researchers looked at the PET scans of men and women after 20 hours of fasting at rest, when looking, smelling, and drooling over their favorite food, and when that food is presented to them but they are told not to think about it. All of the subjects reported feeling less hungry for the food when…