Judith Kleinfeld recently wrote a column for The Christian Science Monitor summarizing her views and the recent Independent Women’s Forum study of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s sexual discrimination study.
MIT’s study claimed that the university had discriminated against female scientists, but on closer analysis the study was a political document devoid of any statistics or solid facts that would allow anyone to examine whether or not there had indeed been sex discrimination at MIT. As Kleinfeld writes,
Did MIT actually discriminate against its female faculty? Check out the study yourself at MIT’s web site (http://web.mit.edu/). You will notice an astonishing fact: MIT’s study is innocent of evidence of gender discrimination. Not an iota of data is offered to show that MIT treated its female faculty any differently from its male faculty.
Irrational self-flagellation — it’s not just for medieval monks anymore.
Source:
False solution on gender. Judith Kleinfeld, The Christian Science Monitor, February 27, 2001.