Expressions of Discontent

Stephen Hawking, the famous Cambridge physicist said the following about women in physics and mathematics:

“It is generally recognised that women are better than men at languages, personal relations and multi-tasking, but less good at map-reading and spatial awareness. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that women might be less good at mathematics and physics. It is not politically correct to say such things and the president of Harvard got in terrible trouble for doing so. But it cannot be denied that there are differences between men and women. Of course, these are differences between the averages only. There are wide variations about the mean.”

Now, I realise that some will disagree with the above on the premise that any claim that women are less good than men at physics and mathematics is assuredly an expression of male chauvinism, but I have a different quibble: the idea that women have been demonstrated to be better than men at multitasking is a recent folk-psychology myth that has become popular with women because it flatters them. Actual research in human psychology shows no evidence of a gender difference in multitasking ability. What the research does show instead, is that multitasking is inefficient and bad for you. If you want to flourish at work, try as much as possible to organize things so that you can concentrate on one task at a time.

Here are some links, if you fancy:

Someone who did a search of the literature for evidence of a difference, and came up blank, talks about it here.

News report of one of a number of studies showing that multitasking is not a good thng, here.