Amber (Prettier than Napoleon) asks the question, and it's a very interesting one.
Is the cause possible differences in innate intelligence at the tail ends of the bell curve (what I'd heard called the idiot-genius syndrome, which leads men to be overrepresented both among the very low-IQ and the very high-IQ)? Sex discrimination in law school classes (whether on the exam or before) or in hiring? Social pressures that push some women away from law school? Differences in innate ambition? Social pressures that lead men to be more ambitious than women (for instance, because less ambitious men face more condemnation from parents, peers, or prospective girlfriends than do less ambitious women, or because more ambitious women face more such condemnation than more ambitious men)? The tendency of women to marry at a somewhat younger age than men, coupled with a tendency of married people to on average be less likely than single people to move? (Moving is often needed to get the prestigious appellate clerkship that can help lead to a Supreme Court clerkship.) The greater tendency of women than men to have spouses or lovers who aren't easily movable, which may again make it less likely that women would move to get the prestigious appellate clerkship? A combination of some or all of the above?
I'd love to hear speculation, but even more I'd love to hear actual data.
UPDATE: By the way, some data, from my year clerking (1993-94): Of the 38 clerks (including 4 who were clerking for retired Justices), 11 were women. As I recall, 5 of the 11 women were married, none had children, and at least 4 of the married women had left their husbands in a different city.
Of the 27 men, only 5 were married, 5 had children (including one who was divorced and whom I didn't include in the 5), and 4 of the married men's wives were with them in D.C.
This is just one year, and any serious study would have to look at much more than one year. But it led me to wonder whether the women who had the law school credentials to get the prestigious but often out-of-town appellate clerkships that are stepping-stones to the Supreme Court
- might be more likely to be married than comparable men (presumably because women marry slightly younger than men),
- might have more difficulty getting their husbands to move with them than men would have getting their wives to move with them (perhaps because the women's spouses are more likely to have hard-to-move jobs than the men's spouses), and
- might have more difficulty clerking, especially in a highly demanding clerkship, if they have children than comparable men would.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Prof. Ben Barres' Response:
- Credentials and Interdisciplinary Work:
- Scientific Debate, Proof, and Conjecture:
- Should Speech About Gender Cognitive Differences "Not Be Tolerated" on Campus, and Instead Treated as "Verbal Violence" Rather Than "Free Speech"?
- Be Careful Trusting Data, Even in Nature:
- Gender and Science:
- More on Sex and Supreme Court Clerks:
- Data on Women in Legal Academia:
- Why So Few Women Supreme Court Clerks?
It really made me think.
Why not interview some people?
It would be very interesting to see real data for both SCOTUS and appealate court clerkships.
So if you "put the blame on the people choosing the clerks" when you infer that they're discriminating based on sex, the mere presence of "highly able female law graduates" in the pool doesn't justify such an inference.
I have not seen much recent data on the subject, but the data I have seen suggests that men are disproportionately represented at the very highest levels at the most elite schools (law review, Coif, etc.). I know this used to be true (say, ten years ago), but I'm not sure if it still is. (There are different patterns at non-elite schools). Since most Supreme Court clerks come from elite schools, that could be a partial explanation.
Two reasons for the male disproportion at the top of the class are the greater male variability in intellectual performance that Eugene mentioned (more at the very top and more at the very bottom) and a greater aversion to competitive environments among women. (Lani Guinier wrote about this).
Women are less likely than men to move for jobs, and married women are even less so. Since being a Supreme Court clerk requires residing in Washington (and possibly moving to a different city for the preceding clerkship), that is undoubtedly a factor.
I don't think that the motherhood issue is as important for Supreme Court clerks as it is for working in law firms (as Alan eminence gris adverted to) simply because it is a one-year gig. However, women with children are less likely than men with children to basically ignore them for a year, and as elChato mentions, if you think that your career trajectory is not going to be substantially enhanced by the grueling one-year stint, then you might be less willing to do it.
Eugene also mentions "differences in innate ambition." This is probably also a factor. That is not to say that women lack ambition, but women tend to have a more balanced approach to life and are less willing to subordinate everything in their lives to achieving and occupying high-status positions. Eugene refers to "social pressures," but part of this difference is almost certainly a consequence of differences in sex hormones (primarily acting on the developing fetal brain) and not simply differential socialization.
I doubt that differential desire for an academic career is responsible, simply because I don't think that people who take Supreme Court clerkships are much motivated by the thought that it would help them get (specifically) an academic job (as opposed to some other good job).
As David Bernstein mentioned, a substantial majority of applicants for tenure-track positions are male. My guess is that it is the "publish or perish" tenure system that discourages women from academic jobs, as Amber is correct that in many ways, an academic career can be quite flexible and would be attractive to women for that reason. But the publication system is one that can be off-putting for risk-averse people who do not thrive on competition, and women tend (on average) to be more risk-averse and less competitive than men.
I discuss these issues at length in my book "Biology at Work: Rethinking Sexual Equality" (Rutgers University Press, 2002).
Judges and clerks spend a LOT of time together. Late nights, all days, close quarters, soul-baring in the argue-the-case-and-write-the-opinion modality.
Older men (the bulk of the judges where I was) said they simply felt more comfortable with male clerks in these settings. The intellectual relationship could be comfortably closer naturally, and there was less risk of the ever-feared (but maybe unrealistically-feared) complaint of some sort of sexual . . . discrepency.
I predict that, as more post-1960 judges come of age, this trend disappears, just as true anti-black bigotry disappears as the old guard dies off.
Feeders are overwhelmingly male -- far more so than either SCOTUS or the Circuit Courts in general. Not one of the top 12 feeders is female.
I also like the motherhood angle. Many of my law school classmates are Moms and from what I know about them being a Mom comes first.
I have 2 kids and am about to start my final semester. (Finishing up in 2 1/2 years). I could easily go clerk for a judge. My wife (if she was a lawyer, thank God she isn't) could and would never even think about it.
Also, it's worth noting that equality is a recent, and still solidifying, phenomenon in our society. And clerks and judges tend to be, for lack of a better term, old. At least in comparison to other occupations.
The other big issue that no one has mentioned is the strong difference between the Justices. Here are some statistics on how many clerks from both genders the Justices hired:
Justice Breyer: 14 men, 16 women
Justice Stevens: 18 men, 12 women
Justice Thomas: 18 men, 12 women
Justice Ginsburg: 18 men, 12 women
Justice O'Connor: 14 men, 10 women
Justice Souter: 20 men, 10 women
Chief Justice Rehnquist: 13 men, 5 women
Justice Kennedy: 25 men, 3 women
Justice Scalia: 26 men, 2 women
The gender disparity in the Kennedy and Scalia chambers is quite resounding. I think that such huge disparities might in part be explained by the paucity of qualified women and especially qualified conservative women, but the 51-5 ratio (as compared to the ratio of even Justice Thomas) makes me wonder whether some kind of sexism is at play.
NOW had issued some kind of statement I believe on this trend, and their worry was that the feminist movement was losing steam, and overall it really does seem that more and more women are actually preferring either the more old fashioned roles for women, or at least toning down their ambitions to be flexible with more traditional stay-at-home scenarios.
That would be disappointing if there were no blame to be laid anywhere I suppose. All of those social-construct theories of a male dominated society down the theoretical tubes.
I think we like to be around folks like us/who like us/who don't find us "lesser".
Why would you want to work someplace where you were made to feel "lesser"? Those daily little comments, offhand jokes, deep discussions about the place/role/capacity of women -- even when seemingly innocuous to a middle-class white man who's lived in the majority -- can made a workplace not a really healthy place to be. I think often it starts on law reviews. Women often miss out on the comraderie because they are "different", not into the drinking/competitive/macho ways of working with others that are outside the actual work product.
No matter if you try to/want to be treated equally -- like a person, not a gender -- there's always someone (quite often a woman) who calls distinction to the "pretty femininity" issue. It helps some women to get ahead, to distinguish themselves like this, but only a few can make it on being "special", different from the guys. This strategy would not work if the numbers were more equal, but it more than works for that one particular woman to distinguish herself in that feminine/non-a-male way.
The thing about Scalia is similar to the way women are treated in the Catholic Church, and from what I hear, even in traditional Jewish society. You can go so far, but at the top, we all know the roles of men and women. Who knows better? Father or mother? We downplay women's contributions as more airy and less analytical, even if the end results would prove more effective.
I fear these type of attitudes are growing in recent years as we turn toward more traditional times, a wistful return to the innocence of the 60s. If you're raising a daughter, and tuned into popular culture, you may see this in the clothing styles and character portrayals. (I think upper and upper middle class girls are insulated because their wealth and mobility allows more fashion choices.) The message to the rest seems to be: you are your body and your girliness personality. Don't try to be "masculine" or if you do, understand that you are the outsider.
In short, I think it's more cultural than genetic. No matter the external rewards, if you don't fit in where you have to give of yourself everyday in your work, it's unhealthy and unhappy. So you tend to move on and screen yourself out for those other opportunities, that might not be so bad at the upper levels.
the innocence of the FIFTIES/50s.
The number of female clerks compares quite favorably to the tiny number of women with top credentials at Harvard. (By the way, Guest Poster, are these data publicly available?). Despite the very large difference in credentials, the ratio of male to female clerks is only about 2:1 (incidentally, the same sex ratio of those going into academia, per David Bernstein's figures). Assuming that the Harvard figures are representative of other top schools (which may or may not be true), it would seem that Scalia and Kennedy's figures are most reflective of the pool.
Also, notice that even Ginsburg had a 3:2 ratio of men to women. I imagine that if she thought that the feeder judges were discriminating against women in their hiring or in their recommendations, she would respond in some way (such as by using different feeder judges).
Moreover, it is my impression that those who seek and secure SCOTUS clerkships generally do so as an end in itself, as a culminating achievement in and of itself, rather than simply as a stepping-stone to something else.
So it seems to me that the supply and demand features of the precise clerkship market described by Guest Poster are somewhere closer to the mark, and in particular, comparative attitudes of men and women toward the law school experience. On this point, I find Kingsley Browne's comments on narrowly-focused ambitiousness versus life balance to be quite illuminating and consistent with the scholarly research I have seen on this point.
Let's face it--much of what we do in law school is screening and winnowing relatively arbitrary accomplishment for accomplishment's sake. At some point people ask themselves how much marginal effort they want to expend to be ranked first in their class rather than fifth or tenth. Or how about the decision whether to be a senior editor on the law review? And even if you finish first, it remains a crapshoot as to whether you get a SCOTUS clerkship at the end of the rainbow. So this may feed into the risk-preference point that Kingsley notes.
Looking at Guest Poster's data, it is also interesting that like the others, both Ginsburg and O'Connor hired more men than women, which I think raises some doubts about various idiosyncracies of sexist attitudes or male-female relations as suggested by some Commenters. If this data is generalizable to feeder circuit court judges, and I suspect it is, then the eventual ascension of more senior and influential female circuit court judges will not likely change the ratio.
Note also that feeder circuit court judges--i.e., the most prestigious circuit court judges--also tend to be disproportionately male, suggesting a similar dynamic in that even-smaller world of human interaction and competition than the law school/SCOTUS world. Think of it this way--if you are an Article III circuit court judge, with one of the most prestigious jobs in America and life-tenure, why do some judges nonetheless feel compelled to seek to be even more prestigious within this little world? Once they reach that level, why do they seem compelled to try to get to the Supreme Court, such that they seem genuinely disappointed when they do not?
Query whether this means that even if the percentage of female judges rises (and the competition for getting a judgeship in the first place is exactly the same dynamic repeated--a very small subset of a very small subset of people, so it is not inevitable that it will), it is not obvious to me that necessarily means that the number of female feeder judges will necessarily rise over time.
To throw out one other supply-demand hypotheses that might influence the numbers. Casual empiricism suggests that male law students are generally more likely than female law students to be both conservative and overtly so (e.g., Federalist Society) in law school. This might create a selection bias in both serious applications and eventual offers among Justices to the extent that they take ideological compatibility into account expressly or implicitly in their hiring. I know nothing about Scalia's hiring, for instance, but could this phenomenon explain part of the lopsidedness of Scalia's ratio, for instance?
If the numbers indeed hold true at schools other than Harvard, do you have a theory as to why? Bell Curve? More males prepared to compete -- well versed at what it takes to establish the top credentials at those places? Perhaps we need more of the current top players -- distinguished attorneys, former clerks, professors, judges, etc. -- to propogate daughters and give them this competitive advantage if we want to see more end-result equality? I would hate to think that as Americans we'd be willing to settle for only 1 out of our 9 top decisionmakers being females for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, isn't this what the paucity of women clerking at this level going to lead to? I'd be disappointed if we all just accepted this as the norm, for whatever reason. (But I really hope it's not the genetics explanation. I do believe so many things can be overcome if the will, and belief in self, is there...)
Maybe someone could do a scientific study?
Instead of educated males speculating, why not get out there, interview the women, and listen to their responses? Often the people closest to the source of inquiry have answers not yet considered by those peering in from above.
Discussions such as this, which consider why members of a particular elite group that are supposed to be part of a meritocracy tend to be of a particular race/gender such as white/male, always suffer from a lack of the underlying data of the applicant pool. That is very much by design: the organizations that give credentials to the applicant pool feel the need to disguise that data, as revealing it would reveal how very uneven those credentials end up being distributed through the blind credentialing process.
Why is that? Here's my take: As a society, we are extremely uncomfortable with the idea that a merit-based credentialing process (like law school exams and grading) can reveal strong race/gender effects. We have a deep commitment to egalitarian ideals, so we instinctively say that any institition that hints at those effects must be biased. So you end up with a little game, in which each institution tries to hide the effects through affirmative action, etc., and any instition that reveals the effects gets tagged as being the one that is biased, sexist, etc.
I don't mean this by way of criticism: I'm egalitarian myself, and I kind of like the idea that institutions shield us from the reality of things. But I think it's helpful to realize that there is a long chain of institutional hide-the-ball going on here.
"It is my job to teach you once you are here. If I am not reaching you, I am not being effective in my teaching, since you are all qualified to be here. I just have to work a little harder in my teaching skills to better communicate the material so you can better understand it."
Rare, but oh so refreshing.
What if the professor teaching you believed in the Bell Curve and the inevitability of white male superiority from the start?
(And you were not a white male.)
The reality of things being a certain gender/ethnic type will inherently perform better in merit-based tasks? This circular thinking demonstrates my post above. (Do you teach, Kate?)
I think you need to trace it back much farther than that, starting with unequal environments (where you live, not who you live with), and unequal educational resources from the start.
Did anyone see "My Fair Lady"? A good teacher could help. A great teacher -- committed to excellence for those determined to achieve it -- could do wonderous things with those some believe to be naturally "lesser".
When you say "Rare, but oh so refreshing," do you mean "Rare, but oh so comforting"?
I don't follow your argument. Women get much higher average grades than men in college, and go to college at higher rates than men. Is your view that men just had worse environments growing up?
I hate to say it, but the more I think about it, the data points toward overt sexism in the Scalia and Kennedy chambers. Let's assume Rehnquist, Thomas, and Scalia are hiring from the same pool of very conservative people. 40% of Thomas's clerks and 28% of Rehnquist's clerks are women, but only 7% of Scalia's clerks are women. These differences are probably too big to be random. Thus, either Rehnquist or Thomas are practicing affirmative action for women (consciously or unconsciously), or Scalia is discriminating against women (consciously or unconsciously). Intuitively, knowing what we know about the Justices, which seems more likely? A similar analysis can be done with Kennedy.
As for the Harvard data, it is only from one year. In previous years, it was less lopsided, though still lopsided. In the class of 2005, the numbers were:
Total magna/law review: 19 men, 4 women
Clerking magna/law review: 15 men, 4 women
Third:
Grades are abitrary. Even in law school, but especially at those lower levels. Do you like the teacher?/Does the teacher like you? is often the question to ask when
Can you tell me the percentage of women as National Merit Scholars, extracurricular winners such as National Science Fairs? Or is that all genetic too? My life's observations tell me environment and expectations play a far greater role than many here are willing to admit. Why? Because it may just be you haven't come by your achievements as competitively as you would like to believe.
And I meant refreshing. Not a comfort woman myself. Perhaps you might understand better had you access to other perspectives. What was that Eddie Murphy/Dan Ackroyd "prince and pauper" movie called again?
You see, in teaching, it's not just dump and load. People thankfully have different styles of learning, and some blossom when their needs are being met, yet whither under a style foreign to them.
Total magna/law review: 20 men, 4 women
Clerking magna/law review: 16 men, 4 women
1. Todd says that "SCOTUS clerks are more or less right out of law school." I guess that depends on how vague he means "more or less" to be, but in OT 2002, over 20 of the 35 clerks had worked for at least one year (and in several cases, three or more years) between their lower court and SCOTUS clerkships, many at law firms. And if memory serves, a majority of the women clerking that year had at least one year between clerkships.
2. Todd also says clerks are generally unmarried. Well, in OT 2002, at least 16 of the 35 clerks were married.
OT 2002 might by atypical in these two respects, but I don't think it's way outside the norm in recent years.
If fewer women apply, then the various career-biases come into play. If men and women apply in equal numbers and more men are hired, then it could be bias or brains.
But without that data, who knows? Maybe the SCs snap up every woman who applies, and poor Scalia and Kennedy are perennially late to the gate in their hires.
I am still confused. You seem to be making two arguments. First, differences in grades are the result of systematic differences in early opportunities, and second, grades are arbitrary and have no meaning. Which is it? I don't understand how they can both be true.
Trying to achieve a fifty-fifty gender split would be silly at best, given the unique nature of the job. I agree that the proper method of finding the truth would be to look at the schools each justice perfers and then referring judges. I think this would explain the situation better. Scalia and Kennedy limit theirselves to certain schools, Thomas is willing to look at grads of lesser regarded schools, etc.
Still, 20% of the best Harvard grads are male, and Stevens hires well over 50% women?
Trying to achieve a fifty-fifty gender split would be silly at best, given the unique nature of the job. I agree that the proper method of finding the truth would be to look at the schools each justice perfers and then referring judges. I think this would explain the situation better. Scalia and Kennedy limit theirselves to certain schools, Thomas is willing to look at grads of lesser regarded schools, etc.
Still, 20% of the best Harvard grads are male, and Stevens hires well over 50% women?
I have the suspicion that, if law school exams were as objective as those in the sciences, women would likely make up around 5% of practicing lawyers, just as they make up less than 5% of practicing hard scientists in the USA, Britain and Germany.
The fact that almost all judges are unschooled in science and math probably helps to accord women the high representation they enjoy in clerkships.
If he called on a woman, he would point to her and say, "Woman."
He also took to calling a particularly masculine-looking woman "Thesbian" despite the fact that she corrected him with her real name every single time.
And that was only a few years ago. In a major metropolitan city.
And yes, we (both men and women) complained and no, the school did nothing about it.
Sure it can. Come outside your upper middle class background for a bit of stroll in some real-life worlds:
Jane is a smart young teen in an average high school with average teachers just trying to get by. She intelligently questions the materials provided to her, which may be considered subpar (based on the teacher's liberal biases, for an example a lot of you are familiar with.) Teacher X does't like that, and thinks Jane is "challenging" her. She is rated poorly here and there by X, on the occassional essay if her answer does not "match up" with the teacher wanted to see. That's ok with Jane; she is learning, and perhaps growing beyond X.
Now compare Jane to John, who has the fortune to be educated in better places. His teachers looove that he wrestles with the (better chosen) material, asks questions of them, and considers points that perhaps they had not. They don't penalize him for this.
Later on, John tests better than Jane. On the PSAT, John scores as a National Merit Scholar. Both the early opportunities offered them, as well as the seemingly arbitrary way their grades were awarded, make John a better candidate to colleges and on up.
Is every teacher an X? Definitely not. Those who would use that as an excuse won't get far. Do X's exist? Certainly. Sometimes an X, in fact, is more bothered by the questioning coming from Jane, and not Scott who could ask the same thing. Perhaps X doesn't like "uppity" girls, or perhaps he does react the same whether it's Jane or Scott.
If you took Jane from the start, and gave her John's schooling, books and teachers, could she test better? Would her "arbitrary" grades be higher? Saying it's genetics dismisses too many real-life situations, and does not account, for example, for adopted children placed in homes with better educational opportunities.
What does this mean? Better grades only?
What about those standardized tests? If those are more proportional, it may be window dressing.
I don't know what the spread is on male/female results on things like LSAT, MCAT, GRE, and what happens to grad school enrollment, success, and post-school careers. A topic worthy of study to be sure.
Justice Breyer: 13 men, 15 women
Justice Stevens: 16 men, 12 women
Justice Thomas: 16 men, 12 women
Justice Ginsburg: 16 men, 12 women
Justice O'Connor: 14 men, 10 women
Justice Souter: 18 men, 10 women
Chief Justice Rehnquist: 13 men, 5 women
Justice Kennedy: 25 men, 3 women
Justice Scalia: 26 men, 2 women
Does Scalia like people who are as abrasive as he is? That could have a disparate impact. Kennedy surprises me.
Mainly, though, my speculation is that it's about competitiveness and culture. I think testosterone makes people more competitive. And culture; well, there are lots of things. As Napoleon Dynamite said, women like a guy with skills. True or not, most men seem to feel that way. Meanwhile, even many feminists think men aren't looking for over-qualified women. Again, true or not, if that's the conventional wisdom, it must have an effect (probably well before people are applying to the Supreme Court).
A female law student knows that she wants to have children by age 30. She also would like to maximize her pre-childbirth earnings. Should she work her tail off in law school to amass the credentials that would make her eligible for a Supreme Court clerkship which it's quite likely she won't get (the competition is fierce)? Clerking for the circuit court means a loss of income, despite the escalating clerkship bonuses, and also may mean deferring childbirth for a year if she is to attain her desired level of pre-baby earnings.
Alternatively, she can coast through law school, planning her wedding on theknot.com instead of taking notes in class (I saw a shocking number of women doing this), and still get a job at a top firm earning $135K right out of the box. This also means she can plan on living in the same place indefinitely post-graduation.
The choice to pursue a Supreme Court clerkship, unless you're incredibly confident in your own brilliance, is like buying a lottery ticket. Plenty of people clerk for the circuit court and make it no farther. Women are more risk averse than men.
I have no idea what you are saying. What was the point of your story about "John" and "Jane"? To be clear, I think the theory of "innate" differences is utter baloney. But I can't understand what your argument is. Oh well, maybe I never had a teacher who gave me that second chance.
"Kingsley: If the numbers indeed hold true at schools other than Harvard, do you have a theory as to why? Bell Curve? More males prepared to compete -- well versed at what it takes to establish the top credentials at those places?"
In almost all distributions of achievement, men are disproportionately represented at the extreme right tail (and left tail, as well, but for purposes of this discussion, we don't care about them). In other words, there is greater variability among males than among females.
Even in areas where the average female is better than the average male (think verbal ability, for example), the highest performers may be disproportionately male. This would imply that those who achieve top positions based on ability would tend to be disproportionately male if selection is sex neutral.
Consider also that high ability by itself is usually not sufficient for the achievement of top positions. High ability usually must be coupled with a single-minded determination to achieve (also a tendency exhibited more often among men).
Top law schools generally consist of high achievers who have demonstrated a certain amount of diligence. These people are drawn from a nationwide pool. Those at the very top of the class are a small subset of even this group -- i.e., the extreme right tail of the right tail of the distribution -- the elite of the elite. For the reasons mentioned in this and previous posts, it is not surprising if they tend to be disproportionately male.
At non-elite law schools, the calculus is more complicated. At many such schools, women outnumber men at the top. One major reason for this is that, as mentioned previously, women tend to be less mobile than men. Therefore, they may be more likely to go to a local law school even thought they have the credentials to go to a better school, because attending the better school would require relocation.
Just also wrote:
"Perhaps we need more of the current top players -- distinguished attorneys, former clerks, professors, judges, etc. -- to propogate daughters and give them this competitive advantage if we want to see more end-result equality?"
The cause of this situation is not that the "top players" are not having daughters; it is simply that their daughters are part of the female distribution, having developed in the hormonal milieu of a female.
Just also wrote:
"Grades are abitrary. Even in law school, but especially at those lower levels. Do you like the teacher?/Does the teacher like you?"
Remember that most grades in law school are awarded anonymously. Grades may be arbitrary in the sense that they measure only part of what goes in to making a good lawyer. They are not arbitrary in the sense that they are random. There are good exams and bad exams. Someone who graduates at the top of the class has written mostly good exams, and someone who graduates at the bottom has written mostly bad ones. There is some arbitrariness and subjectivity at the margins, but that plays only a small role in where someone is in the graduating class.
Just also wrote:
"Can you tell me the percentage of women as National Merit Scholars, extracurricular winners such as National Science Fairs? Or is that all genetic too?"
I don't know what the current distribution of National Merit Scholars is, but I know that it used to be disproportionately male. The awards were based on the PSAT until a federal court held that it was illegal to base them on the PSAT (or maybe to base them entirely on the PSAT, I don't remember) because it had a disparate impact on girls. So, the awards may be sex-normed now.
I don't know anything about the National Science Fair, but I do know that girls participate in science fairs at a higher rate than boys do (although boys are more likely to engage in science activities completely on their own).
Amber wrote:
"I'm not sure if you already knew about this data set, but here is a list of all the Supreme Court clerks of the United States."
That's actually a pretty incomplete list. For example, it lists only 26 clerks for Justice White's 30+ years on the Court, when the real number is something over 100.
elChato wrote:
"I don't know what the spread is on male/female results on things like LSAT, MCAT, GRE, and what happens to grad school enrollment, success, and post-school careers. A topic worthy of study to be sure."
I believe that on all of the standardized tests mentioned, males have higher average scores than females and greater variability, so there is a disproportion of males at the very highest level. Partly it depends on how great a ceiling effect exists for the particular test. The more people who obtain perfect scores on the test, for example, the more balanced the sex ratio will be. The sex ratio of perfect scorers on the SAT, for example, has become substantially less imbalanced after the "recentering" in the mid-90s.
One confounding factor on test results is that test designers often attempt to reduce or eliminate sex differences in performance.
"I think the theory of "innate" differences is utter baloney."
I don't mean this to be insulting, as there's no particular reason that a lawyer should be familiar with the psychological literature, but I do not think that it is possible for a fair-minded person who is familiar with the vast literature on the subject of sex differences to hold that opinion.
For someone who would like an introduction to the literature, I would (of course) recommend my book "Biology at Work: Rethinking Sexual Equality," which deals with the effect of sex differences (many of them innate) in the workplace. I also published a relatively short piece on the Larry Summers issue: "Women in Science: Biological Factors Should not Be Ignored," 11 Cardozo Women's Law Journal 509-528 (2005).
More general treatments are Diane Halpern's "Sex Differences in Cognitive Ability," Doreen Kimura's "Sex and Cognition," David Geary's "Male, Female: The Evolution of Human Sex Differences," Linda Mealey's "Sex Differences: Developmental and Evolutionary Strategies," and Steven Rhoads's "Taking Sex Differences Seriously."
This is just the small tip of a large iceberg.
(Dropping out is of course relative; most of the people I'm referring to still tried to do relatively well and did not write off class altogether. There was a distinct gear-shift downward, though.)
Well, that's not true. There's arbitrariness all over the place. The real point, though, is that to come out in the top 2 or 3, you clearly have to be very good at something. That's true even with a lot of arbitrariness throughout the masses. (Good players almost always lose in the world series of poker, but bad players never win).
The ACT doesn't have a wrong answer penalty, and it is also issued to all students in two states (as opposed to just college bound), and over 90% of the population in two more states. The average scores vary because the states have very different racial demographics, and racial gaps dwarf gender gaps. But the relative gaps hold constant--girls outscore boys on grammar and writing skills by a wide margin and by a much narrower margin on the reading section. Boys outscore girls by a solid margin on math and science reasoning sections. Given that three of the four sections on the ACT involve intensive reading, it would appear that reading ability varies based on subject.
Males outscore females on math every time; females outperform males in writing consistently. Result: males on average do better on tests that are knowledge oriented, females do better on tests that are expression oriented--which raises the question of whether or not females get points for style, rather than ability. As a rule, women do better on anything involving subjective assessment in school (which explains their grades).
Sorry, I just don't buy that it's a genetics/hormonal innate difference.
Expectations and resources devoted to daughters, even amongst the educated upper class, are more likely in my mind. Plus, the current system of childcare expectations/job mobility for spouses and risk aversion related to that, as Eugene notes in his follow-up. Still more daughters from the superachievers please, and set the bar just as high for them, with all the support you'd give your sons!! I don't want to see an 8-and-1 ratio all my life. And libertarian daughters, overall, would be such a blessing for the country. Besides, I'm sure there's some study that guys with sisters have an easier time with women. And don't you want the best for your sons???
Perhaps that would depend on your impression of recent court opinions, the quality of writing and degree of clarity.
But my own situation aside, here are a bunch of theories: 1) There is probably some Bell Curve effect, although I don't think it's all that significant; I've seen charts showing that men do better than women on the LSAT, but it's by a small amount and, most interestingly, not all that much more pronounced at the very highest scores, somewhat undercutting the morons-and-geniuses theory of male intelligence, at least in this context. 2) More women than men appear to be turned off by the ultracompetitive nature of law school, and thus are less concerned with pursuing the various brass rings it has to offer. It's interesting that many more women seem to succeed at Yale (a smaller and probably more nurturing environment) than Harvard. I can't present statistics, but it was my strong impression from reading clerkship applications and it's borne out by comparing the composition of editors from the Harvard Law Review to those of the Yale Law Journal. 3) High-achieving women are more likely to be liberal than high-achieving men, and thus less likely to apply to or click with conservative justices. (The relatively high proportion of female Thomas clerks can be explained by his lesser focus on elite credentials, which of course gives him a larger pool to choose from.) 4) Women are much less likely to forge the sort of relationships with powerful (usually male) professors that lead to glowing personal recommendations of the kind that get clerkships.
I agree with all the points regarding children, mobility, etc, but I'd throw in one more.
I think the law students most likely to seek clerkships are those who most surround themselves with other lawyers/law students. The more you interact with people outside the law profession the less attractive clerkships may seem to you.
When I was considering whether or not to apply for clerkships I talked with my parents (neither of whom know much about the legal profession) about whether I would be able to borrow money temporarily if anything bad happened while clerking and they just looked at me funny and said "Why would you take this clerking job that pays so little over the well paying private firm job?"
Similarly, when hanging out with a few friends (both of whom have regular corporate non-law jobs) one asked if government lawyer jobs (like working at the Department of Justice) were for people who were at the bottom of the class.
So I think the more you interact with people outside the profession the more immune you become to mob mentality. And let's face it -- most people apply to clerkships because of mob mentality. And I think Amber is right that many who apply do it b/c they are risk positive (or I would add delusional about their chances of obtaining a Supreme Court clerkship.)
There is, after all, a reason why there was widespread sex discrimination before those laws were enofrced.
I think ideology would matter. However, it is hard to square the numbers based on ideology alone. Thomas had 40% female clerks. I would suspect female law students, soley from observation, to be more of the liberal tilt. That does make your point regarding Stevens (our data has changed, Souter now, which is in line with your ideology thesis). I think the ideology hypothesis is a helpful way to think about this issue. It makes some sense, but there are problems.
Assuming a female=left and male=right ideological divide, Thomas should have less females. Kennedy should be very balanced (whatever balance means here). Overall, after being given the number of women in Harvard's top twenty, I feel that the court as a whole has been very inclusive, even if Kennedy and Scalia have not been.
Who knows, maybe they just interview 90% men?
"Sorry, I just don't buy that it's a genetics/hormonal innate difference. Expectations and resources devoted to daughters, even amongst the educated upper class, are more likely in my mind. Plus, the current system of childcare expectations/job mobility for spouses and risk aversion related to that, as Eugene notes in his follow-up."
You can't really separate the "genetics/hormonal innate" bit from things like childcare and risk aversion and even job mobility. If you give female fetuses an extra jolt of testosterone in the second trimester of pregnancy, you will see a lifelong difference in things like risk preference, desire for children, and other sex-typed behaviors.
As for the argument that "expectations and resources devoted to daughters, even amongst the educated upper class, are more likely" explanations, three points. First, that is an empirical question, and there's not much empirical support for it. After all, the supposed lower expectations and resources devoted to daughters don't prevent them from getting better grades than sons -- and from being a majority in colleges and universities for the last quarter century -- so why should they be responsible for fewer clerkships?
Second, it doesn't have to be one or the other. Both factors could simultaneously be playing a role. If they are, then even if the "social" factors were equalized, there still would be a disparity (just as there would be if the "biological" factors were equalized but the social factors weren't).
Finally, with all due respect, unless you have taken the time to look at the biological evidence, the fact that you "don't buy it" doesn't mean very much. There is a huge literature in psychology and biology on the effect of sex hormones on cognitive and temperamental traits. One can dislilke the findings of these studies without knowing much about them, as that's a matter of taste and preference. However, one cannot meaningfully disagree with the studies without taking the time to understand them. Again, I don't mean this in an insulting way, but, as the wise man (or woman) once said, "everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts."
"You can't really separate the "genetics/hormonal innate" bit from things like childcare and risk aversion and even job mobility. "
Oh sure you can.
Not every woman marries and has children. Thus no childcare worries, more mobility, potentially more risk taking without lil ones to worry about.
Don't hold us all back with your generalities, Mr.Kingsley. It's not a testosterone superiority thang, no matter how much you would like to convince women they are "lesser" genetically.
Nope. You must have misread, whether intentionally or not. I do think expectations can differ for sons and daughters, and that it is possible to have more than one factor be at play, as per my example above.
Another hypothesis consistent with this data point: If (and this is a big if) the number of top men in a cohort exceeds the number of top women by a substantial margin (say 200 to 125), and if Yale relatively accurately screens for top students while trying to maintain a 50-50 gender balance, and if students generally prefer Yale to Harvard, then a top female law student is much more likely to attend Yale than a top male law student is, and the schools beneath Yale will have gender disparities that Yale doesn't have, even though the cohort as a whole has gender disparities. This is a similar point to that which Sander made.
"Not every woman marries and has children. Thus no childcare worries, more mobility, potentially more risk taking without lil ones to worry about. Don't hold us all back with your generalities, Mr.Kingsley."
The point is not what "every woman" does. We are already talking about "generalities": that is, not why no women get clerkships (or achieve other high positions) but why the sex ratio isn't exactly in balance. That necessarily requires consideration of group statistics (i.e., "generalities").
Every woman isn't shorter than every man; some women are taller than most men. But even if the NBA is willing to hire on a sex-blind basis (and I don't know if it is), it will still be overwhelmingly male. One could fairly say that the reason is that "men tend to be taller than women," without denying the fact that there is an overlap of height distributions.
Also, the implication that women without children are psychologically equivalent to men is simply wrong.
By 1998, 39% of the clerks at the Supreme Court were women. The increase in women was due to the hiring practices of specific justices. Thus, some justices hire 40-50% women, such as Justices Ginsburg, O'Connor, and Breyer, while Justice Rehnquist and Scalia hired few women.
As for applications, the book indicates that the current practice is for applicants to apply to all 9 justices.
If the reason for the disparate number of women is the reliance on feeder judges, then perhaps it would be useful to inquire into the hiring practices of the feeder justices and the criteria that they use. And who will replace Luttig as the most successful feeder?
And I would suggest that perhaps it is better for justices to think beyond Harvard and Yale Law Schools. There are many excellent attorneys who have gone to other law schools!