Last Tuesday, Charles Murray, American Enterprise Institute Scholar and advisor to the Republican candidate for Texas Governor, Greg Abbott, decided he would subject an audience at the University of Texas to his opinions on the significance of women.
Murray cited his 2005 paper “Where Are the Female Einsteins?”, which asserts that he has found no conclusive evidence that proves that any woman has been a “significant original thinker in any of the world’s great philosophical traditions” and that “women have played a proportionally tiny part in the history of the arts and sciences.”
Murray’s honest belief is that women are just not capable of achieving the same levels of success as their male counterparts. He uses questionable scientific evidence that the biological differences between men and women are what essentially keep women from reaching the heights of intellectual glory that, according to Murray, men throughout history consistently display.
Murray continued exuding this ignorance, stating that even women who possess the “cognitive skills for achievement” are not capable of putting these skills to proper use because women “have something else that they want to do in life: have a baby.”
Murray also argues that equal pay laws actually hurt women by discouraging companies from hiring them. He claims that the statistics that demonstrate a pay gap between men and women are “flawed” because “many women prefer to stay home with their children” or choose jobs “such as sociology, liberal arts, or psychology, that pay less in the labor market.”
Not only is Murray claiming that women’s intellectual achievements are stunted by their “inescapable” biological drive to bear children, but he also stated that the pay gap is a myth because women just tend to choose lower paying jobs.
When approached by a woman from the audience who asked if he still believed what he wrote in this aforementioned 2005 paper, Murray responded, “Until somebody gives me evidence to the contrary, I’ll stick with that statement.”
The self-proclaimed “racist and sexist” is currently a key component in working up Greg Abbott’s new education program. His position as such will hopefully be short-lived for the sake of sparing anyone in the Texas educational system from being subjected to the plans of a man who sincerely believes that “men’s brains are larger than women’s.”
Ciara is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire.
