Kacie brought up some
statistics about girls in math and science during her presentation yesterday,
and Deborah and Alli were able to discuss their mostly positive experiences as
women in the Physics Department. The question always seems to remain though:
Why do so few girls pursue degrees in STEM fields?
Well I was perusing
the articles on my New York Times app
this morning and what do I find?
“Why Are There
Still So Few Women in Science?”
http://nyti.ms/1f0jL3m
So of course I read it! It’s a bit long so I’ll give you my short take-aways:
1.
There are very few mentors out there encouraging
women to go into science.
2.
There is still so much unconscious bias within
the minds of both males and females towards their female science students.
3.
Culturally we start teaching children that
scientists look/act a certain way (think TV Show The Big Bang Theory).
And here is a great quote to sum up the piece:
“As
so many studies have demonstrated, success in math and the hard sciences, far
from being a matter of gender, is almost entirely dependent on culture – a culture
that teaches firls math isn’t cool and no one will date them if they excel in
physics; a culture in which professors rarely encourage their female students
to continue on for advanced degrees; a culture in which success in graduate
school is a matter of isolation, competition and ridiculously long hours in the
lab; a culture in which female scientists are hired less frequently than men ,
earn less money and are allotted fewer resources.”
I
agree with a lot of the conclusions brought up by this. Our society doesn’t
operate in a way that encourages females to get involved in math or science. I
don’t know if you’ve heard of the books by Danica McKellar that try to get girl
involved with math.
These
ENRAGE my roommate Karen who is a
stats major and is appalled that we have to sell math as “quizzes and boy drama”
in order to get girls to like math. I have to agree. We don’t make math books
into sports magazines to get boys to invest in math.
My
seventh grade science teacher decided that teaching meant writing a
transparency of notes that he put up and made us copy down every day. That
doesn’t get any kid excited. I honestly don’t remember a damn thing we were
supposed to learn that year (but I can recall 6th and 8th
grade science well because my teachers were awesome!) My middle school students
had a math teacher for algebra who was kind of mean. He was a good teacher, but
his strategy involved teasing them a lot. I know that only some of us were
thirteen year old girls once, but there is nothing worse than being picked on
and teased when you feel like the biggest pile of awkward in the world (trust
me my lovely male friends, female puberty SUCKS).
I
believe (and warning, Teacher Brianne is coming out) that the key to getting
ALL students more into math and science is to start encouraging them in their
math and science classes from an early age. You need to preform experiments
with the kids and you need to give them positive feedback when they’re doing
well. We need teachers at every level of education that look at the students
and think about what that person needs to succeed. For some that is a joking
attitude and telling them all the things they need to do better, and for other
this is a sympathetic attitude and telling them all the things they did well.
I
feel fortunate that my math and science teachers were kind and encouraging to
me. I wouldn’t be at Mines if I had someone constantly reminding me about how
much I screwed up. I feel fortunate that although Mines is emotionally
challenging a lot of the time, it’s not trying to discourage any one gender more
than the other. I feel fortunate that I’ve had bosses in my technical
internships that choose me based on my skills, and still respected me as a
human being. I don’t think every corner of STEM fields is riddled with gender
bias/discrimination, but I do know that a lot of those corners need some work.
Brianne, I posted a link to the same article one minute after you! Yes, I was amazed this morning to find on the front page of the NY Times an article on the topic of our course last night. I'm glad to see the NY Times has been paying close attention to our discussions! I think the whole class would like to read this article on women in science. I note that the author is a writer with a physics degree, again in keeping with a major theme of our course, bridging the gap between the sciences and the humanities.
ReplyDeleteI actually only made it half-way through this article before I realized I needed to make sure it was on the blog. Luckily, Brianne had already taken care of that, so I could finish reading it.
ReplyDeletePerhaps because I'd heard most of the article's statistics before, I found the most compelling aspect of the piece to be the author's own story. It was like watching myself through a funhouse mirror, and I found it deeply disturbing. It certainly gave me a deeper appreciation for the quality career advice/mentoring I've received over the years.
I also found the article's commentary on "The Big Bang Theory" interesting, as I made almost that exact argument when discussing the show with some colleagues over the summer. While I often find the show entertaining, I can barely watch episodes which feature Amy heavily because I find her such a frustrating, cringe-worthy, false representation of female scientists. Obviously, stereotypes reign supreme in sitcoms, but Amy, Bernadette, and (I'll add) Leonard's mother are not exactly going to inspire tween girls to become scientists.
On the Danica McKellar books, I think her intentions are good, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I distinctly remember side-eyeing those books in Barnes & Noble as Hipster junior high Deborah. (Brianne's telling the truth about female puberty. Ugh.) I was equal parts offended that even math books thought I needed a boyfriend and curious about the idea of math books using conventionally female interests, and that's basically still my attitude on the issue. There's a good idea in there, but it's buried under a healthy dollop of stereotype.
Most frank comment award goes to Deborah for, "On the Danica McKellar books, I think her intentions are good, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions." The NY Times article said that McKellar’s books are, “countering the perception that boys won’t like girls who are smart.” In my experience in junior high and high school, boys really didn’t like me if I was smarter than them, and a few ex-boyfriends of mine tried very hard to lower my self-esteem. For example, as a junior in high school, my boyfriend at the time told me that he didn’t think high school students should take classes at the junior college. When I asked why and reminded him that I was doing that very thing, he said something to the effect that it wasn’t conducive to a “normal” or fun-filled social life. Perhaps the next step is to write a book for men, teaching them that it’s ok if a woman is smarter than you, and that they deserve the same respect as any male colleague would.
DeleteIn order to add to the discussion, I would like to provide some information I read this summer in Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In. (She is the current CFO of Facebook.) In her book she addresses difficulties concerning women and their pursuit of a successful career, and one thing that stuck out to me from the NY Times article was the comment that women use starting a family as an excuse to leave science.
Sandberg makes the argument that for women to be successful in their careers, there needs to be social and structural change. What she means by social change concerns gender roles. There is nothing odd about a father packing a child’s lunch for the day or dropping them off at school. Sandberg says, “Make your partner a partner.” Traditionally, women have been considered the primary caretaker of children; and this makes sense for a period of time say when the mother is breastfeeding (a male cannot adequately do this). But a change in roles and a balance of child-rearing responsibilities is necessary for women to succeed in their careers and in science.
In terms of structural change, companies and universities have policies for maternity leave, but there is not usually an equal amount of time for paternity leave. This discrepancy adds to the imbalance of time a man and woman can commit to their work and to their children. There needs to be policies to make it easier for women to pursuit their careers, and one way to do this is to make it easier for men to take care of their families.
Once upon a time I was a cashier at Target, and I LOVED when I saw a dad with his kids buying the family groceries. I don't believe that it's a bad thing if a mom wants to be a stay at home mom, that's a huge job so kudos to her, but I loved when I saw families who shared the responsibilities of taking care of each other.
DeleteToo many women who want a career give that up when they have kids, and that's not fair to the hard work they have put in. It wouldn't be fair to ask a man to give up his career so he can take care of the family either. For career focused individuals, they have to share the at-home responsibilities fairly. If it means one partner always cooks or one always does the laundry, that doesn't matter. It needs to be fair and realistic for the both of them.
I loved your point, Cat, that there needs to be better paternity leave policies. What happens when a male couple adopts a newborn and needs to take time off for the child? What about parents who both want to be at home after their child is born (so maybe they can trade off sleeping). What about the dad who just wants to be a stay at home day because he loves that sort of thing while his wife loves working? Paternity leave not only gives these men the opportunity to be with their families more, but I believe it's a step towards a society that says it is okay for men to be the caretakers and women to be the breadwinners.
Lincoln mentioned that I should provide a link to this post being shared on Panda's Thumb, so here it is: http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2013/10/why-arent-more.html There were 39 comments when I checked back on the page to grab the link.
ReplyDeleteAlso, SWE sent about an email relaying an article about Girl Scout Engineering Day: http://www.ourcoloradonews.com/golden/news/women-inspire-girls-to-pursue-their-dreams/article_6b0448a6-887e-53cc-b82d-70bd4fec4949.html One of my favorite parts of our SWE chapter has always been this Girl Scout Day. I was a scout for eight years and a counselor for a summer at one of their camps; I love Girl Scouts. I love that this event tries to show females how FUN science and math can be. There's not enough fun activities like this through out their formal education, so it's always good when they can see how great it really is. There is also the fact that the activities are all run by females in these fields. This shows them how attainable a degree in STEM is for females.
Brianne, I just think it's funny that you mention Girl Scout Day, because I always really hated girl scouts. We had to do one badge that was a child-care badge, which involved learning how to change diapers (while I was in 5th grade!), as well as a lot of other really boring badges like jewelry-making and stuff like that. The other thing that really got to me was that we would go "camping" and just stay in cabins or even hotels, while my friends who were boy scouts would go out in tents and learn to make fires and survival skills. A lot of the other girls enjoyed our activities but it always seemed like we got the short end of the stick compared to the boy scouts (except for the cookies, of course!)
DeleteI volunteered at Girl Scout Engineering Day here last year, and I thought it was pretty good, but I thought the activities should have been geared to a little higher level. At every station I worked at, the girls had already learned all the science involved and tended to disengage unless the activity was something fun like blowing something up or playing with static electricity. Unfortunately I didn't have time this year to get involved in planning and helping out with Girl Scout Day, but it sounds like it went really well this year.
There is a great book called "Reviving Ophelia" about the widespread phenomenon of "In my experience in junior high and high school, boys really didn’t like me if I was smarter than them." I have seen pressure on girls to dumb it down for the sake of get social acceptance really dramatically here in Philly.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Reviving-Ophelia-Saving-Selves-Adolescent/dp/1594481881