Women and mathematics

[flexibeast]

Today i came across an article entitled "Poll shows math the most hated school subject". Although i wasn't particularly surprised by this result, i was interested to read that:

When broken down by gender, more than 40 percent of women had no love for numbers.

That's one way of putting it; another way is to say that more than 50% of women didn't have strong negative feelings towards mathematics. So why choose the former phrasing over the latter? Might it be that the former tends to direct us towards traditional stereotypes which claim that women are 'naturally' not mathematically minded, whereas the latter does not? And yet, women have made a number of significant contributions to mathematics:

• Sophie Germain made contributions to the field of number theory;


• Sofia Kovalevskaya made contibutions in the areas of partial differential equations and rotating solids;


• Grace Chisholm Young was awarded the Gamble Prize for her work on calculus;


• Amelie Emmy Noether not only made contributions to the field of algebra, but also to theoretical physics;


• Julia Robinson's work laid the basis for the 'solution' of Hilbert's tenth problem - Yuri Matiyasevich's theorem, which implies that it is actually unsolvable.

As a researcher into women's participation in the IT industry recently noted, essentialism actually "helps to create what it seeks to explain", and "choices made during adolescence are more likely to be made on the basis of gender stereotypes". i wonder how much the mass media's subtle choices of phrasing, such as in the example above, influence those stereotypes?
 

Comments

[timeisahelix.livejournal.com]

Word.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Sorry, i don't follow . . . . ?

[timeisahelix.livejournal.com]

I mean, "Yeah. you're completely right and awesome for posting this."

Perhaps they don't say "word" in Australia. I actually rarely ever say it in real life, only on teh internets.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Well, i live a cloistered life, far from the trendy crowds . . . . :-) Thanks for enlightening me, and thanks for the compliment. :-)

[timeisahelix.livejournal.com]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Word

Ok a womens rant from me...You won't hear it often but...

[choke-me-hard.livejournal.com]

I hate when they make women out to be idiots...You know anything a man can do a woman can do at least 10x's better...Granted I'm not the best example of womens intelligence but come on...Some of the most intelligent ppl in our history are women!

Re: Ok a womens rant from me...You won't hear it often but...

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

*laugh* Well, there's that saying that goes something like "If you want to get the job done, ask a man. If you want to not only get the job done, but get it done right first time, ask a woman". ;-)

Seriously, though, it is sad to see how many people (including a number of women!) still think that women are basically only capable of little more than domestic work (as though managing a household is a small thing!), despite so much evidence to the contrary . . . .

Re: Ok a womens rant from me...You won't hear it often but...

[choke-me-hard.livejournal.com]

I totally agree...Although I am comfortable being the devout lil domestic diva I prefer working and when I work I prefer grunt work as in hard labor versus the stereotypical secretary.

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

Thankyou for posting this.


Rhiannon

Undergrad math/stat student.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Heh, you're most welcome! :-)

Actually, not long after i posted this, i came across a more contemporary example of successful women in mathematics: Xiaoyun Wang, a member of the Chinese team that recently successfully broke the SHA-0 and SHA-1 crytographic algorithms.

i've actually been meaning to ask you (if i may) which areas of mathematics you're studying?

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

Well I haven't really decided yet, I am about half way through second year and I am doing a double degree with computer science and statistics, my main problem is that I have too many areas of interest, I love mathematics but I may not get a major in it as I also want to do epidemiology, which will mean a lot of statistics, getting back to the maths I have been concentrating on discrete mathematics/number systems and there applications in computer science, process efficiency, algorithms and so forth.
At the moment I am really loving group theory and hating differential calculus.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

*nod*

i'm impressed by your love of group theory - for some reason, i really struggle to remember the basics, which is frustrating . . . .

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't be to impressed by my math prowess, my interest in math is nothing more than unrequited love, I care for hir so dearly but I have never shown hir anything new of value.

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Not yet, anyway. :-) Not all great mathematicians have been prodigies like (for example) Gauss . . . .

[cheshire-bitten.livejournal.com]

The question is do you understand differential calculus because I would be more inpressed with that right now. :)

[flexibeast.livejournal.com]

Er . . . . only the basics. i mean, i got up to somewhere around the chain rule at uni; and i did a bit of integration, but nothing to write home about. It's not something i'm currently pursuing, although i imagine i probably will at some stage; i certainly don't hate it. Maybe i just haven't done enough of it yet. ;-)