Women and mathematics
2005-08-17 01:02![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexibeastToday 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:
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:
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?
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?
