"Hard" Sciences: A "Boy Thing?"

[BlueIris]

The PBS series on women in sciences is excellent.

I just watched this Judy Woodruff interview with the president of Harvey Mudd on why women aren't better represented in the sciences and what could change that. It's great.

http://video.pbs.org/video/2227422857/

[CherokeeDem]

1. Thanks....

When I was in the seventh grade...many years ago...boys took science, girls took home ec. I didn't want to take home ec; I was a science geek. The mistake they made was having those two classes in adjoining rooms with a door between and held at the same time. I snuck into the science class so often that eventually I was allowed to stay, and the following year options were offered so that girls could take science and boys...home ec if they chose. I went on to become a clinical microbiologist and eventually moved into operations and now into Human Resources...and I'm still a science geek.

[tabatha]

2. I have been in science my entire life.

At high school, university, two different science careers, and hopefully the rest of my life.

[exboyfil]

3. Two daughters going into STEM

Older daughter (10th grade) is looking at Electrical/Computer Engineering with a minor in Cinema (possibly second major). She is hoping to find synergies between these two areas. She is already a great film editor (won a school award for Best Directing and Editing and Best Film for her 10 minute documentary). She will be taking College Chemistry this summer (after finishing Honors Chemistry this year). Her last Chemistry class - she does not like chemistry. She will be taking Calculus I and II, Calculus Physics I, and C++ programming next year as a high school junior. We are clearing the deck for concentrating on her engineering, journalism (broadcast and documentary film), and Spanish for the next two years. Her career plans are solidifying.

The younger daughter (8th grade) will have completed 9th grade Physical Science and 10th grade Biology by the end of this year. She is also trying to clear the deck to focus on science and health career courses (certified nursing assistant) as well as her writing. She is thinking Biochemistry with a minor in Creative (possibly Technical) Writing. Then she plans to go on to medical school.

I have already paid for a bunch of courses, and I will be paying for several more to smooth their path. Education is very important to me. I would rather spend that money on education than just about anything else for entertainment.

Science is not a boy thing. In some ways I think women are smarter because they don't want to be confined to a cubicle (like me). I don't expect my older daughter to spend more than two years in a cube. I see her going out into the field working with her company's technology (whether it is cameras or editing software) to aid high end producers. I can see a high level job emerging from this approach. I suspect she will continue to make movies all along - combine that with the technical knowledge of the product- and you have a very powerful mix.

The younger one would make a great doctor. She reads anatomy books for entertainment already. We had a blast doing her biology at home and cutting up a bunch of different animals.

[BlueIris]

4. Yowza!

Reading the anatomy books for entertainment is key clue re: a future medical career. I am cracking up, reading that.

[JDPriestly]

9. Right. Another sign: they just can't resist discussing the cool dissection they did

in class today -- at the dinner table. There you got a doctor -- possibly a surgeon no less, no doubt about it.

[longship]

5. But look at what women have done, and continue to do.

I suggest that everybody here view the 2007 TED talk by Carolyn Porco, one of the prominent scientists involved in the Cassini mission to Saturn. Just go to Ted.com and find it. You will see what women are doing in science. TED has many women scientists in their archive. Look around and see what they are doing.

The demographics for women are promising. In biological sciences and medicine, women are blowing guys away. Even in theoretical physics, a long time man's club, there are women in prominent academic positions, like Lisa Randall, at Harvard.

The first person to win two Nobel prizes in science was Marie Curie.

I'll put forth other prominent women in science of whom some may not be aware.

Hypatia
Hildegard of Bingen
Ada Lovelace
Caroline Herschel
Marie Curie
Henrietta Leavitt
Rosalyn Franklin

And there are many others, especially today. Watch the Porco TED talk and see what women are doing. I only wish that more women would see the opportunities in the sciences and that in spite of gender bias, women have always been part of science.

Men could not have done it without them. Unfortunately, they often did not get the credit. When I was young culture said that women went to university for an MRS degree. Today, they are a force in the sciences, as it should be. Regardless, women have nothing to be ashamed, they have fought against ridiculous biases and have accomplished much in spite of them.

If only it had happened centuries earlier.

Poor Hypatia.

[BlueIris]

6. "The demographics for women are promising"?

Really? I spent some time Altavista-ing this topic again tonight, and most sources claim that only one in four STEM jobs go to female applicants.

This article is one of several that cites that number--it was especially troubling considering that it acknowledges the need to encourage women being educated via community colleges to pursue STEM careers, as they are a critical group losing out to the economic benefits of such jobs.

http://chronicle.com/article/Community-Colleges-Should-Urge/131258/

I'm actually not a STEM person, but I am interested in this problem. So I would like to read more about the promising demographics, if you could point me toward them.

[longship]

10. I don't have figures at my fingertips

Low bandwidth here. But women are kicking ass in undergrad degrees. In post grad, they are wiping the floor in both medicine and biology, where they are above parity with men.

IIRC there are other areas where women are excelling.

Nota bene, I am not making sweeping claims like salary parity, opportunity, etc. I think the ERA may be needed, or something like it, to achieve that.

But more importantly, it may take cultural change to accomplish what anybody paying attention to this issue desires. That may be a sad reality. All the more so to argue for the ERA.

[napoleon_in_rags]

7. The barriers are starting to be challenged.

And that's a wonderful thing. I remember the struggle of the one afro-american woman in an upper level CS class I took. She got hammered, by what I considered to be discrimination, and she didn't make it through. It was a shame because she had the smarts.

If you want to understand the nature of this discrimination, consider the question you see on certain "intelligence" tests that lists a small series of numbers and asks you for the next one. If you're a grown up thinker about information, you'll realize that for any small series of numbers, there are an infinite amount of algorithms that could produce them and then diverge after that series. It takes a certain arrogance to choose one of them, and announce that one to be the "correct" one. What the test is really testing isn't intelligence, but how much you think like the test maker, which algorithm you think is THE one. And that's the nature of the discrimination you see in the hard sciences. You get a group of sheltered upper middle class white boys together, who were all raised in similar circumstances and think very much the same, and a new form of cultural "correctness" emerges... Some of it corresponds to real hard scientific/mathematical truth, but the other part of it corresponds to a cultural way of thinking which is really quite independent from scientific truth, but is merged with it in their minds. If a person with a different cultural background who doesn't share their way of thinking, but has a gift for the actual science tries to become part of this kind of scene, they will always be at a disadvantage.

[BlueIris]

8. "You get a group of sheltered upper middle class white boys together..."

"...and a new form of cultural 'correctness' emerges...Some of it corresponds to real hard scientific/mathematical truth, but the other part of it corresponds to a cultural way of thinking which is really quite independent from scientific truth, but is merged with it in their minds."

I think you've hit the nail on the head, here.