Joyeux 4th of July, mes amis américains! I am checking in from Montréal, a temporary stopover on the way back to the U.S. of A. from a brief visit to Quebec City. I was there for Renaissance Weekend, an occasional (five times per year) gathering of the important, demi-important, and merely interesting and/or well-connected to get together and talk about stuff.
I had a great time, and I would be happy to tell you all about it if RW goings-on were not strictly off the record. (For example, I could reveal the amusing story behind how nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler met his wife Rosa Wang, or how I took down a huge pot from Scripps College president Nancy Bekavac when my quad tens demolished her ace-high flush, but rules are rules.) But I am perfectly within my rights to share things that I said myself. I gave a few mini-presentations, among which was one in a series of two-minute lunchtime talks on “What I Would Do If I Could,” a rather free-ranging topic if ever there was one. Other people suggested banning torture, printing people’s phone numbers on their license plates, or moving to a chocolate-based economy. Here was my little spiel:
If I could propose one thing, it would be to do everything in our power to encourage young girls to get excited about science, math, and technology.
As a physicist, I know that my field is only about ten percent women. There is a theory on the market, occasionally suggested by people in positions of power and influence, that an important contributor to this imbalance is a difference in intrinsic aptitude. The technical term for this theory is “bullshit.” I say this not as a starry-eyed egalitarian, but as one who has looked at the data. This is a theory that makes predictions, and its predictions are spectacularly wrong. If they were right, the fraction of women that dropped out would rise at the higher ranks, as the competition for positions became more fierce; that’s not true. The percentage of women scientists would be basically constant from place to place; that’s not true. The fraction of women getting physics degrees would be stable over time; that’s not true. The truth is that women drop out of science between high school and college (and, tellingly, disproportionately more women try to specialize in physics later in college than those who choose physics as a major during their first year). And they do so because they are discouraged by a million small signals that add up to a powerful cumulative message.
We shouldn’t encourage girls to be enthusiastic about science, math, and technology because we need more scientists, mathematicians, or engineers. We should do so because many young girls are potentially interested in technical fields, and this interest should be celebrated, not deprecated. Support to pursue one’s passions is something that everyone deserves, regardless of their chromosomes.
Let freedom ring, everybody.
Re #95,
Thanks, Macho. But the problem starts early. The low number of female tenured physics professor is largely due to the low number of female physics undergraduates.
The question is, “Why the low number of female physics undergrads?” Nature (inherent disinterest) or Nurture (subtle discrimination)? Unfortunately, more data on female perceptions of discrimination at the higher ranks of the profession won’t help answer this.
Re. post #99
Somehow the formatting cut out parts of my comment. I meant to say …. boys/people of certain ethnicities are represented in higher proportions relative to the available population in the Physical sciences, that’s not a reason to discourage girls/people of other ethnicities en masse.
If the problem is nurture, then data will be shown on a percentage that does not show an absolute…60/40…70/30..even 80/20…or 90/10 all show nurture as the cause.
Nature displays itself like this: What percentage of humans can fly using their bodies only? Zero. They have no inherent capabilities. What percentage of snakes have hands, feet and wings? Zero again.
What percentage of parrots can speak a language? According to linguists the answer is zero again. The parrot can mimic sounds but will not fly off into the forest, teach its fellow birds to speak nor will its language learned go through any history of weakening of consonants, shifting of vowels, dropping prefixes and suffixes and then building up new prefixes and suffixes with the following generations. Humans do it involuntarily.
Huh? Not following you, Bob.
Supernova,
Belezean has stated in #101 ” The question is, ‘Why the low number of female physics undergrads?’ Nature(inherent disinterest) or Nurture (subtle discrimination)?”
If women are inherently disinterested in physics, then none of them are interested.
Furthermore, what percentage of men show an interest in physics enough to take it up in school? Is it 100%?
I think I am making a strong pitch on behalf on nurture and you might not agree?
Good grief. By the same reasoning, if women as a group are inherently disinterested in romantic relationships with other women, then none of them are interested such relationships.
Or, if women are inherently shorter than men, then none are taller.
Inherent disinterest like any biological property would not be uniformly distributed. To say that women as a group are inherently disinterested simply means that the median point of the disinterest curve among females is higher than the corresponding median for males.
No, Bob, I’m with you in the nurture camp on this one, but I gotta agree with Belizean that you’re far oversimplifying the claim that anyone is “inherently” anything. I don’t think anyone on the nature side is trying to deny that female physicists exist, or argue that they exist in spite of a complete lack of interest in the subject. It doesn’t do us any good to traffic in absolutes.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2189555
Short news-item, reproduced in full below:
Further:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/15023082.htm
I wish the changelings would write a book. They have a unique perspective that I think is very valuable to answer these questions. When this topic appeared before, I proposed (#63) a similar idea to what the above writer described, thinking to a good friend of mine who made the gender change in the other direction (male to female).
Here’s a link to Barres’ opinion piece in Nature (subscription may be required):
Does Gender Matter?
Here’s another interesting tidbit.
Girls turned off by boys’ own curriculum