<p>Marite, perhaps Harvard is a special case. I agree that the physical sciences are still male dominated, but I'm surprised that more women aren't represented in Biology or Chemistry. Do you think this is true in most academic settings? I just think it's more a matter of interest than bias.
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<p>sjmom2329: Reminds me of a history class I loved. I had one project that required a visual and a story component. I spent about 2 hours on the story, and 4 on the visual -- which came out badly. I was making a canoe out of felt and pipe cleaners, which was more difficult then it ended up looking (and I got burns from the glue gun!)</p>
<p>I got a 100% on the story, a 60% on the visual, getting an 80 for the project. I cried my eyes out.</p>
<p>I hated the emphasis on homework, projects, and group work in high school. None of it helped prepare me for college, not that I actually wasted my time on it.</p>
<p>I think secondary schools aren't made for kids who don't learn concrete-sequential style. I'm abstract random, and since most classes (with the exception of history/social sciences) are taught step-by-step, I had a lot of issues understanding the material. I remember being frustrated in Geometry and Calculus because I knew the steps but didn't understand why and struggled mightily until the concepts of "triangle" and "derrivative" made sense to me.</p>
<p>Of course, now I'm a very happy Philosophy/Political science major.</p>
<p>Aside: I vaguely remember reading somewhere that the gender balance changes again in graduate study. Anyone else read anything to that effect?</p>
<p>Weenie, oddly enough, one of my best friends (male) has a Ph.D. in Social work and, even odder, he's one of the few male alumni therefore of Smith, where my D headed after he already had his Ph.D. </p>
<p>But anecdote aside, I see a demand for, from, and on behalf of girls to learn how to handle Science/Engineering/Math. Show any sort of similar demand from males about nursing or social work and I'm all for it.</p>
<p>Fwiw, my D was a double-minority in B/C Calc. I think she was "saved" for Math because both 11th- and 12th-grade Calc teachers happened to be women. Not only was she female, she was WASC-Anglo. She described her Calc Class once as being "the Asians, the Jews, and me & Jane Doe."</p>
<p>Being crass, I assume people set up programs for Science/Engineering/Math for girls because those majors can support careers in lucrative fields and positions of power. Nursing/Social Work etc. don't provide much lucre and the power is one of influence rather than command.</p>
<p>EK, we're slowly replacing a lot of VCR tapes of our faves with DVD's but still have an extensive VCR collection. The past week we've been watching some of the Dahlgiesh series that we taped off of PBS. We don't have a DVR yet and so even things like college football games get taped on VCR. Sort of illuminating...we get a pulse on commercials and often wind up looking at each other and saying something like, "Well, we're not the target audience for that one, either."</p>
<p>TheDad, this mix may be contextual and can also work with boys. I recall when we were on sabbatical on the west coast (same time I referred to above regarding my daughter), and the teachers in 7th grade couldn't believe that my son was really good enough to be enrolled in the "high" 8th grade math class (basically, 2 grades above his nominal level). After all, he wasn't Asian, and he was from nowhere (Michigan). But then he aced a special test that he took a few hours after arriving by car from the midwest and thus was admitted to the class we thought he belonged in, and when later that year he placed very high in the Hokubei Mainichi math contest in the South Bay area -- winning honors for "his" school -- they became believers (miracles do happen, after all). But they couldn't understand why after that year he voluntarily returned to Michigan -- "too bad for you," they said. That I attribute to California chauvinism. (Don't worry, anybody, I grew up in California and I know it's heaven, but it's not the only one.)</p>
<p>Mackinaw, I'm sure it is contextual. And certainly there is California chauvinism...though it pales besides some others. It's one of the reasons that I'm so happy that D is going to college on the other coast, learning about everything that isn't California-centric, though I laugh when she complained about classmates who assumed that <em>everyone</em> knew Massachusetts history. There are indeed many versions of heaven...and not a few of Purgatory. "If I owned both Hell and Texas, I'd live in Hell and rent out Texas. --W.T. Sherman"</p>
<p>3/4th s of the naturopaths, pedatricians , dentists, ob-gyns, psychiatrists, and surgeons I and my girls have had for the last 24 years have been women, so the girls must be taking biology someplace ;)</p>
<p>We did notice however that when we were looking for private schools for our girls, that most of the families seemed to be parents of boys. The schools had pretty equal mix, but it just seemed that more parents felt like they needed or wanted to find a different environment than public school for boys.</p>
<p>Being a boy who is actually still "in the system"(I know, I know, this forum is meant for parents, sorry), I just wanted to share my own experiences</p>
<p>In our school for the last couple of years the top ten kids at graduation have been 2/3rds girls. However, I really don't think its the curriculum that is somehow worse for boys than for girls. What I think happens, at least at my school, is that doing well in school is not a "cool" thing for boys, instead they are pushed more towards athletics. The arts are viewed especially badly, a talent in them apparently suggests effeminity. A smart boy is the target of taunts of "geek" or "nerd", while a girl is admired for her acheivements.</p>
<p>Also, I think many of you are underestimating the power of social conditioning in a child's behaviour. Girls are still encouraged towards more pacific avctivities, while boys are pushed more to competition-driven ones. A good example of this (Once again in my experience, it may not be true for the all) is the case of my ccousins. I had two cousins born approximately one and a half years apart. The elder, a girl, was very energetic and active, sometimes to an annoying extent, and was occasionaly called "bratty" or "hyper. As the boy approached the stage of life that had elicited these comments towards his cousin, he seemed equally inclined, and I expected he would be reproached similarly. However, much to my suprise, the adults of the family made no such comments, instead commenting on how "nice it was to see an active boy!"</p>
<p>Sjmom:</p>
<p>It may be more pronounced at Harvard than elsewhere, but I used the Harvard example only because you used a Harvard physicist (I assume it's Lisa Randall) to claim that women are well represented in a male-dominated field (an oxymoron).</p>
<p>The math team my son ran was in his high school, the same high school that took in students who had been encouraged to join the Science Club for girls in k-8. The fact of the matter is that girls do not go into math and science in large numbers for a variety of reasons. Some may have to do with school, some may have to do with the uncool factor, some even with parental expectations of career paths for girls. </p>
<p>I'll have to dig the information out, but I believe that the data for SAT takers in 7th and 8th grades (Talent Search participants) show that males score better in math than females. This may reflect innate differences or it may reflect the onset of peer pressure on girls away from math and science in the middle grades.</p>
<p>Princeton profile.
physics: 68. Female faculty: 5
math: 59. female faculty: 10 (mostly at instructor and lecturer, i.e. non-ladder, level).</p>
<p>
Actually, I don't think I "claime(ed) that women are well represented in a male dominated field." I said that some can be successful -- by the way it was Lisa Randall (thanks for reminding me!)</p>
<p>I don't understand why this is, but I do think that there are more girls/women headed toward math than physics, which is strange, since physics is so closely related. Anecdotally, in my son's vector calculus class last quarter, about half the students were girls, but in his honors physics sequence, there was only one girl. His school attracts very bright girls, so I can't believe there aren't girls capable of pursuing high level physical sciences. </p>
<p>Emeraldkity4 -- good point about female doctors. I can say the same here. In fact, I sometimes have trouble getting my sons into the only male pediatrician in their practice -- but their orthodontist, oral surgeon and dermatologist have all been female. I think I read recently that more than 50% of medical school students are now female, so they must be getting enough science classes to get into med school.</p>
<p>This is the exact quote to which I responded. The anecdote about Lisa Randall's success was just an illustration of the claim that women are well represented in the sciences. At least, that is how I interpret it, unless my reading skills are deficient.</p>
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I don't necessarily agree with this -- I'd have to see the supporting references, because I think women are quite well represented in the sciences, although perhaps not as much in engineering. In fact, I recently saw part of a presentation on physics by a woman physicist from Harvard -- clearly, she managed to succeed in a male dominated field.
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<p>Women are indeed capable of excelling in the sciences. In many countries, women have long been very well represented in medicine, partly because women are more comfortable being seen to by women doctors. It was actually astounding to me, coming to this country in the 60s, to see that the medical profession was so male-dominated. I was used to a very different situation. It's taken decades to produce the greater gender balance in medicine that we see today.</p>
<p>Computing, which is a brand new field, begun after feminism, is male- dominated. I would have thought a brand new field with no established ethos, would have been easier for women to crack than more hide-bound professions.</p>
<p>By the way, I have sons and no daughters, so I am not making any special pleading on behalf of female students. I'd be very surprised, however, if there was parity among the faculty in the math and science departments at most universities. Princeton (which has a woman president) does not look very different to me than Harvard whose male president created waves with his comments about women and sciences.</p>
<p>On the subject of the absence of girls in physics, there is a fairly easy explanation. Colleges have been pushing for AP-Calc as a sign of rigor, so both boys and girls have been taking AP-Calc. They only require 3 years of lab science, however. Physics is typically taught last, and AP-Physics either requires AP-Calc to have been taken before or to be taken concurrently with it. Most students who do not aim to go into Physics and Math in college do not bother taking AP-Physics. The more ambitious students, however, do take AP-Biology and/or AP-Chemistry. They are thus well prepared to major in Biology or Chemistry, the traditional pre-med majors, but not so well prepared to major in Physics.
In my S's high school, there were several sections of AP-Bio and AP-Chem, but only one of AP-Physics, and that one was pretty well dominated by boys.</p>
<p>The interesting thinkg about the gender gap is how it changes over time. Girls, initially, often test high overall than boys in elementary school. However, boys overtake girls in science and math by the end of high school. In graduate school departments and in tenured faculty, even in humanities, males u outnumber females. Men, of course, are the overwhelming majority of CEOs, politicans and top paid lawyers in the country. It seems that complex social pressure shape this pattern. I'd say it's a bit alarmist to speak of a crisis amongst male education when they usually overtake female students by the end of college.</p>
<p>Marite, I can see why my sentence was confusing -- perhaps if I phrased things better, you wouldn't have to parse my language so carefully to interpret my meaning. Here is what I intended to say:</p>
<p>-- women can succeed in science, as evidenced by med school, dental school admissions etc, and I do believe women are well represented in the social and life sciences. </p>
<p>-- women are not well represented in engineering and the physical sciences. I believe that this is due to lack of interest, more than lack of ability or encouragement, based on my experiences as a systems engineer and my sisters' experiences in electrical engineering.</p>
<p>-- society has made inroads in helping girls succeed in education. Books like "Raising Ophelia" have opened the debate about girls' needs.</p>
<p>-- boys are often labeled as 'bad' when they are active or delayed developmentally. There are few efforts to promote education for boys, since it's assumed they don't need the same nurturing. I disagree with this. Books like "Raising Cain" talk about how we are failing boys.</p>
<p>The problem I see is that, as a society, it is not in our best interests to throw away any talent, based on gender, socio-economic background or ethnicity. It's wonderful that we have so many programs to encourage women and girls -- I just think that some of this success has come at the expense of boys, which can only hurt all of us in the long run. I don't have anything against women pursuing anything in which they are interested -- some of my best friends are women! I just think we are going to have some serious social problems if we don't address the needs of boys and men in our culture.</p>
<p>A couple of points - but no answers</p>
<p>1) The gender gap in medicine is fast disappearing - incoming medical school classes are roughly 50-50. to my knowledge, law, MBA and grad school are as close to 50-50</p>
<p>2) I think you are missing on of the biggest points of the article - the one that Larry Summers got castigated over - some of the differences in boys and girls are physiologic, hard-wired by their brain chemistry and hormones. Yes, there are people at either end of the spectrum, this is a Gaussian normal curve, but the vast majority of boys and girls follow some small variation of the normal pattern. ACHIEVEMENT gaps are closed by the end of college, but some differences in thinking and processing are lifelong, and these physiologic differences are accentuated by socialization, and plain old human nature - girls are more verbal, it is easier for them to do well in verbal based activities, therefore they like to do verbal based activities.</p>
<p>What this means for boys is that boys mature more slowly, particularly their higher order thinking skills, and they are drawn to activities that have some spatial processing component. It also means that they have trouble sitting still, their thinking patterns are less linear, because they truly are wondering "Can we eat this?". This body-brain-society mismatch runs headlong into middle school, the time when their ability to compensate for the not yet organized brain is probably at its lowest.</p>
<p>If grades and test scores are going to continue to be the end all and be all, if recess is a thing of the past, and "shop" or "trade school" is stigmatizing, and therefore to be avoided like the plague, then we need to begin treating boys differently, teaching them differently - maybe the answer is single sex classes in middle school/early high, maybe the answer is that boys don't go to school until they are a year or 2 older than girls.</p>
<p>3) Lest you think that this has just been discovered, my DH said that a consultant discussed the early brain/learning research findings at prof development meetings 10 years ago (DH teaches high school), it didn't fly 10 years ago because of feminism/ girls are victims, how could boys need special treatment and the demonization of "shop", no parent wanted their child relegated to shop, when truth is lots of boys would learn academics better if a portion of their day was taken up with more physically active pursuits. Now it doesn't fly because of NCLB, and the emphasis on standardized testing and requiring academic success of everyone.</p>
<p>I do notice such a huge discrepancy in our town. I cannot remember a boy being valedictorian or even ranked in the top three in the graduating class for at least the past ten years. I have a sophomore boy who is doing very well academically. I know that he is not considered "cool" or popular because he is doing so well in his academics. I know that girls (I have an older daughter) can get " away with" being a top student more easily. The focus with so many of the parents of boys that I know is sports. The parents I know are much more concerned with their boys being good athletes than good students.</p>
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The problem I see is that, as a society, it is not in our best interests to throw away any talent, based on gender, socio-economic background or ethnicity.
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<p>Amen.........</p>
<p>There's also the issue of obedience.</p>
<p>Girls are much more likely to take notes in class, obey the teacher, follow instructions, and adhere to class guidelines and homework deadlines. </p>
<p>I personally take offense at this so-called "not yet organized brain". It is not an issue of mental maturity.</p>