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This is a spin off the “is it just me” thread. Well, my pet peeve is women in science
Bean: So you see, about 25% of new physics graduates are women, with these rough statistics. The "old guard" was closer to 10%. So in 20-30 years, when these women have had a chance to make groundbreaking discoveries, whose full impact on their fields will be well-known, then you will see about 25% of Nobel Prize winners will be women!
I doubt your projection of the number of graduates to Nobel Prise Winners. Unfortunately, I can not cite the original paper in Nature - it would take me a lot of time to find it, sorry, but I hope I am not imagining things that research in population genetics shows that there are just naturally more men with talent to math and physics than women.
I do not want offend anybody personally but if both of ones parents are 5 ft tall one has lower chances to play basketball in NBA. Likewise, *there are women talented in physics and math… but the number of them is lower in comparison with men.
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The number of women in math and science can be misleading. I have seen many reports
of girls being actively discouraged from entering those fields. The only difference that may
be valid is that there are a few very bright males with immense motivation and drive.
I do not remember reading about any female with the ability that Newton described as
" being at the height of his powers" when he was able to put all his energy into thinking
about a problem until he achieved a solution, such a solving a problem proposed by Leibnitz
in such a short time that Leibnitz said "Ex talionis leonem...."
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exactly. it seems that to be a genius is more a trait of males -and female's abilities have less deviation from the norm - whatever the norm is.
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its not just talent (intelligence) women (in the past, both distant, and not too distant) have been denied educations, or when educated denied opportunity, or when educated and given opportunity, have be socially ostrosized for persueing certain careers.
about 3-4 years ago, Stanford medical school appointed a woman as the of the medical department(or was it the whole hospital? medical school?) (a specialist in neuro-surgery i think) and once her appointment was offical, she went public and took action against many of the doctors and hospital administrators.. who's behavior was discrimitory..
She said, for years, she had bit her tongue, held back with complaints, dealt with sexist treatment, so she could advance.. and all the while watched other women become demoralize and discouraged by the same treatment, and drop out of medicine and neurosurgery, because they couldn't take the added stress impossed by sexism. All the men involved were shocked, and surprized not to many women were.
Most women realize they can't rock the boat and suceed, and have learned that when you complain, you commit career suiside.
often, while individual men are nice, the system and rules that are in place are not...collectively, they become bullies.
and a recent study of really successful women (the NY times published a story on it) pointed out that sucessfull women tend either to 1) not marry and have families, 2) have a spouse who has basically put their career on the back burner, (ie become "house husbands") or 3) had family money (trust fund or other extra assets) that allowed them to be able to "buy" service over and above what their salary would normally afford.
Successful men? they had wifes! many of whom didn't work in outside jobs, and so were able to do all the "family tasks". women with out "house husbands" or money are less likely to succeed.. it has little or nothing to do with intelligence.. it has to do with there only being 24 hour in a day, and families take time...
Men have wife's, and they take care of the family stuff...
as for genetics, many a polymath has come out of blue.. with no family history of great genius. yes, you are right, my parents just over 5 feet tall (circa 1.6 meters tall)don't have any children or grandchildren taller than 6 feet (what 1.9 meters or so?) but intelligence seems to be different...
it does help to have parents who value educations (no matter how much or how little of it they have)
cultures that do, (judism comes to mind) tend to have higher levels of women with education, (and that education is broad-- more scientists, more doctors, more engineers..)
when i was a teen, and reading the almost 10 year old best seller, the microbe hunters, my mother disapproved.
she almost never censored books, but she disliked the idea of me being interested in science and medicine...
my life has been interesting, and many things interfered with it following a normal course.. but even if things had gone well, i know i would not have had any parental support for pursuing medicine.. i know i would have been advised to become a nurse... my parents openly stated "medicine is no career for a woman"...
how many other woman heard the same message, over and over again? life is hard.. when those arround you, rather than encouraging you, and supporting you, go around discouraging you, and undermining your confidence (and in many cases sabatoging your efforts..) its not hard to understand why so few woman have succeeded!
i am a few years older, and i realize, things are much better today.. but there are still many more obsticals for women than there are for men.. i hope, as your career progress, that is less and less true, and you never encounter them...
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of troy,
You make excellent points.
Vika,
Don't buy into any theory that pushes women into a lower mental status than men. There are simply too many exceptions to the so-called rules.
I'll give you one just for the sake of writing. Categorically the most brilliant student I ever had the pleasure and honor of teaching was a girl, whose father is an award-winning physicist. She was (and is) incredibly gifted in music. She was accepted into the Curtis Institute of Music when only 13. She began working on her bachelor's degree in music at the highly prestigious Curtis school while also attending the Masterman School in Philadelphia for her high school diploma. Both Curtis and the Masterman schools are for highly gifted students. You would be hard pressed to find many boys who could have pulled off earning high school diplomas and masters degrees at the same time at two such schools.
Now how would you go about explaining the fact that this girl achieved what she achieved? Is she a freak? No. Her parents highly valued education, encouraged her to achieve her highest in all fields, even moved to Philadelphia so their daughter could achieve as much as possible. I read several news articles about her, and even her sterling character blazed forth. She never turned in assignments late when extreme pressure was upon her. When she had to pull long days of intense study off, her dad would say to her (as her mom told me he'd said to her many a time), "It won't kill you." Edit: I want to add that she took science awards at the Masterman School.
And today, at the age of eighteen, she's earning her masters at Julliard.
I agree completely with of troy here. Much of what happens to girls has to do with the environment parents provide. Girls who may be geniuses may be encouraged to go into areas in which their genius simply cannot flourish. Tradition. Lack of understanding. The easy way out. Denial. Stereotypical thinking. Parents fall into the cultural trap. And genius does not guarantee the fighting spirit.
We place so much stress upon improving education, but the area we should really improve is parent education. Particularly parent education regarding the raising of girls.
Have you ever read "The Women's Room" by Virginia Woolf? [Edit Correction--thanks, of troy! "A Room of My Own"]Second Edit: "A Room of One's Own"--sheesh. Read it! If not, that's a good starting point though written so long ago. Woolf doesn't address the sciences--if my memory serves me correctly, though I could be wrong--but she does address the problems the female sex encounters in trying to distinguish itself in a male-dominated world with male-dominated histories, achievement, and even so-called scientific sociology studies.
If I bought into your way of thinking, what very sad repercussions would my female students suffer. Instead, I am by far more alert to possibility that sitting in my classrooms could be the beginnings of brilliance in both my male and female students. I don't buy into your comments that puberty is going to wipe out the female brain--cross-thread ref. Genius is rare, but recognized genius is a thrilling moment for educators--and it should be for parents, too. And not just genius, but executions of superior human intelligence, whether displayed by obviously bright humans or average people who have brilliant moments of perception and insight.
I would entreat you to open your own mind up to finding those exceptions to the rule--as many as you can find--and eventually you'll realize the rule is antiquated and to be held in high suspicion.
Best regards,
WW
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Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.
I'll be a post feminist in the post-patriarchy.
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In reply to:
Feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings.
Ha! We know, we know. We're goddesses.
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We're goddesses
Which functionally amounts to the same thing as saying you're inferior.
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We place so much stress upon improving education, but the area we should really improve is parent education. Particularly parent education regarding the raising of girls.
yes! but not just girls. parenting. period.
Which functionally amounts to the same thing as saying you're inferior.
oh boy. this should be fun....
formerly known as etaoin...
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WW-- re:Have you ever read "The Women's Room" by Virginia Woolf?
Virgina Woolf wrote and essay "a room of my own", lamenting that women were not accorded the same time and access to persue careeres as men. she, too wanted a study, a room for herself to work in, by herself. and she pointed out, women didn't have such room.. men might comment "there is the nursry" (and so decide the woman real work and worth was in bearing children) or point out the "sewing room" (again, womem seen only as slave to fashion, and who primary work was providing directly for the needs of a family) Men could have a study, and write, earn money, and with this money provide... women were expected to provide directly.
(and this is still all to true, since the work women do in the house; laundry, cleaning, childcare, mending, cooking, what ever they do for their family, is never counted in a country GDP-- their labor is not recorded at all.. it continues to be considered "valueless" by the thing we use to value most things ins this word, the dollar value of the contribution.
(mind you, volunteer work, soup kitchen work, this is considered, and econmist can tell you the value of volunteer oganizations, so its not that there is no direct payment, it is rather a continuation of a thought process, that accords women little value)
Marilyn French wrote "a woman room" about a modern women, who is bright, and hard working, who finds, that no matter her accademic acheivements, she is passed over, again and again.. it is about how women's value and contributions are passed over. (Marilyn French also wrote a wonder full book on power.. Beyond Power, detailing what was needed for things to change.. a great book
Dr Bill has been reading (and providing words from) a radio show that has all the transcripts on line, The Egines of Innovation". Dr Lienhart, bless his heart, has done many episodes on womens contributions.. and has commented again and again.. this women made a great contribution to the sciences.. and her name has is never recorded in any text books... there have been 5 nobel prizes awarded to women in physics. which is pretty remarkable since for half of the time nobel prizes have been given out, women have been actually barred from attending schools (like MIT) that taught science. just as they were for years barred from medical school or from law school. and even when they where allowed to attend, they were refused degrees, or refused credential to practice. and Fran Connally, of Stanford, was the woman who resigned in the face of continuing sexual harrasment at that school.. something that still go on, there, and many other places.
What is remarkable is how many women, inspite of all the obsticales they had to overcome, still manage to acheive any recognition!
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