Gender in STEM

It has been estimated that women make up around one third of the scientists’ population, all subjects taken together[1]. However, the proportion of women within each field varies greatly, with physics, mathematics and engineering being the subjects that attract the least of them.

When I was doing my Ph.D. in Physics in Germany, some people my age would look very surprised hearing I was a physicist, and they would ask me whether I really enrolled at university “as a woman”. What possible answers did they expect? Clearly, they had not thought this question through, but it shows how persistent the idea is that physics is a male domain.

It is an interesting question to wonder why physics and mathematics are traditionally seen as male subjects. I believe there are several elements of answer, which are somehow interrelated. First, as Margaret Wertheim argues in her book, “The Pythagoras’ Trousers”, our western society has been built on a long tradition, dating from the ancient Greeks, in which the Earth and by extension the material world have been associated to women and the concept of femininity (see for instance the expression “mother Earth”), while the sky, and by extension the world of ideas, is regarded as a male domain. In addition, as discovering the laws of nature was considered equivalent to reading “god’s book”, the scientific activities and also education were closely related to the church, which not only pictures God as a man[2] but also conveys strong patriarchal messages, in which women are expected to stay at home, confined in the material world, and not to have any intellectual role.

As a result, our society still conveys, subtly sometimes, gender-specific expectations of how people of one gender have to behave and what sort of jobs they can do. It is important to realise the difficulties that anyone has, be they a girl or a boy, when they do not match these expectations. Think for instance of how effeminate boys can be laughed at, in reality just because they do not reflect the collective representation of masculinity. My mother, who is now eighty, has often told me that she was a tomboy when she was a young girl. She spent a lot of time with her male cousin, running and climbing trees in the garden. Her behaviour was frowned upon by her mother and grandmother, who forced her to knit every day. Certainly, times have changed, but gender-specific expectations still persist. To be convinced, a short visit to a toy shop should be sufficient. Maybe legos won’t be found any more in a “boy department” as it may have been the case fifteen years ago, but the clear distinction between legos for boys and legos for girls will make it clear to anyone that we still consider that girls and boys do not have the same interests — and, as a result, we drive them to have indeed different interests. This point with the toys is not only anecdotal as children develop their cognitive skills substantially through play. For instance, boys traditionally get many construction toys, which happen to develop spatial skills, while girls don’t. No wonder then that boys statistically outperform girls in this area.

The gender debate inevitably comes to the question, “nature or nurture?”, that is, whether the differences we observe between boys and girls are the result of a different genetic make-up or of a different education. In any case, in the discussion about why there are fewer girls in physics, maths and engineering, I believe it is of paramount importance to appreciate the social pressure girls experience on what subjects they must be good at or not good at, or that are “suited” to them. And I think that it would help us tremendously, as a society, to realise that boys as well are subjected to strong pressure to match the societal expectations of a “real boy”. There are subjects labelled as “feminine”, such as foreign languages, and others labelled as “masculine”, such as maths or physics. However, a man who studies foreign languages at university won’t have a symmetrical situation to a woman who studies physics, since in both cases the majority of their university professors are men! It is also widely accepted for men to have activities traditionally seen as “feminine” as long as they do it on a professional basis — think for instance of cooks, tailors… — , while until a quite recent time it was “tolerated” for women to have a so-called male activity (such as composing music or doing science) as long as it was not on a professional basis.

Nowadays, the first barrier that girls will encounter on their way to becoming a mathematician, physicist, or engineer, is the commonly accepted idea that girls are not good at maths or at any “male subject” and its corollary that girls who happen to be good at these subjects are not “feminine”. Smart women seem to be seen by many as a threat to the “natural” order of society where men lead the world and have the power, because of their allegedly superior intelligence. This is internalised by girls themselves who feel much more normal and even more attractive by claiming they are not good at maths, even if it is not true. They internalise as well that they won’t have a leading role in society. This can be certainly explained by the insufficient number of role models, the underrepresentation of women in media (not only there are less women in leading roles but also we talk less about them, in proportion), and the fact that the vast majority of children’s books tell stories where the positive role of girls, if there are any in the story, consists of being so beautiful that the (male) hero falls in love with them… No wonder then that we find such striking differences between girls and boys in terms of career choice. Also, as for the importance of different toys that develop different skills, the importance of different expectations has been shown to lead to different outcomes indeed. In a 1999 study by Spencer et al.[3], two groups of university students who strongly identified with maths took on a maths test. It was said to the first group that men usually outperform women in this test, while the other group was told that no difference of outcome between men and women could be observed. The women in the first group dramatically underperformed, while the performance of the women in the second group equalled that of men. This effect is due to a so-called “stereotype threat”, which has been confirmed by numerous subsequent studies and concerns any group that can be singled out on any basis, not only on that of gender.

Finally, the influence of family, teachers, or, more generally, the environment, plays a fundamental role for girls who do choose physics or maths as a career. This is illustrated by many examples of historical female scientists, one of the most famous being probably Marie Curie, who happened to have an open-minded father. These women had to break many barriers to be allowed into these predominantly male domains. Can modern parents who encourage their daughters in their scientific education in the same way as they would encourage their sons counterbalance our strong gender stereotypes?

In a document produced by the Institute of Physics (IoP), entitled ‘girls physics action’, the importance of a supportive physics teacher is also highlighted. A supportive physics teacher promotes a positive image of physics (and doesn’t say, like for instance many biologists who teach physics do, that they are no great experts at physics, implying that it is no big deal) and doesn’t ignore girls because they think that physics is a masculine subject. The story of Julia Huggins, a famous British physicist, who reported in a radio broadcast[4] that she started liking physics when she finally had a true physicist as physics teacher is clearly illustrating the importance of teachers in passing on the love for their subject.

During my PGCE training, we had at university a session on gender in science. Having read and thought quite extensively about the under-representation of girls in the STEM subjects, I was very excited to hear what academic experts had to say. During the session, we were first given a text emphasising the importance of emotions for girls in contrast to boys. As with the research results reviewed by the IoP, the idea was that fewer girls would choose science because science is an activity regarded as deprived of emotions, and therefore by nature excludes women. This argument seems to be aligned with one I often hear about the “issue” with physics and maths, namely that they call for a right or wrong answer. This would be a barrier to girls, who — please let me add ‘generally’ here — like expressing their opinions and discussing their emotions as well. It seems difficult indeed to come around the fact that answers required in maths and physics are right or wrong. A solution would be to go completely constructivist (on this, see Constructivist Theories), and allow students to express their “truth”, provided — we may hope — that it is somehow consistent. Obviously, this would pose a huge problem in terms of exams and marking, and so far no education scientist has dared to come up with this solution (phew!). However, they found another way to solve this issue of right or wrong: by putting an emphasis in science lessons on the nature of science (that is, a humanity subject, which girls are so fond of, aren’t they?) and discussing scientific societal issues in the form of debates in the classroom. Brilliant, girls can finally express their neither wrong nor right opinion in science lessons, and — I’m sure — they will suddenly love science!

From many student interviews reported in the IoP document, it results that girls are interested in living things. The reason is obvious: they are programmed to give life, aren’t they? And this explains so nicely their larger attraction to biology. Also, research says, they need to see a link between lessons and their real life. And, finally, a reason why many people (including many girls) don’t like physics is that it is too mathematical. Maths is not sexy for girls, so how could physics be? So let’s try to take out all parts that are too mathematical, and ask students to explain some physical phenomena, rather than spending too much time on equations or calculations. Along the same lines, why bother with the concept of units? They are only annoying and surely put many students off. Just forget about them! Let the exam boards put the units on the answer sheet, and hope that students at some point will grasp the concept (and its importance).

In the second part of the university session, our teacher showed us photos taken by students. The instruction was to take pictures related to science. All photos of plants or animals had been made by girls. The PGCE students around me were very happy with themselves because they were able to guess the gender of the photographer for each picture. The stereotype was verified and so everything was fine. While I thought our teacher would have tried to fight these gender stereotypes, his lesson did exactly the opposite. The interviews of girls and analysis of the reasons why girls wouldn’t choose physics at A-level carried out by researchers do make such gender stereotypes apparent. However, the subsequent actions, mentioned above, taken to attract more girls into physics do not fight these stereotypes. Instead, they reinforce them, acknowledging that girls cannot like physics the way physics is, because girls and boys are by nature different and girls need to link emotions to their intellectual activities. This led the education community to the conclusion that we should try to pretend physics is different (let’s do less maths, discuss societal issues or talk more about how scientists work), as if we would have to excuse ourselves that physics is indeed horrible. Instead of embracing physics as a whole, showing the fascinating link between maths and the natural world, the physics education world shies away from the challenges of teaching physics properly. Less equations, no units, more debates.

In this document from the IoP and during the session at university, there was nothing about women like me who did choose to study physics. I have many female friends who are physicists, and certainly, regarding our abilities at and our taste for physics and maths, we don’t correspond to the gender stereotype. However, it doesn’t mean we have any issues with our gender identity. Is that conceivable that we love physics for the very same reasons many of our male colleagues do, because it explains the world with mathematical and abstract concepts, because we like solving problems using logic, because we don’t want at any cost to discuss emotions and give our opinion (especially when we don’t know the subject well), because we like understanding things and not just memorising them, because physics is about the world around us…? Shouldn’t we ask ourselves why there are not more girls like us, or, put in differently, why society don’t expect girls to like physics and maths?

Now, don’t let me throw the baby out with the bath water. Not every measure that has been taken to make physics more attractive has been useless, ineffective, or counterproductive. The realisation that students’ interests and needs can be very different (without necessarily thinking of gender) is an excellent starting point. This means taking advantage of the very broad spectrum of topics physics deals with to make it interesting to anybody and show how physics is relevant to any of us — and not only to those who dream of becoming astrophysicists or mechanical engineers. Giving teachers varied resources would be a fantastic idea! Also, instead of regarding the fact that answers in physics and maths are either right or wrong as a problem, we should underline the role of creativity in finding the right solution. There are often many ways in maths and in physics to come to the right result, and this is an incredible richness. And, in physics, there is ample space for expressing creativity when it comes to finding analogies between a physical concept and the daily life. Analysing where the analogy works and where it doesn’t is an excellent way to explore physical abstract concepts. Finally, all outreach initiatives towards young people are useful to deconstruct the representation of a scientist as a crazy, asocial white man working insane hours in his lab. Showing how diverse scientists and scientific or technical careers are is certainly helpful in fighting false representations that lead some young people to reject technical careers.

Making physics accessible is also of paramount importance. As I have explained before, the English ‘the earlier, the better’ philosophy makes it almost impossible because complex abstract concepts are taught too early, without the students having proper foundations. And I must say that I find it incredible that in the 21st century some teachers still give equations, describing a physical phenomenon, as if it is something that must be remembered to solve numerical problems, and not as the very description of the phenomenon that they are teaching, just in a mathematical language. Certainly, this goes hand in hand with how maths is taught. If maths is taught as a set of meaningless procedures with no other purpose than passing the GCSE, clearly the task is immense for physics teachers if they want to show students that equations do tell you something about the world. And for this, solid foundations are essential. If students have no grasp of the concept of proportionality, how will they understand a linear relationship? To introduce equations properly, it could be a good idea to have students first think about or experience the relationships between variables beforehand. Teaching for greater understanding is good for everybody, and not only for attracting girls into the subject.

Trying to denature physics or maths because it would make it more attractive, especially to girls, is to reinforce two stereotypes: that physics or maths are boring per se, and that girls are not done for abstraction and maths — or for thinking outside the emotional world. The general decline in interest for these subjects is quite paradoxical in our more and more technological world where physics and technology are expected to help us find a sustainable solution to, for instance, the energy challenge we are facing. While we become more and more users of technology and dependent on it, we seem to be less and less interested in and able to understand how it works. In parallel to the increasing importance of technology in our world, while robots may do more and more of the tasks that have been done by humans until now, experts are perceived as manipulators and ignorance is becoming a virtue. This is what schools and the whole society should fight, by developing a love for thinking and understanding, not rote learning for the sake of passing tests and debates for the sake of enjoying giving an uninformed opinion.

[1] Gender in the Global Research Landscape, by Elsevier.

[2] There are however signs of change in the Protestant Church; see for instance the example of Sweden: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/sweden-church-god-gender-neutral-terms-uppsala-stockholm-lund-cathedral-lena-sjostrand-archbishop-a8129736.html

[3] Cited in Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Hill, C., Corbett, C. & Rose, A. St. (2010) AAUW, Washington, p. 57.

[4] BBC radio 4, The Life Scientific, Julia Higgins on polymers, November 2016