Stopping grammar school gender bias key to equality

Stopping grammar school gender bias key to equality

By John Beck

After reading your article on the proportion of male and female
professors ("UCLA professorships still dominated by men," Jan. 19),
I felt that I needed to comment on one thing.

There is a quotation by a female student, Carrie White, that
says, "Probably women would be more into the humanities and the
arts while men would enter math and science areas."

I hate to nitpick, but isn’t this attitude part of the problem?
I certainly do not fault White; she’s only reflecting a popular
attitude in the primary and secondary education system: Boys do
math and science, girls do arts and English. The fact that a woman
said this may indicate another victim of grammar school gender
bias.

As one who has taught introductory astronomy (as a teacher’s
assistant at UCLA and an instructor elsewhere), I have seen that
those who do best are usually those who apply themselves – without
regard to X or Y chromosomes. However, I see time and time again
the attitude that women have an inherent handicap in math and
science. I have heard this used as an excuse for failure: "She
cannot do math because she is a woman." This infuriates me, not
only because it is a cop-out, but because there are millions of
people in America who have poor math skills because someone told
them that women simply cannot do math.

When I reflect upon my experiences in grammar school, I recall
that the girls did as well (or better) in math as the boys. In
fact, as we gathered on the playground plotting to stamp out
cooties, we would bemoan the fact that girls seemed better at all
schoolwork, making us boys look bad.

By the time I got to high school, it had become common knowledge
that females could not do math or science nearly as well as males
could. This was widely accepted by the males as well as the
females; enrollment in calculus and advanced placement science
classes merely proved the point. (Although, it puzzled me when I
saw a woman – a cheerleader – find the roots of a third-order
polynomial in her head!)

In my undergraduate days, I rarely saw a woman in my physics
classes as either professor or student. When I was doing my
master’s work, I had the same experience. Here at UCLA, in the
astronomy department, I have seen the largest proportion of female
students so far, and it is still quite small.

It is apparent to me that those little girls who used to make us
boys look bad in grammar school were taught not to excel in math or
science somewhere along the way. They may have learned it in the
classroom, on the playground or in the home – but they learned to
fail.

Not only did the girls learn that women cannot do math, but the
boys learned this, too. Sadly, many of the students at UCLA have
learned this. How can we ever hope to achieve equality when so many
of us don’t actually believe in it?

Beck is currently doing research in Arizona.Comments to
[email protected]