Girls & Math: How It Works

Talking about Girls & Math: How It Works:

Say, roughly, (http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/01/17/summers...) "Women are rare in mathematically demanding fields. This is a problem I want to solve, so I'd like to talk about the cause. Maybe it is because they are discriminated against. Maybe it is because women have other priorities than men. Or maybe it's a reflection of what we see in standardized tests -- that there is more variance in male skill." And be told that you said "Girls are bad at math."

I'm glad this is one of those issues so complex it takes a stick-figure comment to say something about it that is both accurate and noncontroversial.

Here at myState University, the math department operates close to gender parity, with maybe a slight majority of women in the Applied Math concentration. Engineering is a total sausage-fest.

Which is funny, if you think about it, because engineers only need to know so much math.

I'm not even going to talk about physics.

Engineering is hard. Doing difficult homework problems is not fun. I only know a few engineers who were regulars on the college party circuit. The women in my engineering school (who were the minority) were smart and liked engineering.

No insight. Just a restatement of the problem. I'm no more knowledgeable about the bias against women in engineering, and I'm not laughing.