[RUME] Proof and Prejudice: Women in Mathematics and Physics

[Crowley, Lillie F (Bluegrass)]

I'm a fifty-something in mathematics. In response to Sarah Natividad's comments about having never experienced any discrimination because she's female, I would suggest that a significant factor is that those battles have been fought for her by a lot of fifty-somethings...and sixty-somethings and forty-somethings...
 
That's about all I am going to say, except to suggest that, should she decide to pursue a doctorate later after her children are older, she will find it MUCH, MUCH more difficult to do than she would have when she was in her twenties. There are two reasons for this (this is my opinion only, but based on personal experience...): first, she won't have the mental acuity in her forties that she did in her twenties, and will also have to re-learn much of the mathematics she learned in graduate school before she left; and incorporating graduate study into an already full and complicated life is a real challenge.
 
Cheers, Lillie Crowley

________________________________

From: rume-bounces at betterfilecabinet.com on behalf of Murphy, TJ
Sent: Tue 4/25/2006 8:21 AM
To: Sarah Natividad; rume at betterfilecabinet.com
Cc: tjmurphy at ou.edu
Subject: Re: [RUME] Proof and Prejudice: Women in Mathematics and Physics


Sarah,

I suggest you read the book Why So Slow: The Advancement of Women by researcher Virginia Valian.

Best wishes,
Teri Murphy

At 9:20 PM -0600 4/24/06, Sarah Natividad wrote:

	I'm a thirty-something-year-old woman and your mileage may vary, but I
	for one have never experienced prejudice in the mathematical world.  No
	one has ever once said to me that I can't be as good at math because I'm
	female.  I've always been hired for what's between my ears.  I've never
	been treated more poorly than my male colleagues.  I have been treated
	poorly on occasion, but mostly because I'm not so high up on the faculty
	food chain.
	
	Now you might argue that it's because I'm a woman that I'm so low on the
	faculty food chain, and you'd be right.  I chose to stop at a Master's
	degree and be a Lecturer because it was a job I could do while raising
	children.  But nobody made me choose that.  Nobody told me I had to
	choose it because I was a woman.  I just wanted to.  Kids are important
	to me and I enjoy raising them.  I saw my mom being pregnant at age 40
	and I knew that wasn't what I wanted.  I wanted to have my kids earlier
	in my life, when my body was more capable of keeping up with them.  And
	nobody's stopping me from going back to get my doctorate, if I so
	choose, whenever I'm ready.
	
	True, if I were a man, I would not have had to choose between kids and a
	fabulous career at the cutting edge of mathematics.  I could have had
	the career first and the kids later, if I wanted, instead of choosing
	between kids-then-career or career-but-no-kids.  But that has to do with
	biology.  If you don't like it, you can take it up with God (or
	Evolution, take your pick), but it has nothing to do with the prejudice
	of our fellow human beings.  If a man had as strong an interest in
	raising kids as I do, he wouldn't be able to pursue a fabulous career at
	the same time either.  There are only so many things one can do at the
	same time.
	
	I'm not denying the facts, and I'm not saying there's never any
	discrimination.  I'm just suggesting that some of the reasons why women
	earn less than men in mathematics, why women are not as highly
	represented, etc. could possibly be due not to prejudice, but to the
	fact that women are biologically different, and therefore are not able
	to be remedied by anti-discrimination policies or projects.  There are
	undeniable biological differences between men and women, and these
	differences are bound to drive different sets of life choices.  It's
	entirely possible that women can be just as good as men at mathematics,
	that their talent can be recognized (anyone who says women aren't as
	good at spatial relationships as men has obviously never seen a mother
	pick the left shoe out of a pile of shoes and put it on the left foot of
	a squirming toddler) and cultivated, and that women would still not be
	proportionally represented in professorships.  You can offer them all
	the choices in the world, but you cannot make them choose what you want
	just because it makes your statistics look more symmetrical.
	
	Just my two cents on an issue that makes me want to get up on my soapbox
	every time I hear the old canards trotted out.
	
	Sarah Natividad
	
	
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