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

[lida-k-barrett at att.net]

As a 79 year old, as of the 21st of this month, I am delighted to hear things have changed, and I know they have though not totally.  For a look at the 1940-1960 era see Margaret Murray's "Women Becoming Mathematicians"  Lida
--
Lida K. Barrett 
3407 Crown Point Road 
Louisville, TN 37777-3331 
865-984-6599 
lida-k-barrett at att.net


-------------- Original message from "Crowley, Lillie F (Bluegrass)" <lillie.crowley at kctcs.edu>: -------------- 


> 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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