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

Thu May 4 15:40:33 EDT 2006

I am 46 and I too experienced sexual discrimination-some very blatant such
as not receiving a summer TA appointment because my husband worked while the
men who received them had wives making more than my husband. There were also
very subtle derogatory comments. I have also found women who were great
mentors until I became a colleague rather than being in need of mentoring
then it would get competitive and a different form of discrimination occurs.

I do think things are improving but we are not even close to achieving
equality when young math majors are espousing gender stereotypes that are
detrimental to girls and young women. At WSU several colleagues and I bring
equity issues into many of our programs and classes and there is little
understanding of the issues or the need for many of our undergraduates until
they have more exposure. 

There are still young men who come up to me and say things like "wow I did
not know women were smart enough to teach this". 

Students and salutations on letters say "Dear Sir" or "Mrs. Vincent" rather
than Dr. Vincent, while men colleagues are referred to as Dr. or Professor. 

Take a look at story problems in math texts.women may be present or the
person involved may have not gender. But if you analyze what women and
minorities are doing in the story problems in many texts is often things
that are stereotypical of European American men. Equity is not about
changing women and minorities into European American men; instead equity is
recognizing and allowing choice.

All of these are minor and subtle, but they pile up and when seen
collectively there is still a very long way to go. 

Kimberly Vincent

Washington State University

Dept of Mathematics

  _____  

From: rume-bounces at betterfilecabinet.com
[mailto:rume-bounces at betterfilecabinet.com] On Behalf Of
lida-k-barrett at att.net
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 10:57 AM
To: Crowley, Lillie F (Bluegrass); Murphy,TJ; Sarah Natividad;
rume at betterfilecabinet.com
Cc: tjmurphy at ou.edu
Subject: Re: [RUME] Proof and Prejudice: Women in Mathematics and Physics

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 he r 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 e arlier 
> 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 sa ying 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 repres ented 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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