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    Math and Physics are probably the last strongholds of male domination. But female mathematicians are coming.

    If you look at the senior facuilty member of Harvard Math department, there is only two female professors (out of 26 listed there). But if you look at the junior facuilty members, there are 5 female professors out 18. So from the pipeline point of view, it is just a matter of time. Granted that most of junior faculty members may not make it at Harvard, they will go somewhere else and become a full profressor.



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    When I was 17, I scored at a 99.995 percentile in math. Rather than finding myself interested in math, I found it to not other much in the way of a challenge. Maybe I would have if I had gone a lot further in it, but I never had an interest in doing this. I also don't feel the questions on the provincial exam were complicated enough to really judge my ability to do any really advanced math.

    Only one person in the province bested me in this exam and it just happened to be a female in the same class I was in. She went on to become a teacher, so she did not go into a field where advanced math is used. I was picked up by a scientific organization to work with flow system models (climate and other systems), but I wasn't the one doing the advanced math. The reason I say picked up is I didn't have a degree.

    I consider myself to have more of a female personality. What really interests me is people. I really can't see spending my life doing math when people are just so much more interesting.

    Now, I wonder if the reason females are not as well represented in math is they are far more interested in other areas. I thought I would give the perspective of a person who at least tested high in math at a younger age.

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    Now, I wonder if the reason females are not as well represented in math is they are far more interested in other areas.

    Certainly possible. I think one of the articles mentioned this. However, it has just been so easy for me to observe my DD being "guided" to showcase her verbal skills and away from math and science, perhaps because that is just what people expect from a bright girl. I do think math talent can be somewhat more difficult to assess in the early grades unless one is actively teaching the child at home, and maybe I will see the same thing when my boy is in school. It's just hard to ignore the fact that they give her books at her reading level (5th grade or so) in school yet maintain that she is doing "just fine" with the first-grade math curriculum (which she complains about to me--"boring baby math.") I mean, I suppose she is doing "just fine" in the sense that every test or worksheet is always correct. In K, her teacher remarked that she did not work ahead in her math book "like some other kids do" and chose to free-read instead during free choice, implying that she was not a "math kid." Well, the math book was K level...

    Last edited by ultramarina; 04/27/11 09:37 AM.
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    Originally Posted by chenchuan
    If you look at the senior facuilty member of Harvard Math department, there is only two female professors (out of 26 listed there). But if you look at the junior facuilty members, there are 5 female professors out 18. So from the pipeline point of view, it is just a matter of time.
    Unfortunately, that argument doesn't always work - hence the phrase "leaky pipeline". I don't know specifically for US maths professors, but in many situations where women are in a small minority a situation where the proportion of women goes down as you go up the hierarchy has persisted for many years. I remember hearing a talk about how US academia (in general, not specially maths) was particularly bad at this, even compared to academia elsewhere, because of the tenure track system - the time of life when your system forces people to put work above everything else in order to get tenure is the same time of life when mothers or those who want to be mothers find it hardest to do that. There were some pretty shocking graphs showing, for example, how much more likely a women was to make it to full professor if she was childless than if she had children, and how this did not apply to men. This was in one of the most famous US universities, but I forget which one.


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    I remember hearing a talk about how US academia (in general, not specially maths) was particularly bad at this, even compared to academia elsewhere, because of the tenure track system - the time of life when your system forces people to put work above everything else in order to get tenure is the same time of life when mothers or those who want to be mothers find it hardest to do that. There were some pretty shocking graphs showing, for example, how much more likely a women was to make it to full professor if she was childless than if she had children, and how this did not apply to men.

    Yes, absolutely. I work and socialize in academia, and I can see this quite clearly. Few of the female professors have children, and those that do almost never have more than one. In fact, I actually can't think of a single female professor I know who has more than one--wow.

    Wait, no, I do know one. She and her husband are both professors, and they have two children and split a position. So she isn't a FT professor (and neither is he). They did this on purpose BECAUSE of their children.

    However, I know plenty of male professors with more than one child. Their wives almost never work full-time.

    Last edited by ultramarina; 04/27/11 09:55 AM.
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    Having said that, there's my friend the full professor at one of the very top US universities who is about to have her fifth child! (There, I've probably uniquely identified her.) She's superhuman, though.


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    Originally Posted by ColinsMum
    Unfortunately, that argument doesn't always work - hence the phrase "leaky pipeline". I don't know specifically for US maths professors, but in many situations where women are in a small minority a situation where the proportion of women goes down as you go up the hierarchy has persisted for many years.
    That is very true. I noticed that the math department of my local public university (Sonoma State University) has much higher female ratio. More than half of faculty and staff are women. This may have something to do with the more progressive culture in California as well as the fact that SSU is not a highly ranked university.

    This makes perfect sense. Women's progress in math will not started at Harvard. So beating up Mr. Summer won't solve the problem. It starts from the lower ranking universities and works its way up. This may take decades to get to Harvard but the trend is clearly there.


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