What if Newton was a girl?
musings of a woman in STEM
If I were to ask you to think of three famous scientists or mathematicians, who would you think of? Einstein, Newton, Galileo, Darwin, Mendel, Tesla, Bohr, Turing, Euclid, Descartes, Young, Euler, Pythagoras? That list wasn’t exhaustive, but hopefully, you can see what they have - or should I say had? - in common. Yes, that’s right: they’re all dead white men. Maybe you suggested Hawking, Penrose or Tao if you were feeling more current or Ramanujan if you fancy yourself a number theory aficionado. All men.
So maybe some of you said Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace or Rosalind Franklin. Heard of Hypatia, Emmy Noether, Rachel Carson, or Lise Meitner? Perhaps you have. It may be that you know everything there is to know about female scientists, and I may as well be writing to a brick wall. Even you’d have to admit that the gender dynamics in STEM are somewhat questionable, and not just historically so. And to cement that in (no, I’m not sorry), here are a few stats and curious results from a Google search of mine… (as well as my own hypotheses, of course)
Statistically speaking
According to the BBC, only 14.4% of people working in STEM (for those who don't know: Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) in the UK are women, despite females comprising roughly 50% of the workforce.1 Other statistics suggest that in the US, computing, engineering and the physical sciences are severely underrepresented by women, with females making up only 18-20% of bachelor's degrees.2 My question is simple: why is this? And here is what I found...
Stereotypes
So, it turns out that psychology can actually come in handy sometimes...
The divide could be self-perpetuating: young women see few others in science, technology, engineering, and maths, so they have fewer role models and examples to follow, so fewer choose STEM subjects, and the cycle repeats.
We often gravitate towards role models that seem similar to us; if someone like us can achieve their dreams, so can we. This is especially true when it comes to gender. A deficit of women with jobs in STEM results in girls having fewer people to look up to; therefore, they don't pursue STEM because of it.
History is also not exactly on the side of women in STEM (as I hope I've made it blatantly obvious). Historically, STEM fields have been dominated by men, which isn't a surprise - let's be honest. Women in these fields can be stereotyped (as not being good at STEM, that is), and (have you got the gist yet?) this can cause women to not want to pursue science-y degrees or occupations.
Intelligence, innit
This might get a little controversial...
So, psychology is a little less helpful here, as most studies are either conflicting or inconclusive. Typical. But that leaves me room for speculation, which I love.
But first, what do we know?
Well, as I said, not much. Ask any old layperson in the street, and they'd probably tell you that women and men have the same distribution of IQ scores (well, most would likely have no clue, but we’ll ignore that for now…). Not necessarily. In fact, there has been much speculation about some studies that suggest men, on average, score 3-5 IQ points higher than women.3 There has then been yet more speculation about studies suggesting height difference is the root cause (taller = higher is the gist). Then, further speculation on how this correlates with brain size. However, I hope anyone reading this post is intelligent enough to understand that, to use David Mitchell's catchphrase: correlation is not causation. In my opinion, intelligence seems to be a mingling of quite a few factors, and some scientists insist that IQ is even something you can improve...4
Quick disclaimer: I do not wish to insinuate that IQ is the only measure of intelligence; it just happens that it’s pretty decent at predicting academic success.
One promising theory proposes that women are generally better at reading and writing, whereas men have better visuospatial skills - particularly at the higher ends of the spectrum (which may explain the lack of girls in various olympiads... and thus the creation of the MOG and EGMO), although this disparity seems to have decreased over recent years.5 Again, this is still very much up for debate, and it's a case of nobody-really-knows-why. IQ has correlations with many things (including ethnicity, socioeconomic background and the length of your index finger, apparently (all up for debate)). If you’re intruiged, this article might be a good starting point.
However, more conclusive research has to do with estimates of IQ.
It's probably unsurprising that most people estimate their IQ as above average (obviously statistically impossible). Here, researchers have found that men overestimate their scores significantly more than women. What a surprise! This has then been correlated with general self-esteem in men and women (with men typically having significantly more). Again, unbelievable.6
This then links to the cliche: you can do it if you believe you can. Perhaps, though, that is not so far from the truth. Researchers from Stanford University found that those who were negatively stereotyped and had less belief in themselves performed significantly worse on standardised tests - specifically the SAT - than their non-stereotyped counterparts of the same academic ability.7 Rather curious...
Before I sign off - just a friendly reminder that some rather curious buttons exist below. You might even have a gander, like, and leave a comment if you're intelligent enough. Goodbye...
I think you're smart - Maya