Re: How To Recruit Women to Tech and IT Classes

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

> On Fri, 25 Aug 2000 14:08:46 -0700 "Shapiro, Mark"
> <mshapiro@EXCHANGE.FULLERTON.EDU> writes:
> ....>.  Other science  departments have been able to change their
> culture, we can do the same if we have the will to do so.
> >  Mark Shapiro
>
> But that's not the problem. Biology and the other sciences that you
> mention require a different kind of thinking (memorizing ?) than is
> required for physics and mathematics.
> It has already been shown that women and men have thinking processes that
> are somewhat different.
>
> Herb Gottlieb from New York City

I don't think biology at the research level involves much more
memorizing than does physics these days. They may not use the
analytical math that we do in physics but if you look  at their
papers the level of statistical analysis they have to subject their
results to is daunting. Frankly, I'd rather do my differential
equations than their statistics.

We all know at the beginning that biology students have to do a lot
of memorizing because of the new vocabulary and all the taxonomy that
they need to know. But put yourself in the shoes of a beginning
physics student. We all tell them that they shouldn't memorize things
for physics--they need to work through the logic, and if they learn
to do that then they won't need to do memorizing, but can concentrate
of the higher order thinking required for any analytic science. But
to the beginner, the connections are not yet clear, and they are
still trying to learn how to use the analytic tools that they have
been provided with, so even though we rail against the idea of
memorization, they do a lot of it because they don't have the skills
to do it without memorizing yet. Some never get past that level and
they usually come away from physics with a bad taste, thinking that
physics has been a fraud--the teacher told them not to memorize, but
in order to pass the tests they had to memorize.

The different disciplines of science differ in the details of the
analyses that they must go through, but the overall methods are
pretty much the same. The math level may be different in different
areas, even within the same discipline, but the logical requirements
remain pretty much the same. I rather think that the main reason for
the differences in participation levels of women in the various
disciplines lies more with the culture of the discipline than with
the sex-related differences in required methodology.

Have the methods of law or medicine changed now that the fraction of
women participating is approaching 50%? Have the methods of nursing
changed now that it is no longer an exclusively female profession?
Would the methods of pre-school or early elementary school education
change if significant numbers of men entered those fields? These are
fields in which not too long ago women in the first two and men in
the second two were mere tokens. I don't know what investigation into
the changes in these fields with the advent of increased numbers of
the alternate sex have been done or what the results are if they have
been done, but I suspect that they would go a long way to answer the
question of whether is is the mental proclivities of women or the
internal culture of physics that is keeping women from infiltrating
the discipline to a greater extent.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
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