Re: MentorNet (one woman's response)

[John Clement <clement@HAL-PC.ORG>]

> At 06:44 12 10 2002 , the following was  received:
> > This thread has so far not focused on what can be done to improve women's
> > performance in physics classes.  The evidence for this problem  goes way
> > back and there are many articles in Jour. of Res. in Sci. Teaching (JRST)
> > which investigate this problem.  It starts in grade school and
> continues all
> > the way through graduate school.  At each stage women have difficulty and
> > drop out.  Science, and especially physics seems to be a filter which
> > removes women.
>
> John, another facet which you don't address is the problem solving
> abilities of men vs non-men:  Male brains tend to be either left or
> right  -- Generally they are good chefs, painters, composers, etc -- ie
> creative OR they tend to be analytical and have a high sneakiness
> coefficient -- good accountants (as we have seen recently).  OTOH the
> brains of non-males seem generally to have right and left brains function
> synergistically  -- They can analyze and create at the same time -- and in
> my classroom they do seem to excel in this regard compared to males  -- ie
> they ought to make fine physicists.
>
> Apparently they are also wise enough to use their talents elsewhere.
>
>
> Jim Green

I confined myself to the observations that I have seen in research papers
that might pertain to science and physics in particular.  Your observation
may or may not be correct in regard to physics.  It should be noted that
many women go into medicine, chemistry, biology, math, but not into physics.
There is something about physics or about the climate in physics that tends
to filter out women.  This is particularly true in the US, but I have noted
that there are more women trained in Europe in physics.  Some fields also
tend to filter out men.  For example the number of male teachers is much
lower in the South, possibly because the salaries are lower.  Women have
traditionally been shunted to lower paying jobs, or the lower pay has been
given to a job because it is just "women's work".

Your observation may actually be a variant of the observation that men are
more variable.  This is well established and can be observed in many ways.
For example there are many more male homosexuals than female.  Various brain
disorders are much more prevalent among males.  Males tend to be ADHD while
females ADD.  As a result females are underdiagnosed.  This has been
attributed to the fact that fetal development for males has an important
difference from females.  In the absence of any hormonal influence a fetus
will develop to be female.  At appropriate times males experience a dramatic
change in development due to hormones.  At this stage things can go wrong
and various differences can appear.  Essentially males are produced by a
stressful change in development.  One of the important pieces of evidence
for this is the appearance of genetic males who lack male hormone receptors.
They in all respects resemble women.  When doctors see this syndrome they
will declare the child to be female, even though they know it really to be
an undeveloped male.  Usually the individual never knows the facts.  They
are later told that they have a problem and can not have children, but are
seldom told that they are really genetic males.  They usually have perfect
skin as teenagers because it is the male hormone that produces acne.

One author claims that there are a larger proportion of mentally defective
males and of geniuses.  I don't know if the proportion of scientific
geniuses is really greater among men.  We do know that men have been
rewarded for their genius and women have traditionally been married off to
bear children.  Notable examples of this are Mozart's sister and
Mendelssohn's sister.  Marie Curie almost never went to the university
because she stayed home for a while to work and help her sister get a
degree.  However, thank God, she did go to the university in the end, and
became the first double Nobel Laureate.  The first translator of Newton's
Pricipia into French was a woman, who was also a scientist in her own right.
She also shocked the court by her low gowns, and set the fashion for
toplessness at court for a century.  My usual aphasia for names prevents me
from recalling her name.  There were a number of brilliant female composers
in medieval and renaissance times.  They were able to do this because they
were in cloistered convents.  Incidentally the nuns played all manner of
instruments in the convents and loved the trombone.

A good example of how women have been suppressed is the short story "The
Yellow Wallpaper".  Again the author escapes me.  It was by a woman who was
married into a conventional Victorian household and whose creative side was
ignored.  She went mad as a result and the story is a compelling account of
her descent into madness.  Eventually she walked away from the marriage and
became a writer and lecturer.  She was scandalous at the time.  The story
was presented on Masterpiece Theater a number of years ago, but I originally
read it as a memorable gothic horror story.

As for sneakiness in males Vs females you can't beat Leona Helmsley.

As to creativity vs the ability to analyze, science requires both.
Creativity is required in all phases of science, but analysis is also
required.  There is a common misconception about science that creativity
only comes into play when designing experiments.  Coming up with a theory is
a supreme act of creativity.  After all theories are constructed by our
minds so that we can make sense of physical phenomena.  Then using it is a
blend of creativity and analysis.  I would say that the best physicists have
to do both in equal measure.  They have to visualize using the right brain
and then write down their observations using the left brain.  The one sided
individual will have extreme difficulty in physics.  The articles about NOS
(Nature of Science) by Norman Lederman in JRST and other publications put
these ideas into sharp focus.

With respect to physics, I am under the impression that the allied field of
astronomy has a fair number of women.  I have been told that Margaret
Burbage was more competent than her husband in the field, though they shared
many papers.  The husband was a disaster in the lab.  He even left a palm
print on an expensive diffraction grating!

I really do not think that the decision by women to leave physics is because
they are mores sensible than males.  I think it is because the methods of
teaching play into male strengths rather than female strengths, and that
there is still some hostility toward women in the field.

Because of this, real affirmative action would mean using research based
methods of teaching that appear to be gender neutral, and that produce
higher gain for all.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

This posting is the position of the writer, not that of SUNY-BSC, NAU or the AAPT.