Why Should A Women Be More Like A Man* ?

The notion that women don’t go into the physical sciences because it’s a hostile environment is absolute nonsense. Not to get into why most girl’s minds don’t wrap themselves around math and physics, those whose minds do go that way aren’t discouraged, they’re welcomed.

The experiences of the women in the excerpt below are exactly the same as my experiences in the early 50's as the lone girl in a sea of boys in most of my high school classes. The teachers were another matter. Overt nastiness that is unthinkable in today’s world was the norm. On one occasion in a Solid Geometry class, I was asked to go to the blackboard in front of the room and solve the problem written there.

It was far above my capability and the teacher said right there that I should drop the class even though my test scores were pretty much upper 90’s. I turned to the class and said I would do so if one of the boys would come up and solve the problem. I never learned whether any of them knew the answer, but none came forward, so I rested my case.

FTA in The American Magazine, by Christina Hoff Sommers: I located two female survivors—Sherry Gong, currently enrolled, and Kelley Harris, who com­pleted Math 55 with an A last year. “Did you encounter a hostile environment in that class?” asked Miss Harris. She laughed. “I loved my classmates!” When she once thought of dropping out, it was her male friends in the course who persuaded her to stay. Sherry Gong was taken aback when inquired whether she felt that women in math were unwelcome or margin­alized. It was as if had asked whether women had the vote. “It is 2007!” she reminded me. Sergei Bernstein, a young man now enrolled, told me, “We would like to have more girls.”

What many women may not understand is that those in the hard sciences tend not to be verbal or given to all night bull sessions exploring the meaning of life. They tend to do their work with intense concentration which can exclude the world around them. Stories of eccentricities abound and women who expect the mostly male students and teachers in these disciplines to be just like the guys in their BS courses may think it’s a hostile environment and it’s being directed at them.

The end of my story: In college, life got in the way and I dropped out to get married, have kids (in that order) and then stayed home to take care of them for the next 25 years. I made the choice happily and willingly and I can't say I ever regretted it.

*Lyrics from My Fair Lady here.