fester@math.berkeley.edu (07/19/88)
>I can't think of any more examples of general imbalance of male and female >tendencies ... but I'm sure there are many. Of course there are exceptions >to every generalization ... but, for the most part women tend to notice >details and think about the finer points of life and men tend to see the >bigger picture in a much more less complicated sort of way. >Greer I think this is largely false. This posting motivated me to go compile the data I had requested in another newsgroup, regarding what subfields of math women tended to go into. I had requested that data because I had noticed what seemed to be a pattern; recently I met a former Berkeley math grad (Hi Karen !!) who has had the same observation, and she mentioned that her boyfriend (yet ANOTHER math grad here ((Hi John !))) has ALSO noticed this same phenomenon: namely, that women seem to be clustered in algebra and topology. Here's the data I recieved: (I don't include things like operations research, because I was only interested in math proper, but thanks for writing.) 3 algebraists (unspecified) 2 algebraic number theorists 1 combinatorics (did not complete the program, though) 1 topologist (unspecified) 6 algebraic topologists 1 SCV 1 functional analysis a comment, without numerical data, "a majority were in algebra or topology" and the following very funny letter from Chris Long- They were grad students at one point: Mary Ellen Rudin : topology and set theory Sophie Germain : number theory Emmy Noether : algebra This is relevant because algbera is one of the least detail-oriented, most conceptual branches of mathematics. Vicki Powers said it best " I loved algebra from the first course I took in college, and always had trouble with analysis. The more abstract a subject is, the more I like it and algebra seems more abstract to me than other branches of mathematics. " (hear, hear !) Thus, while this data is clearly insufficient to generalize with, it certainly indicates that if anything women are MORE conceptual and LESS detail oriented than men. (Marie, Lise, do you think *this* has anything to do with why women are clustered in Theory and scarce in Hardware rather than sheer hardware phobia ?) To those who wrote wanting to know why I asked, there are two reasons. I do have a long-term, theoretical interest in the matter of learning and cognition, and the ever-present question of whether these differ between women and men. But I also have a short-term practical interest, which is the following: everyone in the PhD program here has to pass an examination, the Preliminary exam, within one year of being in the program. This exam is heavily biased towards analysis. No one, not even the PR-conscious faculty, dispute that. There tend to be twice as many analysis questions as algebra questions, and these make up the brunt of the test. Obviously, with this heavy bias towards analysis, people who are really good at analysis have a much better chance of passing the exam. Karen knows at least one person who actually passed by answering NOTHING BUT analysis problems. If it turned out to be true that most women were inclined towards algebra and topology, then clearly they are at a disadvantage relative to X% of the male population, when X is something quite significant. (The obvious comment is that of course men who are better in algebra are at a disadvantage too !) This is again one of those indirect links to why things are worse for women; analogous to, say, the fact that most companies are reluctant to hire older employees (I mean people just starting, not transferring from one company to another.) This is not directly sexism (ageism, yes) but it translates into sexism because it has been a given, for decades, that women support their husbands through graduate/professional school and THEN start pursuing having their own life. Thus it is almost all women who are in the position of being older, hence discriminated against, employees. Lea Fester fester@math.berkeley.edu ucbvax!math!fester
bs%linus@mitre-bedford.arpa (Robert D. Silverman) (07/19/88)
In article <12218@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> fester@math.berkeley.edu writes:
:This posting motivated me to go compile the data I had requested in
:another newsgroup, regarding what subfields of math women tended to go
:into. I had requested that data because I had noticed what seemed to
:phenomenon: namely, that women seem to be clustered in algebra and
:topology.
:
etc.
:Here's the data I recieved: (I don't include things like operations
:research, because I was only interested in math proper, but thanks
:for writing.)
:
: 3 algebraists (unspecified)
: 2 algebraic number theorists
: 1 combinatorics (did not complete the program, though)
: 1 topologist (unspecified)
: 6 algebraic topologists
: 1 SCV
: 1 functional analysis
: a comment, without numerical data, "a majority were in algebra
: or topology"
My wife is an analytic number theorist.
Estimation of error terms for arithmetic functions, asymptotic analyis,
techniques like the Hardy-Littlewood circle method, etc. etc. are
about as finely detailed as one can get in mathematics. Try reading
"Sieve Methods" for example (Halberstam & Richert).
Bob Silverman
marla@Sun.COM (Marla Parker) (07/20/88)
In article <12218@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> fester@math.berkeley.edu writes: >This posting motivated me to go compile the data I had requested in >another newsgroup, regarding what subfields of math women tended to go >into. I had requested that data because I had noticed what seemed to >be a pattern....namely, that women seem to be clustered in algebra and >topology. Um, for those of us who abandoned math after vector calculus, what, in general terms, is topology? And "analysis" is such a broad term, could you give us an idea of what it means here? And where does geometry fit in, if anywhere? I wonder where geometry fits in because one of my favorite questions to ask people is which they liked better in high school: geometry or algebra? Almost everyone has a definite opinion, and if they didn't like either, they at least found one to be easier than the other. I have not noticed that the algebra/geometry people split along gender lines at all. It seems a total mix to me. My informal ongoing survey is about 10 years old. In hs, algebra was a breeze for me. Geometry I loved, but I literally stayed up until midnight doing geometry homework every single night for most of tenth grade. I loved it, but it was much harder for me than algebra. My best friend, who is now a dancer, was just the opposite. She thought geometry was easy, but algebra made no sense to her. In a basic econ course at Berkeley, faced with something like 2x + 7 = 15, she said, "Can you help me with this? No, wait! I can remember - something about moving the 7...?" She figured it out, but it was a struggle. marla