So as a science teacher, every year we have different science conferences. This year, was the year for the NZIP (new zealand institute of physics) conference. I almost always go to these conferences, not really for too much professional development since a lot of the stuff gets repeated, but for keeping up with connection and the newest technology in physics so I can promote it better to students.
In any case, promoting women in physics or STEM subject comes up every now and then and they have projects in some universities to get more women taking physics. I hate it. I think it's stupid and is rather detrimental to the cause than be helpful. I know this view is going to be hated by a lot of feminazis and butt hurt sensitive millennial, gen-z or whatever you call those nut jobs, but luckily no one looks at my blogs.
So here are few of my reasons.
1. By saying women aren't taking STEM courses for any reason beyond the fact that they simply want to study something else, has hidden implications that women are not capable of making good choices in life. Here are some 'ideas' that some people seem to have, especially feminazis. They think for some reason, STEM subjects are sexist. That because there are more men in there, they some how chauvinistically pushed out women. This could be true in places like... america... (haha that's partially a joke) or male dominated countries where women aren't even allowed in the same class like... I don't know... Saudi arabia where women only make up 14% of the workforce. However in this day and age in most developed country like I said, (New Zealand is definitely one of them), women are brought up to be strong independent individuals, equal as men to make fair judgement of their own future and they're not put down by men. I teach science and physics. I observe more female students caring, studying and focusing on their own future. In fact, a lot of them roll their eye at how immature some boys can be. At high school physics, none of them care that there are slightly more boys in class. A lot of them sit, chat and discuss physics with them, and the boys don't treat them any differently because they're female. Simply saying "because men", "because media" or "because sexism" implies that women are weak individuals that are pushed around by everyone. If by any chance, this implication is true, then the focus should be how to train women not to be pushed around, rather than "fighting sexism".
2. This whole push down plays women's success in other fields. Here are some interesting stats, there are now more young graduating female physicians than men in some countries. In 2018 more women were awarded a PhD than men in america. "Data from APA's Center for Workforce Studies show that women make up 76 percent of new psychology doctorates". There are also more female veterinarians around the world. Are these not successes? What if women WANTED to take something other than STEM? What if they simply wanted to become a teacher? Is that a... BAD THING? No, in most developed countries where there is a stronger sense of equality women are succeeding in different ways, not in a bad way, just in a different way. So by saying women are not taking math at university is a bad thing, is like saying women who are doctors, nurses, educators, artists, writers are not as good as women who have taken a STEM subject.
(After writing it, I realized I raged in reason 3 and ramble on about 3 ideas that all lead to the one factor that girls aren't exposed to math early on)
3. They totally and utterly ignore the actual cause of all this which most physics teachers have been screaming for YEARS. One of the BIGGEST reason why women don't do well in physics... is simply because their math is too weak. Before I continue, I should make it clear. Women and Men are DIFFERENT. IT IS NOT A BAD THING. Women and Men are both strong and independent creatures that can do whatever they want but people hate it when I point out this fact that they're still different. Now I'm not saying all women and men are different. There are always outliers since personalities, traits and characteristics are all slightly individualized but we do still have a bell curve. Therefore in general, there are a few definite differences between men and women. For example... Remember how I said more of my junior girls focus and study harder? (by the way this is statistically true, women do better in new zealand education in terms of gaining something called NCEA credits), this is because more women 'care'. Genetically and historically speaking women who survived and passed on their genes were child bearers and carers, which means they did have to worry a bit more then men about their future. This is also why there are more women who experiences anxiety, depression and loneliness (ok this is a bad thing). But in general, women caring more is a GOOD thing. As I've stated there are more female doctors, nurses and teachers. Women and men are 2 sides of a coin that compliment each others. Some men might do more dangerous, tricky or sometimes even dirty things (like builders, police, truck drivers, car mechanics etc) and some women do other important things like caring, curing, educating etc. In any case, before I explained the whole math thing, I had to explain the difference first.
Women do poorly in physics because they're bad at math. In new zealand education especially, most primary schools don't have a specialized math teacher. They also don't memorize timetable in a lot of them, and lastly but most importantly, they don't do ANY algebra in most primary school. As a matter of fact, some primary school teachers hate the idea of math and say stupid shit like 'what's the point of memorizing timetables if we have calculators??' (fucking idiots who have not actually learnt shit in university. I HATES THEM!!!) If any of these fuckers who say that actually study physics in university, they would realize how important memorization is. Human brain is a complicated network of neurons that are constantly making new connections. We learn from repetition mainly, because we need to teach our brains that the information we need to learn should be in the long term memory by telling it 'hey! we use this information often, you should keep it!'. Now here's another important part that people seem to forget or just not care about. Making connections between ideas only comes easily and clearly when both ideas are in the long term memory. Here's an example. Teach a kid that '3 x 4 = 12'. Then ask them a few weeks later 'a x 4 = 12, what is a? If they have memorized their times table, they'll easily say 3. NOW, we can teach them the secondary idea, the link, and how to. '12/4 = 3, hey look! it's the same number! it's because we're doing something called 'rearranging'' In stead, if you skip that part, if the kid never memorized the idea of 3 x 4 and you just tell this kid, 'a x 4 = 12. To find a we divide each side by 4 and 12/4 is 3 so your answer is 3', it becomes less clear, and definitely not easy.
Phew. anyway, now I'll get to my final conclusion of all these explanations. Women care more and statistically they're more prone to anxiety. When it comes to learning physics, if the students math is not solidly in their memories, making connection on how we interpret information and calculate that given information becomes much harder. Look at kinematic equations like, " d = v t + 0.5 at^2 ". First look at the equation gives some students anxiety. We get over that hurdle and tell them "you just need to put in the numbers to where it goes first". Easy step. "5 = 0 x t + 0.5 x 9.81 x t^2"... by now, if you came into physics without practicing and memorizing how to calculate and rearrange something like "5 = 2 + 2 x 4 a^2", this step will now give you the next anxiety. Now here's a problem with anxiety, when people become anxious, it's a physical thing. Chemicals are actually imbalanced. This actually causes the brain to not work like they're meant to. Suddenly, this added new challenge and hurdle makes people's brain just turn off and make it harder for them to practice, memorize and learn new things.
Now, I pointed out the difference in men and women. Male students, they care less and they just do. Making connections is an important part, but to them it's more 'Hey, I'll just do kind of what the teacher does, and hope for the best.' A lot of them don't have that anxiety blocking their brains like some female students do. You see this in university as well. They just take engineering even though they're not fully prepared for it just because it's a cool subject. I know this whole anxiety seems really negative, but it really isn't a completely bad thing. Like I said, this is the reason why girls study harder and care about their future. The only actual problem is that they were stripped of their opportunity to pursue engineering and physics because the stupid primary sector decided math was too hard for students and they're going to revolutionize it with their stupid modern learning environment or learning using tablets. I HATES THEM!!!!!!! I HATE EVERY SINGLE FCUKING PRIMARY SCHOOL TEACHERS WHO SAYS 'why do you have to memorize timetable when there's calculators'???!?!?!?!! FUCK!!!!
By the way, english is my second language so this whole article was poorly written. But hey! Why do we need to memorize grammar and spelling when there's word doc and grammarly right?!?!!?!?!?!?! FUCK
Very bad non-APA referencing.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/women-are-now-a-majority-of-entering-medical-students-nationwide/2018/01/22/b2eb00e8-f22e-11e7-b3bf-ab90a706e175_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.17cb9abbc0a6
https://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/01/cover-men
