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Stereotypes of Women, Stereotypes of Mathematicians

The subtle tensions between being a woman and being a mathematician arise in part from the images that, from childhood onward, are all around us. We are all influenced to varying degrees by images, stereotypes, and messages of our society. The degree to which we internalize these messages depends on many factors: family, friends, educational experience, interests, community, age, and life experience. But, to a certain degree we are what we read and we are what we see.

Media images of women traditionally fall into three categories: wife/mother, sex object, and girl. In the last fifteen years, the ``career woman'' image has emerged, but even this image makes some concessions to the traditional roles of women as wife/mother or sex object. Carolyn Heilbrun, in Writing A Woman's Life, conveys the power of what she calls the ``romantic/marriage plot'' that most women are raised with, whether or not they choose to pursue it. These images continue to influence both women and men even when they are trying to define new paths. As women's roles expand to new arenas like business or science, they are still expected to also fulfill their domestic responsibilities, giving rise to the modem ``super-mom'' syndrome.

What do these images have to do with mathematics? Absolutely nothing--and that is the problem. None of the images of women are compatible with images of a mathematician. First and foremost, mathematicians are portrayed as completely unconcerned with anything on the material plane. We are often reminded of mathematicians who would become so absorbed in their work that they would forget to eat for days. They certainly think nothing about their clothes or physical appearance, and while they might have family, it is seen as peripheral to the focus of their lives. Certainly one's image of a mathematician does not include changing diapers or comforting a colicky baby, much less cleaning house or making dinner. Their life follows what Heilbrun describes as the ``adventure or quest plot,'' as contrasted with the marriage plot.

But what do mass media images and stereotypes have to do with reality? Though we may be tempted to once again respond ``absolutely nothing,'' these images affect-- and reflect our lives more than we care to admit. Most women have not extricated themselves from domestic responsibilities. And many mathematicians still praise those individuals who transcend the material world and lose themselves in their work, dividing personal and professional life in a way not feasible for most women. As Halmos says in his ``automathography,'' to be a mathematician, you must love mathematics more than anything else, more than family, more than religion, more than any other interest [11].

I do not mean that you must love it to the exclusion of family, religion, and the rest ... A spouse unsympathetic to mathematics demands equal time, a guilty parental conscience causes you to play catch with your boy Saturday afternoon instead of beating your head against the brick wall of that elusive problem--family, and religion, and money, comfort, pleasure, glory, and other calls of life, deep or trivial, exist for all of us to varying degrees, and I am not saying that mathematicians always ignore all of them. I am not saying that the love of mathematics is more important than the love of other things. What I am saying is that to the extent that one's loves can be ordered, the greatest love of a mathematician (the way I would like to use the term) is mathematics. I have known many mathematicians, great and small, and I feel sure that what I am saying is true about them.

This passage illustrates that men mathematicians do indeed have personal lives and responsibilities. At the same time, the message is clear: although family and other interests may be tolerated, they are secondary to one's mathematics. However, this ordering is only possible if there is someone else who can take care of the children while the mathematician does mathematics. It assumes a traditional family structure of a professional and his supportive wife. Since it is extremely rare that a woman mathematician can rely on a supportive spouse to assume the domestic duties, the kind of ordering that Halmos suggests may not be possible, or even desirable. For women, such a vision can lead to a decision of exclusion: family or mathematics, rather than a decision about priorities.

Even, however, when women mathematicians do observe the priorities of their profession, they are still judged by society's standards and evaluated in terms of stereotypically female attributes. In Weyl's memorial to Emmy Noether, for example, he remarks on her appearance that ``the graces did not stand by her cradle.'' A common issue that arises in discussions of Sofia Kovalevskaia's life is her performance as a mother, and whether she neglected those responsibilities. How often do we read a memorial of a male mathematician that discusses whether he was attractive, or whether he spent enough time with his children? [12]

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