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What Still Needs to Change (for the Good of Women in Mathematics, and for the Good of Mathematics)Judith Roitman
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The situation of women in the mathematical community has improved remarkably. Unfortunately, the situation of women in the mathematical community still needs remarkable improvement. Some of the problems lie within the mathematical community, and some lie outside it. Here is my short list of problems, with some discussion and suggestions for solutions. Some of the problems in this list are specific to women, but others are rooted in the general isolation of the mathematical community from the rest of society, with the resulting misleading myths and stereotypes--of mathematics, of mathematicians, and of mathematical employment. Many of these problems are being actively worked on by the national organizations from their Washington offices, but Washington is not the nation, and unless we all pitch in there will be little progress.
1. Women still are undervalued and less visible than men.
This is the root of the problem. That it is not limited to the mathematical community only makes its impact worse. It has been studied (in broad settings) in many guises--the same paper or vita sent out under male and female names to be evaluated; painstaking documentation of verbal behavior in groups; painstaking documentation of the interplay between teacher and student. All of these studies come to the same conclusion: both women and men undervalue and over-ignore women. It would be hubristic and foolish to believe that the mathematical community is immune; anecdotal evidence abounds to the contrary. Even established women mathematicians have stories of insults endured, contributions ignored or misattributed, patronizing comments whose nature was not recognized by the speaker. Even the most prestigious researcher has had the experience of being in a crowd of mathematicians without her nametag on and finding her words undervalued, misunderstood, or even not heard by people who don't know her. Do men--do white men--have similar experiences? Of course. But do they have them with the consistency and predictability that women do, or bearing the particular weight of women's general social vulnerability? Of course not. If it is this way for women whose careers are established, how much worse is it for women students and for young Ph.D.s?
2. The recent calls for a vast infusion of non-whites and non-males into mathematics appear to have suspect origins.
The mainstream mathematical community got excited about the need to recruit girls and ``minority'' (read non-Asian non-white) boys into mathematics exactly when it was noticed that white boys (especially U.S. citizens) won't do it any more. Is this entirely coincidental? If there is a perception that women are being invited in because the big boys are off somewhere else, the invitation will not be accepted. We must be completely clear about this: We want women and minorities doing mathematics because there is mathematical talent in those communities and we do not want to see that talent go to waste.
We must be clear about something else: A girl has no reason to go into a career that boys don't think is good enough for them. To make mathematics attractive to talented girls we must first make mathematics attractive to talented people.
3. The larger culture thinks that math is just about impossible to learn, especially for girls.
We have valuable allies fighting this misconception, in the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics with its new Standards, which is trying to foment a much needed revolution from kindergarten through high school. We need to learn from and work with them. The resulting alliances, whether formal or informal, have tremendous potential, providing we have enough humility to not reinforce stereotypes of those elitist professors in (what else?) their ivory towers. The message that all children are capable of learning mathematics includes within it the message that girls are capable of learning mathematics.
4. The larger culture thinks that mathematicians are geeks anyway, and if they are girls they're ugly.
Just about every professional mathematics organization is fighting this image with excellent promotional materials, and books like Mathematical People do a good job, but the news hasn't made it down to Mary Worth (who, as I write this, is giving advice to an uptight mathematician), or your average popular kid's book. Grassroots response is necessary here. How do you identify yourself at parties? How do you respond to the inevitably prideful ``I'm lousy at mathematics''? How do you respond to passing comments in the media, or bigger blow-ups (such as the national columnist recently devoting a whole column to why nobody needs high school algebra)? Smart kids aren't always geeks; our lousy image is a major reason pubescent girls turn off to mathematics.
5. Unfriendly subcultures exist within the mathematical community.
Here is a dirty little secret that, like most dirty little secrets, needs to be talked about. Certain subcultures encourage outright misogyny (e.g. the nerd subgroup in high school, which is where many teenage boys start to think of themselves as mathematicians) or, at the least, encourage social values with which many women, and not a few men, feel uncomfortable--the monkish ideal of the researcher who lives only for mathematics; the false dichotomy between research and teaching; a teaching ideal in which students are not listened to, but lectured at. None of these attitudes--not even misogyny--is exclusive to men; none of these is shared by all men; and, most importantly, none of these is intrinsic to good mathematics. But if these are the values which are perceived as dominating all others, we can expect most women and many men to be turned off to mathematics.
6. Students come to us with emotional baggage that works against them.
The bright young woman sitting in your class did not spring full-blown from the head of Zeus. Unless she is quite unusual, she is experiencing pressures of gender and self-image which need active intervention on the part of faculty to keep her going. Even at a young age, girls tend to attribute their success to luck and boys their success to talent, while boys tend to attribute their failure to bad luck and girls their failure to stupidity. Many, if not most, successful women feel as if their achievements are illusory, that they can be taken away in an instant.
So tell her when her work is good. Show her how her ideas and questions can lead to further mathematics. Suggest she major in mathematics. Suggest further courses for her to take. Suggest graduate school. Find apprenticeship opportunities. Invite her to seminars, to departmental functions. Encourage her through personal hard times. Don't just sit back, give her an A, praise her to your colleagues, and call that enough.
7. Family leave policy barely exists; family friendly policies are rare.
My cynical view is that nothing will be done until a lot of men start complaining about how childcare responsibilities are hurting their careers. Someone has to take care of the kids--usually women do substantially more than 50% (have you seen any nursing men lately?). Good policies encourage long-term productivity; bad policies are blinded by short-term vision. Unfortunately, most of the academic world is dominated by short-term vision (and not just in mathematics). Family leave may be the issue that forces academia away from its current near-sightedness, and allows academics to get off the short-term treadmills that many of us are currently on. The analogy with what's wrong with much of American business is obvious; as with American business, looking to the longer term is simply good policy.
8. The employment situation still needs improvement.
Do you have a two-tiered situation? Is your pre-calculus taught largely by smart women in dead-end positions? There are two good reasons why these women should not be exploited: Simple justice, and the message that their current exploitation sends to young women.
As for regular faculty positions-see the May/June Notices for the current situation. If you say that a good woman is hard to hire, here is Marcia Sward's rejoinder: ``I've found that offering more money never hurts.''
Yes, the mathematics community has improved remarkably in its treatment of women. But we have a lot further to go. As a community, we should not become complacent. What needs to be done is good for both women and mathematics. We can start slipping backwards, or we can use the infusion of energy from our progress so far to move further towards the elusive goal of true equity, when gender becomes as irrelevant to mathematics as hair and eye color.
Copyright ©1991
American Mathematical Society. Reprinted with
permission.
Brought to you by the Association for Women in Mathematics.
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