Hannah Fry Instagram – In my job as a professor of mathematics, I am often asked why there are so few women in maths and related fields like physics, computer science and engineering, writes Hannah Fry (@fryrsquared), in a guest column for @theipaper.
🖋️ ‘This is borne out in the data: a gender disparity that starts in school and grows as students age. There is a serious under-representation of female talent in the world’s most powerful technology companies, and only around six per cent of mathematics professors are female. My response is always the same. It’s not one thing that makes women leave. It’s death by a thousand cuts.
‘Teeny tiny cuts like Katharine Birbalsingh, the notable education reformer, who told a committee of MPs that girls shun physics A-level as they dislike “hard maths”. Or the list of Field’s medalists (a sort of maths equivalent of the Nobel Prize) which has an almost embarrassing deficit of ethnic or gender diversity. Only two women have ever been awarded the prize in its long history.
‘If you’re on the receiving end of these tiny cuts, over and over, they reinforce the idea that you do not belong. It takes a great deal of resilience to counter that narrative.’
Read Fry’s guest column in full at the link in bio. ⬆️
🎨 Illustration by @timaldii
#maths #stem #sexism #theipaper #inews | Posted on 14/Nov/2022 21:29:45
