Have you ever wondered if your teacher simply didn’t think you were competent enough for a subject, even though your scores were decent? Well apparently if you are a white female this may be true.
"A 'subtle' but 'definitely present' tendency among high school teachers to deem their white female students less competent than white male students with similar grades and scores, and to consider them less comfortable in a particular math class, or to be less capable of advancing."
Personally, I have no idea whether this is true or not considering I haven’t really seen this in action. Obviously teachers have their own opinions of students and I’ve always been somewhat dubious of their ability to keep it out of the classroom. Honestly I’ve always noticed girls were pretty strong at math, or maybe I just gave them the benefit of the doubt. Who knows. <strong> So what do you guys think? Is this sort of profiling rampant throughout schools? Does it exist in other forms such as Asians should automatically be good at math etc? Has anyone on here experienced this firsthand?</strong>
Don't think so man, it all depends how dedicated you are and guys care more about stuff like math as opposed to girls who basically only care about social status/popularity/dating rich and popular guys
I think girls are just less inclined to try and learn math. I know some smart girls, but not that many who are great at math. Also, naturally speaking I don't think they are as good. Maybe they earn higher marks due to dedication, but I feel like men are more intuitive when it comes to math.
Not that this is a comprehensive or viable comparison; (unless you can actually think of more than I can)but how many famous women mathematicians/economists/physicists/etc can you name in comparison to their male counterparts? Now maybe you'll say this is due to a society that largely ignores these great women of science, but I believe that the male population of scientists is just more successful and has had better endeavors in their field. There are many great women writers/poets etc, so I don't think that sexism is a rebuttal as to why women aren't as prominent in the field of mathematical science.
Stereotypes exist for a reason, but they can cause hell for the outliers.
I see this was posted at 9:12pm.
Giving it another hour before the thread explodes.
ima a guy and had a professor say to me "you'll never make it in this major", 3 years latter I can solve ~30% of the putman problems within an hour
and yes ~30% is good for a state school kid
.
Asian-American women excel in math-related fields, and have not faced the "women can't do math" stereotype. This seems to indicate that American women's perceived inferiority is culture-based, not sex-based. Unless you're going to argue that Asians are somehow genetically superior at academics, which has not held up in any statistical study that controls for parental education or wealth-related variables.
Most American universities only started admitted women for full-time, legitimate educations maybe 50, 60 years ago. And women were told, perhaps even until the mid-80s, that they were "bad at math" and shouldn't bother to try. That's hardly an environment likely to generate top-flight female physicists, engineers, and mathematicians. Then consider if said woman, by some miracle, got into a PhD program. All the men around her would question her capabilities, her professors would attribute any mistake to a lack of inherent talent...it's no wonder there haven't been very many women physicists.
I thought this was only true in the south?
@tiger90 US is the south of the global community when it comes to human rights, along with Iran, China, North Korea, etc.
I was just trying to make a joke about the intelligence of white girls in the south, jeez.
Haha, mistaken for other southern stereotypes.
@street, are you French by any chance?
hah, what makes you think that? i can't read sarcasm through plain text
I was wondering where the attack on US human rights policy stemmed from lol.
I'm actually from a red state (MT). So I've dealt with some morons I guess.
on average men are better at everything.
They're better at shopping I think
the poon-support unit who flung doo-doo at me needs to get off the computer and make me a sandwich.
I'm echoing what someone else said above: It's not that women are any worse at math than men, it's that they're not as interested in it. Same thing with computer science and engineering. It takes a certain kind of personality to enjoy solving abstract math problems or sitting in front of your computer and programming for hours on end. These kind of fields are more suited for introverts and people with Asperger's (which is 4 times more prevalent in men). Women on the other hand tend to be more social and extroverted.
A lot of people say that math is difficult because it's abstract. This is true, but it's not the complete picture. I think math is difficult because it's boring, and it's boring because it's abstract.
I have a buddy who moved to MT about 2 years ago from CA, he loves his guns there lol.
This is just a social construction. In high school I was the best math student in my class, and the others who happened to be good were "white girls" too. My teacher didn't think I was less capable or comfortable so I got sent to Math competitions and there were always at least as many white girls as boys.
However, it is true that no-one expected me to do anything about it, not even myself, and I went on to study Sociology and then Journalism.
Exact opposite here! Never once was I asked to be in a math competition instead the whole team at my school is girls....they placed 4th (these questions I would consider trivial and the colleges who attend are unheard of, but are average in difficulty) but all teams that placed above them were full of males lol.
Also, I wouldn't judge a persons math skill based on does he/she get sent to math competitions as the top students generally don't give two shits about them.
My gf is a white female and also really good at math. We were both in the same quantitative major in college and she basically tutored me through the more difficult classes. Despite her superior capabilities, people (professors and fellow students, both male and female) always assumed less of her than me. It was extremely blatant.
These studies are such bullshit. Its all about a work ethic. If these girls want to succeed, they'll give a shit, and if they don't, the results are obvious. I knew plenty of girls who were very strong at math so these studies are meaningless, and don't even play to a stereotype.
Yes, more women tend to go in the direction of social science majors, rather quant heavy stuff like engineering but that's a choice rather then the illustration of their failure as a mathematician.
What about all these graduate tests (GRE, GMAT, etc)?
http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/SAT-Mathemathics_Perc…
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