Women in Science: Negative Results!

The topic of gender representation in scientific disciplines is usually an extremely complicated one. Women tend to be underrepresented inside scientific disciplines as a whole, particularly in mature roles, but the difference might be actually much more remarkable, or in some other instances vanish entirely, after we narrow the target to specific domains.

Over the past half-century, initiatives to recruit and promote women to go after professions in the sciences have been completely effective, but they have not been distributed. Around 1966, for instance, most women made just a 1 fourth of the undergraduate biology diplomas awarded inside the U.S. By the year 2007, women out numbered men, obtaining sixty percent of such identical degrees. In physics, although, these figures have scarcely budged, with the percentage of undergraduate qualifications received by women growing from fourteen percent to simply twenty one percent on the identical time frame. The particular issue, obviously, is "why?"

Most recently released research indicates really small difference in physics-related expertise between genders-not sufficient to describe the huge participation gaps.[1] Hence what exactly is trying to keep girls away from physics? Is it as Dr. Tilghman proposes, that women only do not pick out to put their particular efforts into physics mainly because they think they can make a better contribution in another place? Or perhaps, maybe women aren't attracted due to the fact they usually do not see how research fits with their desire to work with persons, as was recently contended by Claire Cupples, the Dean of Science at Simon Fraser University.

These could possibly seem like comforting explanations-no splendour, no stereotyping, merely choice-but they really are also too basic.

What influences students’ decisions to go after physics?

As early as the eighth grade, the interest that students show in science is among the preferred approaches to predict no matter if they are going to go on to obtain a bachelor’s degree in science, a link which is even additional necessary than their mathematics achievement at the very same age.

Individual interest isn’t, still, the only factor. Students’ belief in their own abilities is particularly necessary. Students with high self-efficacy, confidence in their capacity to succeed at particular tasks, tend to comprehend physics far better and accomplish better grades. This makes a great deal of sense-if students don’t think they have the capability to master new ideas and issues, it is quick to see why they might not persevere in trying to understanding hard concepts. This relationship is accurate for both male and female students, but female students tend to think in themselves much less, contributing to the difficulties they can encounter in physics.

Parents, teachers and peers also have strong influences on students’ perceptions of their own abilities, affecting students' career and degree options. In one study, students were followed from age 12 to age 24. Researchers asked the students and their parents about the student's math and science interests, abilities and career aspirations. They discovered that the a lot more mothers believed in their children’s science and math abilities in grade 7, the far more likely those students had been to pursue careers in science at age 24. Peers can have a comparable impact, supporting or eroding students’ belief in their own abilities. In a different study, rural girls who were recognized as talented in science had been strongly influenced by the recognition and support they received from their peers. These social influences can be troubling because parents, teachers and even peers commonly have stereotypical views of interest and capacity in science, views that tend to favor male students.

Together, studies like these illustrate how challenging it truly is to pinpoint a single cause for the underrepresentation of females in physics. There are actually elements of interest and self-confidence, but also complicated social pressures. With these challenges in mind, what is necessary just isn't acquiescence but continued looking for solutions. We still have to have to know what may be done to support and encourage students, and girls in specific, to pursue careers and graduate studies in physics.

Typically, the techniques that come to mind for encouraging female students contain supplying positive female science role models, developing opportunities for collaborative group work, and discussing the lives of female scientists. We were really surprised, though, that none of these usual solutions had an effect on the physics identities of the students in our study. Female students who skilled them had been no far more likely than others to have strong or weak identities in physics.

There was only one classroom experience that had a uniquely strong impact on female students: the explicit discussion of underrepresentation of girls in science. This isn’t just highlighting females scientists like Marie Curie but instead talking directly about the fact that you can find few females in physics. Female students who had experienced these discussions in their high school classes had considerably stronger physics identities. And further, these discussions had no impact on male students. In other words, for students who experienced explicit discussion of female underrepresentation in physics the possible physics career gap was decreased.Social influences are still very vital for determining if students will pursue a career in physics. Student's opinions are far from fixed, and great science teachers can have an very important effect on their students' physics identities. Most importantly, teachers who did some thing as simple as acknowledging the gender imbalance in physics might be enough to support encourage female students toward a physics career.

Further reading and references in [1]