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Fashionable to be Dumb

February 10, 2016 por Emma Näslund-Hadley 1 Comentario


 

For much of my life, I’ve been obsessed with gender and mathematics. As a kid I loved when my dad made up math games and riddles, challenging me to come up with solutions. But it was clear to me that not all kids and certainly not all girls shared my love for mathematics. Decades later, the aversion for mathematics that I saw among my girlfriends is replicated in new generations. Already in early grades, girls more often dislike math even when they perform on par with boys. When they grow up, they don’t go into mathematics careers as often as their male peers. As a result, we have fewer women in finance, business, and STEM fields such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Precisely the fields where the greatest opportunities are in today’s technology based society.

 

Why is it so hard for us to instill the love for mathematics in our girls?  Cultural norms contribute and shape children’s self-definitions, leading girls to assimilate the stereotype that mathematics is not for them. These norms are clearly so socially ingrained that they are hard to change. In several studies parents have stated that their sons are better than their daughters in mathematics, even when this was not the case. Even girls of enlightened parents will get the anti-math message through media, entertainment, clothing and toys.

One would think that the huge backlash against the talking Barbie in the 1990s – who said phrases such as “Math class is tough” – would make corporations more careful. Yet, even today we see similar anti-math messages promoted in some products that target girls.  A few years back, the kids’ apparel retailer The Children’s Place, produced a t-shirt, listing girls’ favorite subjects as shopping, music and dancing, but not math because “well, nobody’s perfect.” The merchandise company David & Goliath marketed a similar shirt that in pink letters declared “I’m too pretty to do math.” These types of messages tell our girls that it’s an achievement to be bad at math. Or, like one commentator put it, they make it fashionable to be dumb.

Stereotypes such as these are not merely annoying, they are self-fulfilling. A cross-cultural study in 36 countries led by a researcher from the University of Virginia (Nosek, B. et al., 2009) found that gender science-stereotypes predict girls’ math and science achievement. The American Psychological Association exposes research that shows how high achieving female students perform worse than their male peers on a mathematics test by simply telling them that girls tend to perform worse than boys on the test. When female students were not told anything about gender differences, or when they were told that the test tends to produce the same scores for both genders, girls scored equal to boys.

Our girls clearly get the message. So perhaps we should not be surprised when they grow up to believe that mathematics is a field where they don’t belong. This sense of not belonging in mathematics starts early. My nine-year old recently demanded to drop out of chess class. “Mom, girls don’t play chess,” she explained. Knowing how much she loves the game and how chess has been directly linked to the development of mathematic problem solving skills, I took on the lobbying role and managed to convince some other parents to enroll their little girls. As parents and educators we can’t let gender stereotypes win.  Mathematics is simply too important, and too fun, to be kept from half the population.


Archivado bajoEnglish Etiquetado con:#Gender, girls, Math, Science

Emma Näslund-Hadley

Emma Näslund-Hadley es especialista líder en educación del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) en Washington DC, donde dirige y colabora en el diseño y ejecución de una amplia gama de proyectos y reformas del sector educativo en América Latina y el Caribe. La investigación de Emma abarca desde la educación preprimaria hasta la secundaria, centrándose en descubrir procesos de aprendizaje en el aula que promuevan el desarrollo en los niños de conocimientos conceptuales y generalizables en matemáticas y ciencias. Anteriormente ocupó cargos en el Parlamento Europeo y las Naciones Unidas. Emma tiene una maestría en economía y finanzas internacionales de la Universidad de Linköping y una maestría en Asuntos Públicos de la Universidad de Princeton.

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  1. AHA dice

    February 11, 2016 at 3:06 pm

    Obviously women inherit the same genes and ought to be just as good at math as men. But something else is going on. The incongruity between femininity and math is so widespread, that it is worth questioning whether it has evolutionary value.

    Perhaps this happens because math is a tool for men to get things done (e.g. house building) and thus gain the admiration of women. Then men can trade products created through math for sex, children etc. If a woman has to do math, it means that no man is willing to provider with math benefits. This may be the real meaning of ‘I am too pretty to do math’.

    Overall, the above hypothesis fits with gender differentiation of labor. Men are set up to manipulate stuff, and women are set up to manipulate people. If so, then women’s goal of the last 500,000 years or so has been to marry the mathematician. Not to be one. In the 21st century, we are stuck with this ancient selection method.

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Enfoque Educación

"Enfoque Educación" es el blog de la División de Educación del BID, un espacio donde nuestros especialistas y autores invitados comparten sus reflexiones, experiencias y conocimientos para promover discusiones informadas sobre temas educativos entre formuladores de política, expertos, maestros, y padres. Nuestra meta: proveer ideas para que las políticas publicas puedan garantizar una enseñanza efectiva y de calidad para todos los niños y jóvenes de América Latina y el Caribe.

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