To complain to Sunday Times on "UK girls flop" headline

[Duckdeamon]

Today's Sunday times (can't link as they have a paywall) has an article about the UK having one of the biggest gender gaps in science at age 15 of 67 countries (upcoming OECD/ Pisa report). Article is interesting: through quotes it discusses sexism, science and maths and technology leading to well paid job opportunities, that girls are being prevented from doing, gender imbalances in science, and evidence that girls are as good at maths and science as boys.

But why use the headline "UK girls flop in science league"? Which suggests that the girls are at fault!

The results are shocking, and girls are being let down.

The Times article is behind a paywall so isn't clickbait unless anyone on this thread has registered with the Times specifically to read it. Which I doubt.

Not "clickbait" as behind paywall. Dislike derogatory comments about girls and women in headlines and I try to avoid clicking online articles, came across this when scrolling through on my mum's tablet!

Even if it had been "clickbait" that just makes it worse on the paper's part IMO

In order for females in one country to have notably different outcomes compared to other countries there has to be factors over and above some strange national "craptastic" characteristic in females.

Which means either the protocols, ideas and strategies designed to stop girls turning away from STEM aren't working, or are having unintended consequences, or there are social/cultural factors at play that have not been addressed.

So that is a UK flop. Not a UK girls flop.

And it is an issue beyond STEM, becuase if an impact can be measured there the chances are it will be having an impact in other areas as well.

A lot of the problem arises at home and is beyond teachers' control. They may be sure little Susie is being put off STEM by her parents but they cannot ask and they certainly cannot criticise.

@forago

"wow. so WHY are girls much more likely to do physics at single sex schools? it must surely be because of peer pressure and the culture of the coed schools. Has to be something for individual schools to address?"

I would imagine that single sex schools are more likely to be independent or of the grammar variety which tend to be a bit more academic in their leanings and more emphasis is placed on importance of STEM subjects rather then 'soft' subjects.

I studied engineering at uni, mid 90s, there were four women on my course out of a total of 55 people. My impression was that on campus engineering was seen as mixture of hard/boring/geeky/unglamourous (take your pick), we spent our days in the lab testing materials, analysing the behaviour of wind loading on buildings or in the lecture theatre jotting down notes on thermodynamics, structures or soil mechanics. The humanities block was overwhelmingly populated by women studying classics, arts, languages, law, history and literature and often wondered why there was this huge gender imbalance between the two departments. What surprised more was when I became friends with a number of these women many had achieved good a level grades in the entry subjects like maths, physics, chemistry etc that would have got them easily onto any engineering course they desired yet they had absolutely zero interest in pursing this and had naturally gravitated towards the more creative subjects. These choices did not appear to be through coercion from crap careers advice at school or some other authority figure saying 'girls can't do that', the women concerned just had zero attraction towards a career in engineering despite knowing that its very vocational subject with high employment prospects and good earning potential.

By the time they are choosing what to study in at university level they have to accept a high degree of responsibility for their choice. They are not children any more.

But choices don't take place in a vacuum, why are women not doing STEM subjects at A level and beyond? Think the OECD study concerned 15 year olds.

I don't know Duckdeamon but you can't make girls do STEM A-Levels or women do STEM degrees. And you certainly can't make them softer offers than you do the male applicants - there are laws against that. So how you get more of them to make the choice I don't pretend to know.

It's not about making them, it's about encouraging them.

Understood: but there are limits to "encouragement". If she says No, I don't want to do science A-Levels, they're boring/not for me/not what I want - what can you do?

Yeah, but then there's the kid who has never even considered doing STEM A-levels who maybe just needs a bit of support and encouragement.

One of my Y11s who doesn't have much support at home and who was planning on doing less academic A-levels has, with some nudging, decided to take both maths and physics.

So you try, and sometimes you succeed, and sometimes you fail. That's life.

It's probably not clickbait in the full sense but is definitely part of the growing trend of papers that purposely print provocative headlines to elicit response.

The trouble with this kind of discussion is that nobody genuinely knows why the UK has difficulty in creating gender balanced industries. If we did then we'd apply the solution to almost every area, not just those that are flavour of the month.

I haven't read the article but very much doubt women are physically being prevented from doing STEM jobs.

Women make up the vast majority of primary teachers so doubt that any career limiting advice is being pushed in the formative years.

My girls don't experience biases in high school either and have the full curriculum and advanced learning courses open to them.

Naturally we have no idea what goes on behind closed doors and my guess is that the unpopularity with STEM jobs in general means that the majority of people just don't know what's required or have any role models.

Where to start on this?

One of the issues when people are choosing A-levels/degrees etc is the 'Are people like me doing it?' influence. (I'm only halfway through Delusions of Gender but some of the studies cited therein are very enlightening!)

I was the only girl who did physics at my 70s grammar-turning-comp. Only girl in my chemistry set (the other set had some as it was timetabled with biology). One other girl doing double maths. In my case, I think my 'people like me' , the family propensity for science outweighed my gender.

My DD is planning to do maths, FM, physics and computing next year (she'd have done DT systems and control but the school isn't offering it this year, it's being phased out by AQA) - set on being an electronic engineer. Yes, she's at a girls' grammar school AND she's got a pair of scientist parents.

If she says No, I don't want to do science A-Levels, they're boring/not for me/not what I want - what can you do?

Well - you can take a critical look at why she thinks its boring. My DD was expressing bewilderment as to how anyone could possibly find physics boring. But during the last week revising, she said she was sorry for people who only do the double award as the more basic units are boring, they are too much about science rather than getting into the nitty gritty. The chemistry gcse has quite a lot of really dull stuff... rote learning rather than getting into the why and how. Maybe that's part of the problem - that the early stages of science are too dumbed down for girls, when competing with other subjects which don't have to be?

You can certainly take a hard look at the 'not for me' - why doesn't she think it's for her? Not enough 'people like her' visible doing it for a start off.

'Not what I want' - fair enough but again we should look at why. The status and image of science and engineering may be part of it. Hard and not particularly well paid?

Well we could encourage all A level students to take a more balanced spread of subjects and not close off their options too early. It would probably also help if English kids took more than 3 subjects at A level, most of Europe doesn't let you stop doing maths at 16

I worked in the nhs in a typically mainly female job qualifying in 1974. The pay was poor then. I was determined my DDs would grow up to have 'men's' jobs.

They both talked of becoming physiotherapists I put them off that.
I think they just thought that helping people, doing a 'worthy' job was a good way to go. Which it is but the prospects are not as good paywise, and I wanted them to be able to earn enough to live independently if they chose to.

So I think many girls just want to have people centred jobs which are rewarding because they help people, so eg health service, teaching, social work.

Possibly in countries with many female engineers the jobs that women normally lean to are not held in high regard or are just not there. Perhaps there are few social workers in China, for example.

What would you call a 'more balanced spread' though? I suppose it might be good (if they weren't proposing to scrap AS) if they could do say 4-6 subjects for AS and then 3-4 for A2.

Also, I thought that there was going to be some sort of maths for sixth formers who weren't doing maths A level brought in - is that happening?

Yes, there is a Core Maths qualification from this September. It's equivalent to an AS but taken over two years alongside the rest of your A-levels, so about half the workload. There are various options being presented by the exam boards, but it's much more about problem solving, finance and statistics than algebra. Entry requirement is a C at GCSE.

Are you serious Moniker?

I work with an Iranian engineer who told me that high numbers of Iranians (male and female) become scientists or engineers. To them, being an engineer is highly respectable.

There are also many more female engineers in France and Germany, where an engineering degree is as highly regarded as being a doctor. They're also far better paid than we are.

Errol, for a more balanced spread I'm thinking something on the lines of a 'no more than 2 from one column' system where the subjects were broadly grouped by types. I realise it's hard though when you have so few subjects to pick and I don't see how scrapping AS levels will help. We had to navigate something similar for both Standard Grade and Higher options so I ended up doing tech studies, chemistry and geography (as well as english and maths) against DHs maths, further maths and physics. I don't think the narrow subject choices help encourage people who are a bit interested to commit to an early STEM focus, most generic advice to teens would be to keep your options open as far as possible and it's far from every 15yr old who has a clear idea of what they want to be doing at 21. Or even at the weekend.

Mind you if I was in charge I'd also mess about with the maths and further maths syllabus, stop kids doing both and aim A level maths at people who need to be generally maths/stats literate and Further maths at people looking to continue studying engineering or science.

The headline is fine and representative of the article that followed.
complain if you want - they won't give a shit.

'No more than two from a column' doesn't sound good for those who really do know what they want to do - be that STEM or say a linguist. DD is delighted she'll only be doing subjects she wants to do next year.

The headline is shit if you actually look at what our girls achieved, though. From what I understand our girls did better than some other countries' boys. We are penalised for having a big gap between girls and boys' achievement. If the boys had done worse, we would have looked better on this measure!