Girls don't like hard math

[2New]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10759687/Fury-tiger-head-claims-female-pupils-shun-level-physics-dislike-hard-maths.html

Katharine Birbalsingh, founder of the Michaela Community free school in Wembley claims that girls can't be bothered with advanced maths 😂.

Ms Birbalsingh, chairwoman of the Government's Social Mobility Commission, said: 'I just think they don't like it. There's a lot of hard maths in there that I think they would rather not do.'

When pressed on why girls would not want to do harder maths, she added: 'The research generally … just says that's a natural thing... I don't think there's anything external.'

AIBU to think that Ms Birbalsingh is talking rubbish?

It's not that girls are innately prejudiced against maths and science, but that they take subjects they are likely to succeed in, and that means picking subjects that have good teaching, as well as natural ability and enjoyment of the subject.

Why wouldn’t that also apply to boys? You would expect the total numbers to be down for a subject with poor teaching, but I don’t see why the gender balance would be affected.

Why wouldn’t that also apply to boys?

I didn't say it wouldn't - I was talking about girls, because that's relevant to the quotation in question, and the example I used was a girls school so there was no gender balance to consider.

I am confused now! Is FM an extra A level or not? And can you apply to do an engineering or science degree without an FM A level? DD will have to make that choice soon and I can’t get my head around it (I didn’t go to school or university here).

I think A level maths is a more 'risky' subject to take than a humanity.
With a humanity you can always find something to write. With maths it can be easy to hit a stage when you just don't have a clue.

I wonder whether socialisation encourages risk taking in boys more than girls? So boys are more willing to take a punt at maths whereas girls might be more risk averse?

From Twitter:

Katharine Birbalsingh
@Miss_Snuffy
·
21h
My guess is that our girls who haven’t chosen to do physics and instead chose biology and chemistry is that they don’t want to do the hard maths in physics Why should we force them to do physics when they don’t want to? Those who want to, are thriving in physics- that’s great!

Katharine Birbalsingh
@Miss_Snuffy
·
23h
Once again press takes one quote of mine out of context and everyone goes mad. I am not going to force our girls to do A level physics if they don’t want to do to it. It is OK if we don’t have an exact gender balance in all subjects.

Sadly, had the same experience.

A primary teacher - female- told Dd1 maths was a boy thing and girls weren't good at it - at the time she had been. By end of year the did sets - that stayed same for two years - no girls in the top two sets.

Thank god for Carol Vorderman’s and her mathsfactor site. After two years a new to school teacher came in tested groups reshuffled top set all girls however speaking to parents they were all girls who'd had out of school support with maths in some way.

Had another tell DS that boy's don't read - though we pulled her up when she did it in front of us as DS very much did/does. I think he was much less influenced than DD1 by the comments though.

Less gendered by equally annoying telling them they were just bad spellers as that made it so much harder to get the to do support work to improve them at home. Maybe not a natural strength for any of them but they massively improved with support.

The trouble with that @Nanny0gg is that the context is clear from the video and Birbalsingh hasn’t explained how what she said has been taken out of context. From a BBC article on this…Asked to explain why she thought girls would be less likely to make the choice, she responded: "Research generally, they say that's just a natural thing.”
She also talks about the difference in uptake not being down to anything external. It’s pretty clear she thinks girls are naturally less suited to maths.

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/426646/A_level_subject_take-up.pdf

The figure show fewer girls study maths, further maths and physics at at AS and A2 level. The question should be why.

Yes I don't believe it's just because of gender stereotypes either! Lots of my female peers up to GCSE did well at Maths but decided they didn't want to study it any further in lieu of other subjects. Not sure why, all have pursued other careers and seem content, none are regretful they haven't pursued a career in STEM (I did pursue Maths and then a Masters in computing and absolutely very male heavy in both uni and now work).

You only have to look at the boy/girl ratios of preschoolers doing baby ballet versus football to see that society's influence and expectations starts at birth. Parents generally conform to those expectations often unconsciously.

Yet if a boy did ballet it would be widely applauded. Typically women's choices are often discredited as lesser. My daughter enjoys ballet, also loves having a kick about with the football but didn't enjoy the structured lessons- I was loathe to make her pursue football at the expense of something she actually enjoyed just because it was seen as conforming to a stereotype. I guess the question is yes these stereotypes undoubtedly have an influence, but are any of them borne from preferences that seem for whatever reason be more naturally occurring? Stem offers well paid work that's future proofed but is the pay etc good because its dominated by men? Lots of super important female dominated careers are notoriously poorly paid but really vital to society, it isn't a coincidence. If girls genuinely don't want to pursue maths etc though then surely we should be fighting for better careers across the board rather than one which attracts more men being seen as the most aspirational (quelle surprise).

I have A Level Maths and Physics. Shock horror, I'm a woman.

Daft idiot! She should be encouraging girls to do it, not put them off.

Because people like her are putting girls off by saying it is too hard.

@Fortbite, I agree that freely choosing other fields is fine. But we as a society would do well to think about the origins of our choices.

At large scale, it is obvious that the degree level fields stereotypically associated to boys and men - with computing and engineering being prime examples - pay better than fields with a higher or predominant proportion of women. That problem reverberates for all of us. Of course I agree nurses and psychologists should be paid more but the situation is more complex.

@Nanny0gg, thank you for the KB twitter quote. Pretty pathetic that our social mobility czar can offer nothing better than a personal guess. Earlier she claimed research backing but I never saw a source. Did anyone?

@Schulte, as I said earlier, the situation regarding FM is confusing. It is possible that for some subjects the likes of Oxbridge, Imperial and Warwick may require it as a fourth A Level , but TBH I would be surprised if this was a uniform policy even there. It isn’t compatible with social mobility - that may not be obvious but timetabling, working class pupils’ higher rates of employment and family responsibilities, and other factors come into play at schools and colleges not used to accommodating four A Levels. I think it more likely that selective schools insist on using it as a fourth to give their pupils a perceived advantage when applying to elite universities.

That is why I like the rumoured Imperial policy that if you present four A Levels they will offer on all four.

One of these days I am going to analyse the % of first years
in my subject (a) across the U.K. and (b) at COWI for various characteristics. FM as the 4th A Level, insofar as I can access this info, is one of the things I am most interested in

Fortbite
I'm sure most other parents will have the same story as you that their DD just wasn't in to football and their DS's just not interested in ballet. That is my point.
What girls and boys freely 'choose' starts by social conditioning and starts very young.

@poetryandwine
i think she was referring to the gender equality paradox. The countries rated as the most equal for the sexes, also have fewer women pursing STEM careers than countries rated as less equal. There have been a number of papers on why this might be, from natural inclination to gender socialisation via stereotypes to but no one really knows. Some researchers claim it doesn’t exist so it’s existence is by no means established.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180214150132.htm
journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797617741719?journalCode=pssa
the-modern-female.com/the-gender-equality-paradox-feminism-considered-harmful/

I think those that believe this to be the main factor are partly the ones reinforcing the stereotypes.

Although (since I have a maths degree!) I want to say what rubbish, at least when I went to uni (20 years ago) it was definitely male dominated.

I went to a top 5 uni for maths, out of the whole year there were less than 10 girls - and almost all of us were focusing on the “softer” side of a maths degree (ie statistics rather than pure)

i think it’s a social construct thing though not an ability thing

Wait, so it turns out the person who champions a return to traditional, conservative values is a bit of a misogynist?

Colour me shocked!

Well, I am an astrophysicist and spend my whole day doing hard maths so would have to disagree. I am sure my many females peers would also disagree.

Plenty of students go onto degrees having studied, maths, further maths and one other subject.
See for instance Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial.
www.imperial.ac.uk/study/ug/courses/electrical-engineering-department/electrical-and-electronic-engineering-beng/#entry-requirements

You could apply with maths, further maths and physics, or maths, physics and chemistry for instance.

I would suggest that the best way to go about answering your question is to go onto some university websites and see what they say.

Interesting you should say that. I did maths and physics a level (equivalent) precisely because I found it easier to get full marks than in languages and humanities!

TeenPlusCat Yes definitely think there’s something in that less risk taking theory same way men will apply for jobs only meeting some criteria but women only apply if meet 9/10 etc.
For my teen she’d do well but I’d be less confident of her getting an A than in Humanities so why take risk unless you absolutely love Maths.

That may well be the case. DD1 got a 9 in Maths at GCSE and 8s and 9s in single subject sciences but got 8s and 9s in everything and could not wait to stop doing Maths and sciences as she loves design, languages and humanities.

Very much like DH and me though we tried not to influence her with our preferences.

Thank you, @Discovereads. These articles are interesting. I am not trained in social science so I wonder if someone can tell us why there may be controversy around this? I am not seeing it.