To say that boys are better at high standard maths

[MellowRubyDreamer]

My daughter is choosing her subjects for senior and her teacher is encouraging her to choose the hardest maths subject. Not in the UK. DD is good at maths at her girls' school but ultimately she will also be competing with the boys.

I am not saying boys are better at maths but they are better at high standard maths in proportion. Like for example in maths competition/olympiad the prizes are often dominated by boys. DD can choose as she pleases but I am just offering her perspective. She can do just as well but she might need to work harder. She thinks I am being sexist. AIBU?

You are being sexist.

Not a great way to encourage her, is it?

Do you think more boys win because parents of girls have little confidence in their ability, ultimately leading to to less girls taking higher maths… meaning competitions are dominated by boys because proportionately more take the subject at higher level?

Is this a joke.
men aren’t better at math. They just gate-keep with sexism and sexual harassment.

i did just fine as the only women in many of my courses. Women were scared off by sexism, not by content. I was just autistic enough not to care.

Wtaf. You are telling your dd she's can't be good enough because she's a girl.

Utterly sexist.

I went to school abroad and took the equivalent of A-level Maths and and got the equivalent of an A*. I was better than the boys 🤷‍♀️ In fact, the pupils who achieved the highest grades in my year were all girls

Sexist

Also, maths isn’t really about working harder. If you’re good, you hardly have to work at all.

Gosh - as a mother of 2 girls (one who is definitely a STEM girl) I am ashamed of you and for you.

Your poor DD.

This. I hope it’s not real.

That way of thinking was typical of 1950s America. It wasn't even around in the uk in the 1950s. All my family, men and women, are extremely good at maths

I am not saying she cannot be good enough there are other things where girls typically have an advantage. I am just saying there is a possibility she might need to work harder to compete with the boys

Girls are more likely than boys to be told they are not good enough at maths.

No.

You are being sexist.

She won't have to work harder to compete with the boys.

She'll have to work harder to compete with the emotional impact of this kind of sexist, destructive nonsense thinking, particularly when it comes from her own mother who ought to be her biggest cheerleader.

Well your understanding of statistics is clearly crap.
It isn’t relevant to your daughter’s individual case that there are more boys at the very top levels of extra curricular maths competitions. The point of taking the further maths course is not to win the math Olympiad.
Her teacher knows the syllabus and thinks your daughter will do well. It doesn’t matter whether she’s the top student in the country in the subject. It matters whether she will enjoy the course and pass it with a reasonable and realistic amount of effort put in. She should also consider how this choice might affect her options after high school. It might open up doors you haven’t considered for her, like studying engineering for example.

Maths is not just the winners of the Olympiad. What are the male/female numbers in mathematic professions @MellowRubyDreamer?

You are being sexist, and you need to learn about stereotype threat. If your daughter does do worse than the boys at maths, it will probably be because she has people telling her she will need to work harder and she subconsciously absorbs the message she isn't as good which then affects her confidence and performance. So please think about that every time you repeat this message to her - it could be you who is sabotaging her best possible achievement.

Having said all that, I work in IT and there's still plenty of subconscious and overt bias around, so women often have to do more and do it better just to be seen as doing as well as their male peers. It is very tiring after decades of it, so there's no need to begin with it before they even get started.

My mother, from a provincial fifties girls’ grammar school, where the main careers after school were nursing, teaching and secretarial, won a place at university to read maths. She had to go to the boys’ grammar to do A level physics as her school did not teach the subject. In order to do this, she had to be better at the subjects than most of the boys as far fewer girls studied these subjects at a high level at that time. You seem to have the mindset of many people from that time - where have you been for the past sixty-odd years? The glass ceiling was broken some time ago and it is widely accepted, and has been for years, that girls’ subjects and boys’ subjects no longer exist in the traditional sense.

No they are not better, they are more encouraged by their parents. Stop cutting off your daughter’s talents. I’m a woman with a degree in maths and my daughter is growing up thinking women are the bees knees at maths. As are her girl cousins.

My maths degree was mostly girls. We didn’t need to keep up with any boys.

The Nobel Prize for literature has been dominated by men.

Poet Laureate appointments are dominated by men.

The Turner prize winners are dominated by men.

It has shifted somewhat more recently, but it hasn't shifted because men were better at those things in the past and women weren't inherently as good; women have always been just as good at those things, and at maths, but sexism like yours is so entrenched, and many men's response to women being talented is so ugly, that often girls don't have the confidence to pursue the things they're good at to the highest level. You are being part of the problem.

there are other things where girls typically have an advantage.

let me guess... knitting? Washing the dishes ?

Why would she need to work harder? What about this path do you perceive as harder for her than for the boys?

I imagine it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy for your daughter.

Unfortunately sexist idiots like
yourself really limit their children. It’s sad.