Encouraging girls to do Physics, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Is it worth it

[rationaloptimist123]

Only 2% of British girls are taking A'level Physics. This means that a significant number of high paying career options are going to be closed to them in 5, 10, 15 years time. Does this concern anyone else?

I work in technology, where the numbers of women are incredibly low (

I went to a selective single-sex independent school and we were all over the sciences. It didn't even occur to me to think anything about my choices until I went to a state mixed 6th form and suddenly wondered why I was surrounded by boys

This was my experience too sardine, only they were both comps. It was a real eye-opener getting to sixth form and seeing how the male students were treated differently by the male teachers of physics, chemistry and maths (we had female teachers for biology and half of maths). They were more chatty and more familiar with shared interests of football and beer. They showed them a genuine interest in their lives and had higher aspirations for my male peers.

Caronaim apart from your personal teaching experience, where is this over-whelming evidence that biology is considered harder than physics (at A-level)? I ask because I've always understood it to be the other way round.

My DD has a Maths degree and is a teacher of Maths to 6th form, all bar 3 teachers at her school for Maths and Science are women, it's a Comp in a deprived area not long out of special measures and DD is encouraging lots of girls to excel in Maths, I think it helps ( in an odd way) that she is young, trendy and attractive, not mention tattooed and with outlandish nails.

dotty all of the physics teachers at my DS's school are biology or chemistry graduates. When he starts A levels he's going to a private 6th form where he will be taught by a teacher with a physics degree, thankfully with a bursary.

dotty all of the physics teachers at my DS's school are biology or chemistry graduates. When he starts A levels he's going to a private 6th form where he will be taught by a teacher with a physics degree, thankfully with a bursary.

Just adding to it, it's interesting about the gender bias. My god-daughter chose to do engineering when the bias was pointed out to her by teacher specifically because of the bias. She said that if she did that then she'd stand out when it came to university applications because so few girls did engineering. I don't know if it helped but she got into Oxbridge which was what she wanted.

Ah I have a great link on the subject of Lego Friends

here

Lego Friends are as they are, because generally the girls who weren't playing with Lego were more tempted to play with Lego they could better relate to. For example, mini-figures that better represented humans and sets based upon relationships rather than vehicles.

I think it's the parents who were buying their kids Lego, are more likely to be swayed into purchasing pink, girly stuff for their princesses. Primary colours and building sets are for boys, after all- that's why girls weren't playing with Lego.

I think you're probably right, and that's part of it. The report I read, which I've just tried to find and failed, was on the children playing however.

Going back to eBearhug's point about the tech industry needing to deal better with career breaks due to technology moving fast: I think the problem here is more about the attitude than reality, for relatively short career breaks (>3 years) especially.

There's a terrible tendency to recruit by buzzword rather than fundamental skillset - okay, for short term contractors or to fill a particular gap in your team, you might want to be very specific, but a good developer/sysadmin/test engineer will have a skillset that transcends particular technologies, provided a little ramp up time and access to knowledgeable colleagues.

Case in point, in the last few months my team has been expected to pick up 3 different programming languages/frameworks, none of which they have any prior experience with. A recruiter would sift them out on first pass. But they are experienced with similar tech, have access to colleagues who are already familiar - so they've been fine. How is that any different to a woman returning to work with a slightly outdated but fundamentally strong CV?

I don't think most 15 year old girls are thinking career wise, at all. It is a question of persuading them that Physics is intrinsically interesting and 'cool'. The problem seems to occur somewhere between year 7 and years 9-10, when Physics becomes more mathematical and demanding. This problem happens for both boys and girls, but it seems worse for girls. Boys seem happier to make mistakes and learn from them, whereas girls seem to want to just be able to do things naturally and become more upset when they get things wrong or do a bad test.

IMO, the problems start a lot earlier with girls being praised for being neat and tidy and boys being praised for problem solving ability.

Physics is a fascinating subject and should be enjoyed (by both sexes) on its own merits and not for the potential career at the end of the road. The extremely broad (but rather shallow) GCSE and A level syllabi, and lack of timetabled lessons relative to certain other subjects (e.g modern languages) mean that the science is often brushed over in favour of exam technique. Again, this applies to both girls and boys, but to change where we are, we have to prove to girls that Physics is a fascinating subject. At the moment, this is very hard to do.

I loved maths and physics at school and there was a good mix of girls and boys with the girls at the top too.

But they scheduled European Literature with Advanced Maths, that kind of either or scheduling is annoying. Both should be left open. Admittedly it was a long time ago, but it still bugs me I had to choose.

I agree gender bias starts from a young age and I blame retail and disney for some of it. DS' school is incredibly boy heavy (there are only 6 girls in his class). I would have expected that the boys would influence the girls to be more up for tree climbing and physical play. However, instead what I notice is that the girls still wear skirts, almost obsessively, and have unsuitable shoes for tree climbing and messy play.

I think there was an article in a newspaper a while ago about the fact that climbing and experimental play are really important in developing the critical and logical thinking - both really important aspects of maths and physics.

The reason why I blame disney is because it still promotes the outdated idea of a woman achieving happiness through marriage instead of trying to do something more challenging with their lives.

Personally I'm not really that motivated to blame Disney, schools, society, the patriarchy, genetics, evolution, chummy teachers (who talk football and beer) or anything else. I do (as a parent of a daughter) want to take personal responsibility and do my very best and, most importantly, not discourage her - wittingly or unwittingly.

Case in point, in the last few months my team has been expected to pick up 3 different programming languages/frameworks, none of which they have any prior experience with. A recruiter would sift them out on first pass. But they are experienced with similar tech, have access to colleagues who are already familiar - so they've been fine. How is that any different to a woman returning to work with a slightly outdated but fundamentally strong CV?

I agree with this - a lot of it is down to recruitment techniques. For example, the recruiting manager will write the spec. It will probably be ridiculously over-hopeful when it comes to essential, rather than desirable skills. It then goes to his manager, and possibly further up the tree, depending on how many levels there are between him (and yes, for tech jobs, it so very often is male all the way), and his director, or possibly higher, depending on the current rules on funding and sign-offs for headcount. Then it goes to HR to review and approve and publish to the world (and hopefully not mangle the spec in the process, which we have had before.)

Then the CVs come in - mostly through recruitment agents (I think these days, most places don't insist that CVs are only accepted through approved agents, but I have worked for a company which did that in the past.)

Recruitment agents will usually just do an string match on the named program languages/applications/hardware/operating system (depends on the particular job.) This will get rid of most of those who will have similar but not an exact match (this also goes both ways, like the the job I got forward for where they really wanted Veritas Cluster Server, and my experience is Veritas File System, which probably means I could blag it if I really wanted to and did a bit of cramming first, but it's not actually the same.) Then it goes to HR, and again, most of them aren't technical, so them reviewing CVs is matching the given skills again. And at that point, the recruiting manager will get to see the few CVs which are left (and then they apply their own prejudices and biases in chosing which to select for interview.)

This doesn't always happen - I've dealt with a couple of recruitment agents who clearly did know what they were talking about when it came to the technical terms, and that can also happen in HR, plus sometimes they'll sit down with the recruiting manager to discuss what's absolutely essential, what's nice to have, what's good solid background that would be transferrable and so on. Plus the recruiting manager will be not so set in their ways that they won't look at transferable skills either.

The other thing is cost - if you can bring someone in who already has experience with the required language or whatever, then they should be up and running more quickly, and won't need to spend time cross-training or at least, learning a new language. But I reckon training costs sort of balance out across employers over the years, or at least the good ones - they train some, who move on elsewhere, and get in others who were trained elsewhere.

rationaloptimist123

However we're worried that all our "encouragement" could teeter on the brink of having an impact opposite to the one intended - teenage girls rolling their eyes rather than being inspired. My DH in particular is worried not sounding like his dad with our daughter (13).

I have daughters and my youngest is leaning towards science/engineering. As an engineer I would love for her to get into a STEM field but have taken the decision not to steer her in any way (either of them in fact).

Being 11 she has asked us about a number of potential careers. All I believe I can do is to advise, as best as possible, what subjects will/may be required. I do not discuss whether an industry is male/female dominated or any gender biases. If she asks then I may say, as with engineering, that there are more male than female engineers but that there is nothing preventing her from pursuing that as an option. I think it's important she does not feel there is a career she cannot pursue, given her potential grades.

Sorry but I don't agree with the posters who say it's down to innate differences between boys and girls. If that was true, things would be the same in every country - but they're not.

Anyone read Cordelia Fine's book, Delusions of Gender? Brilliant. Apparently it's only in countries like the UK where most science students are men - eg in Eastern Europe 70% of computing undergrads are women! Think someone up thread also mentioned India and the Middle East.

Apparently the reason why we're so backward in the UK is that we're obsessed with self-expression & we think that choosing subjects/careers is all about 'who we are' as individuals (of course that includes our gender). In other countries choices are pragmatic, science and maths just mean a better paying job.

Very wise for women if you ask me. As my great grandma used to say, "never be financially dependent on a man, dear!"

In as much as intelligent girls make A level choices based in future careers, many choose law or medicine. That is why chemistry is the most popular girls' A level science. This is rational based on pay and the ability to take a career break while having children.

As a country, we don't really value STEM subjects enough. Science teachers get this but most senior leadership teams in school get far more excited about artwork, drama and music than what goes on in the 'badlands' of the laboratories. And with a lot of parents nervous about science, the positive messages given out by science teachers in the limited timetabled periods are drowned out by the noise. The exceptions are where the slt are composed of ex science teachers, but this is rare.

I did math, chemistry and biology A level (I'm now a biomed scientist) after school I wanted to do product design engineering but was encouraged not to by the college careers advisor as I was a girl! I was railroaded into doing science A levels instead and kind of fell into my career path. I regret not sticking with my dream as I am more of a creative/technical thinking person whereas science is more fact based.

My state comprehensive school only offered dual award sciences at GCSE (ie no option to take Physics/ Biology/ Chemistry as separate subjects). I was a straight A all rounder, but picked arts A levels as I was advised by the (different) school which I went to for 6th form that I'd struggle with A level sciences without a good GCSE grounding.

Twenty years on, I think a science based career might have suited my personality and skills pretty well but those doors were basically closed to me at 14 due to the limited GCSE options at school. I'm pretty cross about it!

As a country, we don't really value STEM subjects enough.

This is spot on and the reason why our STEM industries are highly specialised and the UK has seen a progressive decline in favour of banking etc.

Gender issues are one thing but who really wants to be an engineer when refuse collection and washing machine repairs are carried out by engineers. Engineering is a dirty word so there is no wonder why we have skills shortages.

BeakyMinder
You've got me thinking. Perhaps we sometimes overdo our well - intended desire not to stifle our DC's own interests. But they are still children - especially when choosing their GCSEs.

My FIL comes from that pragmatic, practical generation that focused on what's going to get you into a well paying career. Unfortunately this meant that art, music, drama, RE, literature were seen as "things to get out of the way" so that at A'level my DH had to concentrate on physics, maths, chemistry etc.

His experience was very different to mine. My parents being in the "We don't care what you do as long as you're happy" category. Interestingly I dropped sciences like a stone as soon as I could (despite going to a single sex school). I did take A'level maths but had no clear idea about career.

I read somewhere that more than half of the aeronautical engineers employed by the Indian space agency are women. We wouldn't be able to get anywhere near that number in the UK.

BeakyMinder

Your theory is fair enough but the main reason why I work with much more French, German, Italian and other non British women is that engineers are not respected in this country. In the rest of Europe an engineering degree is highly esteemed and rightly so.

In France, their top engineering universities are viewed like we view Cambridge or Oxford. If you asked the general public what the top UK universities are for engineering then you'll struggle.

If your theory is true then a significant contributor will naturally be people not wanting to be associated with washing machine repairs etc. Not that there's anything inherently wrong with repairing things but people don't want to undertake one of the most difficult degrees around to be put in the same box as a technician.

ISRO isn't half female, but does have a much higher proportion of women than in the West, including in senior technical roles. This was that pic that went viral last year: m.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-29357472