<p>Not necessarily Even current trends in education seem to suggest that women are not entering into science in astoundingly higher numbers-- this is something rather troubling, actually.</p>
<p>Since the vast majority of Nobels will continue to be given out for scientific achievement, this will limit women’s ability to receive them, unfortunately. </p>
<p>But who says that the Nobel has to be the absolute pinnacle of achievement?</p>
<p>Yep it’s as much a commentary on the committee as it is on the award-winners themselves</p>
<p>Wait… If women are just not doing the kind of work that the Nobel is looking for, why are they at fault?</p>
<p>It’s like getting angry at the Oscars for not giving awards to TV shows.</p>
<p>Well to use the analogy…it’s OK for a TV show to aspire to be just a TV show. A TV show is a different category than a movie. But that doesn’t really hold for males and females in the academic world. Why should it be acceptable for females and males to achieve in separate categories?</p>
<p>It’s not right to claim that women should be content to achieve in “separate spheres” (sound familiar?)</p>
<p>I agree, it’s not the fault of the women.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that women should be content with achieving in separate spheres. It’s silly.</p>
<p>But we have a reality here where women are NOT going into the sciences in as high of numbers as men. So of course there will be fewer Nobels being given to women. </p>
<p>It’s not fair. It’s not how it should be. But it is that way. We need to understand why if we ever want that 50/50 in the sciences that we should probably have.</p>
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Because women are free to choose whatever they want. They are heavily encouraged to pick science & engineering fields, even admitted to many programs with lower stats so as to bring in higher numbers. Yet except for biological sciences,I believe more men still lean that way.</p>
<p>As for Nobel prizes, men are more likely to be outliers on any IQ or scientific aptitude bell curve. Just as they are more heavily represented in the lowest range, they are found more often in the highest. Those high outliers are more likely to be Nobel candidates.</p>
<p>I don’t see any unfairness here. Every person, if viewed as an individual, should have choices and not be forced to conform to some utopian ideal of 50/50 reperesentation in all fields. If 90% of doctors were women and 90% of engineers were men, and 90% of firefighters were men and 90% of librarians were women, so what? Are these doctors and engineers and librarians and fire fighters in careers that suit them? That they are qualified for? Shouldn’t that be the goal – freedom to choose whatever field in which you have an aptitude & an interest?</p>
<p>I think a large part of boys’ disconnect with school achievement starts in the early elementary years. Here, the kid lit consists of “Wonderwoman and the Wimp” themed stories. Virtually every smart, brave & resourceful character is a girl, with a flawed little boy tagging along, learning important life lessons from her. No wonder boys tune out.</p>
<p>I remember reading somewhere that it is actually the current norm that girls are higher achievers in high school than boys.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard that male college applicants have a slight advantage today, because the females are slightly more qualified and many college campuses have become “girl-heavy” because of it.</p>
<p>HS girls are more likely to follow rules and jump through the hoops to get good grades. Boys are a little more rebellious and won’t necessarily put up with all of that. How often have you heard of an underachieving HS girl?</p>
<p>Now think of all the successful people you know or have heard about. Nearly every successful woman was a very good student, maybe even near the top of their class. But a considerable proportion of the men weren’t good in school. They got to where they were by being innovators. </p>
<p>Innovation takes a certain disregard for the rules. It leads to the discoveries and the progress that wins the Nobel prizes.</p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong. You have to be smart to get good grades. But you also have to conform.</p>
<p>The problem is that there are too many women in our elementary, middle, and high schools. </p>
<p>Maybe the “solution” in college is that there are finally some male teachers.</p>
<p>Hmmm…I wonder if anyone has ever studied that. Do boys perform better in schools that have male teachers?</p>
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<p>You don’t hear about under-motivated or under-pushed girls–you don’t hear about girls milling about high school with no direction or purpose. In that sense you are right, Dadguy. Unfortunately, what you do see a lot of is the type of girl who focuses on the wrong things, the girl who devotes all her energies toward the purpose of being a slut. Sorry to use such language but it’s true and sad.</p>
<p>“How often have you heard of an underachieving HS girl?”</p>
<p>Have you ever been in an urban HS? :(</p>
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<p>I’ve been lurking on the Chronicles for Higher Ed discussion board lately, as my dd is going into a PhD program next year, and I’ve learned a lot about life in academia.</p>
<p>The topic of inequality does come up, and one of the themes that I hear is that women academics in the sciences, where a lot of lab time and research money is invested, often have problems balancing their career with childbearing and care. Just getting a PhD alone takes 6-8 years, often, and these are the childbearing years. Because there are relatively few women scientists in the upper echelons of science academia, women are not finding the support from their colleagues that women may find in the business world these days., or even in other academic fields, where there have traditionally been more women. Often the ones who succeed postpone, or decide against kids.</p>
<p>In one thread I read recently, a young woman was afraid to tell her PhD advisor that she and her husband were going to start a family. Her advisor, an elderly and somewhat rigid old prof, had said several times to his grad students, “There will be no babies in this department!” She was posting to get encouragement from other women in the forum to tell her advisor to take a hike ( in this area)</p>
<pre><code>It’s a slow process, this equality thing. We’re making more progress in some areas than in others. Women will always have to deal with childbearing and the time/commitment that the family entails to a much greater degree than the men in their fields due to biology. It’s not fair, but it’s life. The sooner we get our men to understand (and they’re beginning to) and to make accomodation for this unique feature of the female gender, the quicker these changes will happen. We will have more women Nobels - but it will take time.
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All boys private & parochials do better. I don’t know if it has been studied in such a way as to control for all the other factors that contribute to those schools’ success, though.</p>
<p>A.S.A.P. The childbearing always will be the cause for a trade-off. But would any of us women want to switch places with men, and be denied the joy of bearing children? I don’t think too many would. Usually women who come to that conclusion wisely forgo motherhood.</p>
<p>sticerkshock: I know that anecdotally (my boys attend(ed) an all boy school grades 7 through 12) but I was thinking about real research. And I totally agree with you about motherhood. It is a true lesson in compromise.</p>
<p>Schools are just too “girlish.” They just don’t “get” boys. Boys are not the same as girls. I never would have said that in my heyday of feminism, but having raised two boys - I know they are simply not the same and too many aspects of school are determined by women.</p>
<p>“How often have you heard of an underachieving HS girl?”</p>
<p>Wow. Open your eyes!!</p>
<p>As a kid, I think a big part of why males underachieve is because of peer pressure. If you are not surrounded by the “smarter” kids then your friends will make fun of you for studying instead of playing Xbox. That especially happens to black males, who are often made fun of and called white if they try and excel. </p>
<p>That at least is my experience in going to an large urban public high school.</p>
<p>Stickershock-I don’t think many women would switch places with men, no. But I do think we’re losing a lot of talent by not making accommodations for the biological fact that women are the bearers, not just major caretakers, of our species. </p>
<p>A trade-off? Why not take some steps to mitigate the disadvantages women have, especially in a field like academic science, where kids and motherhood can fit pretty well if they can make it through those first gruelling years of getting the doctorate and beginning research? If we insist that the choice be motherhood, or scientific career, we will never get much better than the 20% of women scientists that we have now.</p>
<p>A.S.A.P. – Do you think PhD programs could extend the number of years in which a degree must be completed? Or would that be too disruptive. I don’t know. </p>
<p>I know that even men can have their career progress slowed by the “Daddy track” if they are known to be committed to their families. Backing off from business travel, leaving early for kid activities, etc. is frowned upon by many bosses.</p>
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<p>With my wealth of experience derived from two sons and a mother who was a renegade public school teacher, I can say without much doubt that school through junior high is practically designed for girls. I’m not so sure about high school.</p>
<p>I wish I would just take the time to fully develop this thought, but here are some fragments of ideas on this issue.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Despite wide individual variation, boys are less likely than girls to want to sit in chairs and listen attentively to teachers. I have little experience working with adolescent girls, and lots with adolescent boys, so a comparison is hard for me to do, but I CAN say that even 16-year-old boys have the ability to sit still and pay attention for about 15 minutes. Tops. Younger boys won’t even last that long. If you don’t give them something to DO they will invent one for themselves.</p></li>
<li><p>All bright kids have trouble with the fundamentally stupid nature of most high school work. Kids that don’t care about pleasing adults (more boys than girls, in my experience) simply blow off the dumb stuff. As Jr told me one time in explaining why he resists doing homework (paraphrased, but pretty close to verbatim): “I heard it in class. I understood it. No matter how many times I do homework exercises, I won’t get it any better than I do right now. I’ve never earned less than a 95% on any test or quiz, so who cares if I do the stupid homework?” I think he has a point. More to the point – this is NOT how college works. Unless things have changed since the last Ice Age, college is about papers, exams, and labs. College homework has nothing in common with about 80% of high school homework, so in what way is high school preparing kids for college?</p></li>
<li><p>Great teachers get results. Funny, isn’t it, that my sons’ favorite teachers are the most demanding – in terms of understanding and meaningful performance – and their least favorite are the ones that assign the stupidest homework. (I’ve looked at it. A lot of it is stupid. This is an objective analysis…) Here’s the funny thing – their grades don’t necessarily match how they felt about the teacher. My son’s APUSH teacher was very demanding about writing quality. I think Jr earned Bs from this teacher, but credits him for turning him into a good writer. Funny, it wasn’t an English teacher, but a history teacher who wouldn’t accept poor work. For the record, all of the APUSH homework was in to form of short papers (I want to say 2-3 pages) which had to be thoroughly researched, well organized, and clearly written. How does this reflect on boys vs girls? I don’t know, except that it leads to point …</p></li>
<li><p>What do homework grades mean? When Jr was learning to write in the process of APUSH his papers at the beginning of the year were pretty bad. By the end of the year, I think they were college-quality. His grades improved throughout the year. Since he was being judged on his ability to exercise a skill (writing) that he needed to develop, what did the early-year grades really mean? When I’m learning a new skill, I am definitely not as good at it as I will be later. Why put the learning curve scores in the student’s “permanent record?” Students who were fortunate enough to have learned to write well earlier got higher grades at the beginning of the year. Are grades about lifetime achievement? There’s a whole thread here in the question, “what do grades actually mean in primary and secondary education?” I tell you, I don’t know the answer. </p></li>
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<p>I do know that girls, who start high school with at least two more years of maturity than boys, have a clear advantage in the beginning. If anything, this might be the single biggest difference between boys and girls, and why the academic achievements of men and women in college do not repeat the high school distribution.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Back to the original question, the skills that make a person successful in high school are not necessarily the same as the ones that make you successful in college. This might be why no individual numeric factor (SAT, GPA, ACT) does a particularly good job of predicting success in college. There are too many other factors that are hard or impossible to measure.</p></li>
<li><p>It’s not popular to believe that IQ scores mean anything, but they do. The IQ distribution for men is wider than for women. There are more men than women who score three SDs above the mean, and there are more men than women who score two SDs below the mean. You would expect more men than women at the extremes. You don’t even have to posit negative social forces to explain why there are more men than women Nobel prize winners in the academic areas if you think that research ability and intelligence is correlated. (If you believe that social forces are still working against women, it would tend to amplify this, of course. If academic Nobel winners have IQs over 150 – and I am clearly just making this up – and some women who might have become field-leading researchers are forced aside or decide to mommy-track, you would find men over-represented in the Nobel winners. Fun questions, but pretty fact-free.)</p></li>
<li><p>And finally, it’s my sense that grade earning is largely achieved by teacher-pleasing behaviors. On the whole, overall, in my experience, more girls than boys are willing to play the teacher game. WashDadJr, for one, really, truly, honestly just doesn’t care if his teachers like him or not. I’ve told him several times that independence and the willingness to stand up for himself are great traits, but that they can lead to being either Ted Kaczynski or Richard Feynmann.</p></li>
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<p>So true! Our society - at least the acheivemen side- is not family friendly, to men or women. This is what we need to change. It does seem to be getting better in the business world - from what I see, anyway, but we should do better, for the sake of all our families. </p>
<p>SS= I think that there are a lot of things that could make it easier for women to stay in the sciences, perhaps letting grad students take time off to have kids would help. First, the problem needs to be recognized. I’m not sure it is fully appreciated - stopping for any reason - kids, health, whatever, is seen as not being fully commited to the discipline. (just like in business, - not being fully commited to the company, for men - and women.)</p>