Why Jenny Flunks Math 55

Math 55 is supposed to be the hardest math course in US higher education. "Honors Calculus and Linear Algebra". Classes meet three hours a week, and class homework requires up to 60 hours a week. Few women take Math 55. Fewer still ever pass.

Math 55 does not look like America. Each year as many as 50 students sign up, but at least half drop out within a few weeks. As one former student told The Crimson newspaper in 2006, “We had 51 students the first day, 31 students the second day, 24 for the next four days, 23 for two more weeks, and then 21 for the rest of the first semester.” Said another student, “I guess you can say it’s an episode of ‘Survivor’ with people voting themselves off.” The final class roster, according to The Crimson: “45 percent Jewish, 18 percent Asian, 100 percent male.”

Why do women avoid classes like Math 55? Why, in fact, are there so few women in the high echelons of academic math and in the physi­cal sciences?

Women now earn 57 percent of bachelors degrees and 59 percent of masters degrees. According to the Survey of Earned Doctorates, 2006 was the fifth year in a row in which the majority of research Ph.D.’s awarded to U.S. citizens went to women. Women earn more Ph.D.’s than men in the humanities, social sciences, education, and life sciences. Women now serve as presidents of Harvard, MIT, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and other leading research universities. But elsewhere, the figures are different. Women comprise just 19 percent of tenure-track professors in math, 11 percent in physics, 10 percent in computer science, and 10 percent in electrical engineering. And the pipeline does not promise statistical parity any time soon: women are now earning 24 percent of the Ph.D.’s in the physical sciences—way up from the 4 percent of the 1960s, but still far behind the rate they are winning doctorates in other fields.

...So why are there so few women in the high echelons of academic math and in the physical sciences? In a recent survey of faculty atti­tudes on social issues, sociologists Neil Gross of Harvard and Solon Simmons of George Mason University asked 1,417 professors what accounts for the relative scarcity of female pro­fessors in math, science, and engineering. Just 1 percent of respondents attributed the scarcity to women’s lack of ability, 24 percent to sexist discrimination, and 74 percent to differences in what characteristically interests men and women.___American__via_SteveSailer

But the truth may be a bit less politically correct. La Griffe du Lion looks at sex differences in mathematics and concludes:

Mathematics is a man's game. A gender gap appears early in life, blossoms with the onset of puberty and reaches full bloom by mid-adolescence. It indelibly shapes women's prospects for doing significant mathematics. In this account of cognitive sex differences, Prodigy shows how sex-differentiated ability in 15 year-olds accounts for the exiguous female representation at the highest levels of mathematical research. A female Fields Medalist is predicted to surface once every 103 years.

Another look at women and minorities in science concludes:

Prospects for women and minority doctoral scientists in engineering and other math-intensive areas are examined. A calculation of the ethnic-gender profile of this segment of the workforce is made for U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Rank ordering on mathematical reasoning ability predicts that women will top off at approximately 27 percent of this market. Similarly, rank ordering predicts almost 99 percent of math-intensive doctoral jobs will go to whites and Asians of primarily Chinese, Japanese, Korean and South Asian descent. Asians will continue to be represented in these fields well beyond their numbers in the general population. A study of the math-intensive academic marketplace predicts that women will top off there at about 22 to 23 percent.

In fact, women are already topping off at roughly 24% in the physical sciences which are more math intensive. If you read the Christina Hoff Sommers article you will find that politically, this lack of gender equity is simply unacceptable. Regardless of how many other academic fields and professions that women may be coming to dominate, if even a few fields remain where male dominance appears unchallenged, political feminists will cry foul. And when that happens, billions of dollars suddenly change hands, department heads and college deans will fall, and congress suddenly shakes a leg to please.

This is simply power politics for high powered feminist heavyweights, such as those mentioned in the article. But for academia, it sounds more like the death knell of minimally politicized science and math. The further entrenching of ideology into every aspect of academic thought and training. Make the world conform to your insular views, at all costs. Regardless of who is finally elected US President in November, there is no doubt who is at the wheel. PC--a cold and killing dogma.