Women In Mathematics

h/t to Julie Rehmeyer for pointing to some short (~4-5 min.) video clips relating the issue of gender in mathematics, as touched upon by the play entitled, "One Girl's Romp Through M.I.T.'s Male Math Maze":

Math Genius of the Female Persuasion

It seems like most stories of young math savants or geniuses involve males, but here's one of a German female, 21-year-old (at the time) Julia Ruscher, whose specialty is stochastic processes:



...and speaking of gender and math talent, consult this old take from xkcd:

http://xkcd.com/385/

Math and Gender

A recent study published in "Child Development" indicates that we haven't made a lot of progress in the 'math is for boys' stereotype that so often steers girls away from math at a young age:

http://tinyurl.com/4tt9lpn

From the article:

“Our results show that cultural stereotypes about math are absorbed strikingly early in development, prior to ages at which there are gender differences in math achievement,” says co-author Andrew Meltzoff, a professor of psychology.

...we still have a lot of work to do (...and I can't help but think that the Web will be a powerful tool in bringing an end to the stereotype).

Women In Math

Over a year ago on her blog Tanya Khovanova mentioned the numerical outcome of googling "male mathematicians" and "female mathematicians."  So I just did the same and similarly found a heavily-weighted favoritism toward females:

"male mathematician" --- 3420 hits
"female mathematician" --- 8990 hits

At first glance of course this seems peculiar given the preponderance of male mathematicians in society over females, but of course upon a moment's reflection it's clear that someone doing a search would be far more likely to "search" for find "female mathematicians" than "male mathematicans" (which is, at least subconsciously, for a lot of Americans, almost a redundancy!).

At any rate, many are working hard today, to alter this gender-bias and specifically encourage females to pursue mathematics, at least as an interest, if not even a vocation. One organization active in that endeavor is the Association For Women In Mathematics:

http://www.awm-math.org/

Check 'em out, especially if you're interested in math, and you're a possessor of two 'X' chromosomes!