been trying to make a thread about this for a while.
The Astrophysics ratio of male/female in grad school is 13/4, and it is worse in the pure physics grad school here. The faculty situation is even worse. Undergrad is a little better in my classes - the astro ones are probably around 6/4 for males, females, the pure physics one I would say about 12/4.
It always made me wonder why in the current order of things females are not attracted to the very mathematical sciences. Theres a lot of females in biology and the ratio is not terrible in chemistry either. However in either pure math or physics the ratio is abysmal. I doubt it has to do with our phenotypes at all, because I consider myself fairly bright on physics stuff and there are females in the classroom that surpass me. So it must be something social. It probably has to do with the whole geeky/nogeeky thing too to an extent, because stuff branded as geeky is famous for being very male centric.
People say it has to do with the styles of learning too. Some academics say females are better at verbal stuff while males are more "quantitative". I disagree vehemently, I think females are better at verbal stuff because it is what is expected from them. For example, males are encouraged to play with legos when they are kids, which develops spatial and quantitative skills, while females play with dolls, with develop social skills.
Physics male students are terrible concerning gender issues though, 'cuz most of us are emotionally broken geeks. For example there is always that thinking that hot females are dumb as rocks and the only smart ones are the ugly ones.
So what are your opinions?
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Females and mathematics/Physics