Are you there, science? It's me.

[lettered]

I’ve always wanted to know everything about everything, and I’ve always loved the way everything connects to everything else. Except science.



It always bothered me to say I didn’t like science. If I’m interested in everything, how come I can’t be interested in the most fundamental thing? Science is about what things are, what makes everything the way it is. How could I not be interested?

It occurs to me now that science posits, “reality is”, and maybe I had a problem with that. I am in some ways interested in everything because, “maybe reality isn’t”. Also, maybe it could be said science is reality; everything else is meta-reality, and for some reason the more levels removed from reality you get while still making sense, the more interested I become. It’s probably true of me that I like contemplating the universe more than the universe itself.

But it also bothered me to say I didn’t like science, because—well, it sounded to me like saying you like kids, which I’ve also found sort of ridiculous. Some kids are cool; some kids suck. Some science is nifty; some sucks. Maybe chemistry is awesome and biology blows.

But it’s possible to really just like kids, both cool kids and sucky kids. And I really just didn’t like science.

Then I fell in love. So, okay, I like science now. All of science, not just choice parts of biology. But what I’m interested in right now is why I didn’t like it, and why other people may not. Is it just me, or is this a hard subject to get into? Is it just me, or does it seem like kids will more likely be interested in anything else more than science (or possibly math)? And is it just me, or does it seem like the latter are more often girls?

It’s a gross stereotype. There are plenty of women doctors and astronauts and biologists. But I’m always hearing how tech schools are 90% guys. Companies ache for girl engineers to fulfill their quotas. From what I’ve heard labs are still predominantly male, and while female physicists exist, all the famous ones I know are men.

Is it male oppression? Women still can’t get these high paying jobs? These positions of authority? These careers which require higher thinking, since we all know women have tiny brains?

Is it just taking longer for these fields to open up to women?

Does it have to do with stereotypes of women not being technical-minded, of women being “artsy”, women focusing on “feeling more than fact”?

What do you think? Are you interested in science? Why or why not? What do you think about science? Women in science? The history of women in science, and whether it says anything about how far we’ve come as a society or not?

Comments

[nianeyna.livejournal.com]

As a woman studying in a very male-dominated field (computer science), I have a theory about the seriously skewed ratios. As I see it we have two main problems:

1) Social stigma. Women are "feeling." They're "nurturing." They have "intuition." They can't think critically, and anyway no guy wants to marry a woman who's smarter than he is, right? And on and on ad nauseum. Let me tell you, if everyone is telling you repeatedly that you can't do something, you really start to think you can't do it.

2) I'm not sure how to explain this. Okay - so I went to an all girls high school. And I took AP Computer Science. There were twelve girls in my class. There I was, learning to program, it was fun! I decided to major in it. I knew it would be male dominated, but hey, no big right? We're all there to learn, gender doesn't matter!

No.

When you're one of one or two women in a class of fifteen, twenty people, you are not a computer science major. You are a female computer science major. You are The Girl. It's not that anyone is creepy or condescending, it just feels like being under a microscope. If I do badly, I have to wonder whether it's because everyone's right and girls really are bad at this, or whether I've proved everyone right and my classmates are now thinking, man, girls just can't keep up. If someone helps me with my homework, is it because I'm their friend or because they're being chivalrous or some shit like that. My point is, even if a girl manages to maintain interest in math or science long enough to actually go into it, chances are she'll leave, because the environment is the opposite of inviting. It's like accidentally wearing jeans to a formal dress party or something. Everyone's too polite to say anything, but you still feel awkward and out of place.

All of which is a long winded way of saying: it's culture. The reason girls aren't interested in science is because we punish them for it.

[kenaressa.livejournal.com]

I didn't feel unwelcome when I was at University (Bio major)...maybe a bit outnumbered, but I'm smart enough that it didn't feel like an issue.

[nianeyna.livejournal.com]

Hmmmm... I imagine individual experiences vary greatly. :) Also, bio has much higher percentage of women than cs, to my knowledge.

[kenaressa.livejournal.com]

*nods* I agree with you there (both on the individual experiences and fewer women in cs than bio)

[lynnenne]

I read something a while back that professions only begin to undergo a "cultural shift" when about one-third of the practitioners are women. Thus, many sciences, such as medicine, are already very welcoming of women because more than one-third of the students are female. Even math and physics are trending in this direction. Computer science and engineering are the last holdouts, and are still not women-friendly.

In 1989, in Montreal, a frustrated would-be engineer walked into an engineering class at Ecole Polytechnique with a gun. He ordered all the male students and the male teacher to leave, then shot and killed the 14 female students, yelling, "You are all a bunch of feminists!" Then he shot himself. Apparently he had been unable to win a spot in the engineering class and blamed affirmative action for his failures.

So, yeah. I thought twice about studying engineering after that.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Wow.

My dad told me never to be an engineer because I would have to work for The Man. He told my two brothers this too, though.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I wish you and kenaressa had been at Third Place--elanid and jaded_grave and I had such an interesting conversation about this!

2) I understand what you mean. On the other hand, I'm not sure I would even notice if I was the only girl in a classroom. Not because I'm so above it all; I'm not trying to say that. But I tend to be very oblivious to everything, and at the same time I sort of feel awkward or out of place wherever I am. I guess what I'm wondering is how much of this feeling is something we girls put on ourselves, rather than a vibe fellow male classmates give off.

1) Definitely. I'd like to say I'm not affected by this, but I grew up loving books like Jane Eyre, where the male in the relationship is older and more worldly and the heroine is a young innocent who Must Learn. That particular dynamic has always really attracted me, but when I think about it I can't think of an example where the woman is the teaching partner and the male is an innocent in the ways of the world. Maybe I would've gravitated toward something different if I had ever been exposed to it.