Women and Science: The Debate Goes On

The following post is a copy of my response to
http://sciencewoman.blogspot.com and http://propterdoc.blogspot.com/2006/07/article-barres-nature-2006.html .



I don't believe that women, as a whole, are disadvantaged in math and science compared to men. I have had the privilege of knowing, in my short 17 years, quite a few very gifted left-brained women. Both my piano teacher (a professional classical pianist) and my financial advisor are women, and they have outperformed many men in their field.

When anyone tells me that men are more suited to math and science than women, I scoff.

I believe that any difference lies in the form of education that the said girl or boy received when they were younger. Boys and girls are documented as learning differently, and, as such, can excel or fail in a class as a result of the process of education.

Granted, both my high school Algebra teacher and my Chemistry teacher were women, and they were both horrible teachers, but I don’t hold that against the entire female gender. They were simply some of the not-so-great people in the world.

I believe that it depends more on the individual person’s intellectual focus (i.e. left brain v. right brain, math + science vs. language arts) than on the gender of that individual person.



In "The Chronicle of Higher Education," there appears an excellent article going into furthur detail on this topic. Click HERE to check it out.