Half of Women Do Not Have “Female Brains”

. . . and half of men do not have “male brains,” according to research of Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues. See Table 1 of Goldenfeld, Baron-Cohen, & Wheelwright, 2005, Empathizing and systemizing in males, females and autism, Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 2, 338–345. More details are below.

Session on the Participation of Girls and Women in Mathematics at the Joint Meetings

Background. This series of talks will focus on the participation of girls and women in mathematics, and what can hinder or enhance it. Some speakers have documented and analyzed the participation of women and girls, others are engaged in projects that enhance their participation.

Here are some relevant statistics. (For discussion of other frequently used statistics (some incorrect), see “Statistics about Women in STEM” and “Rumors of our Rarity are Greatly Exaggerated.”) In the United States, women are:

since 1980, over 42% of bachelors degree recipients in mathematics and statistics (National Center for Education Statistics 2009, details and discussion here)

Strange Accounts of the Common Core State Standards

The mathematicians Sol Garfunkel and David Mumford discuss the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSS) in their August 24 New York Times editorial “How to Fix Our Math Education,” concentrating their remarks on high school.

In contrast, the education researcher Andrew Porter and colleagues concentrate on Grades 3–6 and 8 in “Common Core Standards: The New U.S. Intended Curriculum” in the April issue of Educational Researcher. In August, Porter described these findings in his Education Week article “In Common Core, Little to Cheer About.”

As someone who has read the CCSS, I find these articles peculiar. (Disclosure: I edited the penultimate version of the CCSS and am the editor for the CCSS Progressions.)

Here’s why.

Louise Hay Minisymposium at the Joint Mathematics Meetings

The minisymposium consisted of talks by winners of the Association for Women in Mathematics Louise Hay Award for Contributions to Mathematics Education and a panel, “The Mathematical Education of Teachers and the Common Core” at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in New Orleans.

Background. The Common Core Standards Initiative of the National Governors’ Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers is an unprecedented cooperative effort of 49 states to work collectively to develop and adopt a strong set of common core standards for K–12 mathematics. This initiative was a focus of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences Forum in October 2009 and October 2010 (more information, including slides is here). Over 40 states have adopted the Common Core State Standards.

These standards will require a sustained effort to implement, and a key component in the implementation will be the mathematical education of teachers. The purpose of the minisymposium was to bring together a group of distinguished mathematics education researchers and mathematicians involved in teacher education to discuss the education of teachers in light of the CCSS.

Statistics on women in STEM

Ceci and Williams’s February 8, 2011 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences says:

Since 1970, women have made dramatic gains in science. . . . In the most math-intensive fields, however, women’s growth has been less pronounced (2–4). Among the top 100 US universities, only 8.8–15.8% of tenure-track positions in many math-intensive fields (combined across ranks) are held by women, and female full professors number ≤ 10%. (SI Text, S1)

The statement in the second sentence doesn’t correspond to the SI text, which says:

Percentages of women hired on tenure track were as follows: chemistry, 21.2%; mathematics, 26.8%; computer science, 20.0%; physics, 16.8%; chemical engineering, 24.2%; civil engineering, 24.7%; electrical engineering, 15.5%; and mechanical engineering, 18.0%.

John Tierney and The Mathematics of Sex

In June, the New York Times published two articles on women in science written by John Tierney: “Daring to Discuss Women in Science” (June 8, 2010) and “Legislation Won’t Close Gender Gap in Sciences” (June 15, 2010).

In my view, these articles do not accurately represent current research.

Tierney’s June 8 article, which discusses Wai et al. (reference 60 of Ceci and Williams’s PNAS article) is discussed here. (This discussion originally appeared in the September–October 2010 Association for Women in Mathematics Newsletter.) Details of individual assertions in that article are discussed here.

Tierney’s June 15 article, which draws on Ceci and Williams’s book The Mathematics of Sex, is discussed here. (This discussion originally appeared in the November–December 2010 Association for Women in Mathematics Newsletter.) Details of individual assertions in that article are discussed here.

Rumors of Our Rarity are Greatly Exaggerated: Bad Statistics About Women in Science

The essay originally in this location was updated and published in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics in July of 2011. It can be downloaded free of charge here. The abstract is below. Below that are sources of statistics about women in STEM. Last are updates about the garbled statistics discussed in the Journal of Humanistic Mathematics article.