Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!mailrus!uflorida!gatech!mcnc!ecsvax!pedersen%math.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU From: pedersen%math.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU Newsgroups: comp.society.women Subject: Re: Countering discrimination your children will face Message-ID: <5396@ecsvax.uncecs.edu> Date: 21 Sep 88 20:35:10 GMT Sender: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu Lines: 66 Approved: skyler@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Moderator -- Trish Roberts) Comments-to: comp-women-request@cs.purdue.edu Submissions-to: comp-women@cs.purdue.edu In message <5375@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>, hplabs!joanne@hpccc.hp.com (Joanne Petersen) writes: > I always felt that I was supported by parents and teachers in my endeavors > to learn about mathematics. How unusual this sounds now, in the context of > the 'discrimination' discussion.... I was supported by my parents and teachers too. The general public is a different story. I have a tale of two math majors to tell. The first math major is me. Once I'd declared my college major, I was plagued by people telling me: "Oh, my, math, that's unusual for a girl to do" "You must be really bright" "You don't look like a math nerd (you're really pretty)" "You don't act like a math nerd (you have social skills)" I pretty much ignored these comments, considering them the same way I consider silly statements like: "Math was always my worst subject" "I stopped taking math after 8th grade" "I hate math" Which is to say, I take all of these as thoughtless things said by people trying to make conversation but not knowing what to say. The second math major is an acquaintance of mine, who was plagued by the same comments, and _hated_ them. Hated them so much that she switched majors in her senior year of college, just because she had come to hate math (the cause of all these comments) so much that she would have done anything not to have her diploma say "Mathematics." She tells me that "Math is unusual for a girl" made her feel like she was wierd, (or at least that other people thought she was wierd). "You must be really bright" made her question her ability, because she didn't think she was exceptionally bright. She began to think that maybe she shouldn't be a math major, because everyone seemed to think only geniuses could do math, and she couldn't see herself as a genius. "You're much too good-looking to be a math major" also bothered her a lot, I think because of the implicit message "I can't accept all of you as you are: either I can see you as a good-looking person, or as a math major, but not both." Similarly for "You don't act like a math nerd." She also had people tell her, which I never experienced, "Gee, I'm glad I only found out now you're a math major, because I never would have gotten to know you if I'd known it from the start." I think in particular she got the message "_Men_ won't like you if you're a math major." She reacted to all these stupid comments by coming to feel like a misfit, a pariah due to her math, and thus abandoned the math. She is now a musician; I, a mathematician. I was struck by how differently we reacted to similar experiences. I found it easy to brush society's attitudes off as silly and not worthy of notice; she felt society's lack of approval keenly. [I wonder if it's better for women in c.s. After all, people at least expect c.s.majors to make lots of money and often people think they know what c.s. is when they don't know exactly what it is a mathematician would do. TR]