The lack of women taking physics degrees and progressing in the subject thereafter has been recognised for decades, with much hand-wringing and numerous studies examining what could and should be done. However, the numbers embarking on the subject remain stubbornly low, with all the analysis achieving remarkably little.
One only has to listen to the evidence that Katharine Birbalsingh gave last year to the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee inquiry examining diversity and inclusion in science to recognise how ingrained stereotyped attitudes are in the teaching profession as elsewhere. Birbalsingh, the headteacher of a London school, who was then chair of the UK government’s Social Mobility Commission, said: “Physics isn’t something that girls tend to fancy…I just think they don’t like it. There’s a lot of hard maths in there that I think they would rather not do.” When pressed, she added: “The research generally...the people say...that that’s just a natural thing…I’m not an expert at that kind of thing.”
No, she’s not an expert, and she was falling into the trap of repeating unsubstantiated stereotypes – to the consternation, not least, of many female physicists. There is no evidence physics is not “natural” for girls.
Does it matter if this situation persists, of girls effectively being discouraged from physics and fellow domains of “hard maths”, such as computing, engineering and other physical sciences? I would argue that it does matter. We need all the brain power we can get to solve the myriad existential problems the world faces, be it climate change or how to enable an ageing population to live comfortably for longer.
Our knowledge base, I would argue, is equally diminished by the fact that boys at school are steering clear of subjects such as languages, psychology and the biological sciences. A variety of perspectives in the boardroom has been shown to improve companies’ bottom lines, and outcomes in the wider world will also improve with diversity – not just of gender but also of ethnicity, socio-economic status and other factors.
If we admit this basic tenet, that approaching gender parity across disciplines is better for the world at large – as well as for individuals from currently under-represented groups – how can we achieve it? There is plenty of evidence of what works, yet it is overwhelmed by abundant myths and attitudes based on historical stereotypes. Everything from the cartoons our children devour to the toys and clothes we buy them, tastefully coloured pink or blue, is liable to suggest the oddity of a female technologist or rocket scientist. Yes, the situation is improving with more varied role models, but sometimes I feel as if the counter-examples are put there almost to stress the oddity.
Is full gender parity in academic subjects what we should be aiming for? That is a trickier question. Given the way children’s upbringing is affected by our expectations, how is it possible to work out if there is indeed an innate propensity that means, on average, women like physics less than men do? MRI metastudies of the brains of newborns suggest there are essentially no gender differences at birth, as discussed in Gina Rippon’s 2019 book The Gendered Brain and subsequent papers. However, our brains are highly plastic, forging and breaking neural connections apace as we grow up. Differences perceived in later life reflect this plasticity, driven by social conditioning as much as the brains we were born with.
Are women naturally more empathetic but less good at systematising, as some scientists such as Simon Baron Cohen would say, and as Katharine Birbalsingh apparently believes? I believe there is insufficient evidence to back up this belief. So, for the good of both society and the individual, let us assume that all of us might wish to follow any career path and not pre-judge choices by the way we bring up the young and interact with them in the classroom.
Having achieved a reduction in the systemic bias of classroom choices being made by both girls and boys, we also need to worry about what happens next. Almost every day, it seems, we see stories about bullying and harassment against minorities, frequently by white, able-bodied men, in academia as elsewhere. Is it any surprise that women continue to drop out of academic sciences, as shown by report after report, at a far higher rate than men? We know there are predatory supervisors out there because a few, a very few, have been formally unmasked. But the identified culprits represent only the tip of the iceberg, and university HR systems seem unable to handle complaints speedily, often leaving victims feeling worse rather than better.
Women are undoubtedly making advances. We have females at the top of many prominent institutions now, including leading universities. However, as University of Auckland vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater wrote recently in Times Higher Education, women also receive many times the amount of personal abuse that men in comparable positions receive. And of these rather few are from a physical sciences background.
As I set out in my new book, Not Just For The Boys, Why We Need More Women In Science, the solutions are well evidenced for what we need to do to achieve a more just and innovative society, enabling all potential successful scientists to find their niche regardless of gender. Yet the collective will to change our society’s mindset seems as far away as ever.
Athene Donald is master of Churchill College, Cambridge. Not Just For The Boys is published by Oxford University Press.
