Science ought to discover women

**As a product of a girls-only education, university has been my first experience of the co-ed variety and has proven itself to be enlightening. I have witnessed reckless supermarket trolley theft, drinking on a scale that I never thought was possible and perhaps rather more seriously, that so many more boys study scientific subjects at degree level than girls. **

Do we not read that girls achieve higher than boys in all public examinations in all subjects in schools across the country? As these subjects were so popular at my school, I assumed that top universities all over the country would be bursting with these brilliant (female) scientific brains. But I have noticed that the very subjects that were far less popular – english, languages, history – are the subjects that so many of us girls pursue in higher education.

In 1972, women made up just 3% of professors in the field of Engineering. This inched up to 10% by 1998. We might have expected these statistics fifteen years ago– but a 2010 poll revealed that women only account for 30% of the doctorate degrees awarded in science. Perhaps girls are living in a less ‘equal’ world than we might wish to assume.

A study published by the _Psychological Science Journal_ highlights a new form of gender bias. Stanford University psychologist Mary Murphy found that women are less likely to enter a scientific environment dominated by men, because they feel outnumbered. Murphy paid 47 Stanford undergraduates (25 males and 22 females) to participate in this study. All the participants were students of mathematics or engineering.

{{quote The portrayal of professions as male-dominated is one of a range of reasons that has been used to explain why these fields, and subjects, are still dominated by men }}

The participants watched two videos disguised as advertisements for an engineering summer conference. Identical in all other respects, the seven-minute videos showcased 150 people with an unbalanced gender ratio (of three men to one woman) and a balanced ratio of one to one. While watching the videos, students were equipped with body sensors that measured their physiological responses and perspiration levels. Female students showed faster heart rates and greater perspiration levels while watching the gender-unbalanced video compared with the gender-balanced one. They also reported less desire to participate in the conference when men dominated.

The portrayal of professions as male-dominated is one of a range of reasons that has been used to explain why these fields, and subjects, are still dominated by men. Many have spoken out against a process of ‘socialisation’ through which girls are taught to avoid professions pursued by men. The idea of what is expected of a gender is built into a person’s mind at a very young age. Perhaps now is the time to change that.