In 1990, primatologist Amy Parish wrote her dissertation on the socio-sexual behaviour of female bonobos. Parish's theory that bonobos behaved in a matriarchy challenged the traditional evolutionary theory that our primate ancestors have always existed in male-dominated societies. She thus pioneered Darwinian Feminism – a subversion of the famous scientist's claims that gender inequality is linked to biological differences that make women less intelligent.
The fact that evolutionary scientists have consistently ignored the significance of female animal behaviour until the 1990s is reflective of the fact that science is a highly male-dominated field. Almost thirty years later, this has not changed much.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies’ (IFS) latest report shows that while girls perform similarly to boys in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines at the level of GCSEs, they then avoid taking them at A-levels. In 2010, only 13.2 per cent of girls who achieved GCSE grade A or A* at physics, continued with a physics course for A-levels, compared to almost 40 per cent of boys.
In sum, girls can perform just as well as boys in the lab, but they are stopping themselves from choosing a science-related career. According to the report, this is caused by discontent with the quality of teaching, low confidence and underrepresentation in STEM-related disciplines. For Athene Donald, professor of experimental physics at the University of Cambridge, elected Fellow of the Royal Society for her groundbreaking contributions to physics, this is linked to a culturally engrained stereotype that discourages girls from an early age.
"It is a sort of unconscious bias that comes from society," she says. "How many female astronauts are shown in the media? Girls receive the message that science isn’t for them. That message is fed to you practically from birth. Teachers and peers don't make it possible to imagine a future in any of those careers. Even if you are competent, you will ultimately think: 'that's not for me.'"
The idea that there are "girls' disciplines" and "boys' disciplines" goes back many centuries, and became part of the scientific debate with the rise of Darwinism. Neuroscience has been fascinated by whether men and women think differently. More recently, Simon Baron-Cohen’s controversial book The Essential Difference claims that male brains are wired to build systems, while female brains are made to empathise.
Angela Saini, a science journalist, wrote an in-depth analysis in Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong of the research claiming that brains come in two different forms determined by sex. According to Saini, the psychological differences – differences in mathematical reasoning, spatial awareness, performance in tests – between males and females are extremely small. They only happen at an individual level, and cannot be applied to an entire gender group. The differences are measured in standards of deviation; while the average standard of deviation in height between men and women in the UK is two, for example, the author explains that the standard of deviation in psychological differences is only a fraction of one.
"There is scientific research that contradicts this. Some studies show small psychological differences, and then extrapolate them," says Saini. "Those studies are evidence of bias or mistake. Research actually shows that the gender inequality that we see in society is not matched by the psychological differences between men and women that we see in tests."
For Saini, this is why we shouldn't be surprised that girls and boys perform similarly in STEM disciplines at school. But young girls then make a strategic choice to depart from scientific careers – because making their way into heavily male-dominated domains is likely to be more challenging. It is the imposter syndrome: a female scientist will feel more pressure to perform better and prove her legitimacy.
"When you are underrepresented, it does put the spotlight on you, and people expect more from you," Saini says. "It's not nice. I still chose to do it, but I can understand why other girls didn't make that choice."
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For Donald, another factor at play is that the British education system has not been set up so as to build girls’ confidence to choose scientific subjects. For instance, students only get to choose three subjects for their A-levels. That’s the least expansive curriculum in Europe for those aged 16 to 18, and it has resulted in students increasingly tending to be categorised as either artistic or scientific.
In other countries, the gap may be narrower because the scientific pathways still include a large variety of disciplines such as history and geography or philosophy. In France, 31 per cent of girls studied for a scientific baccalaureate in 2015, compared to 38 per cent of boys.
"You have to make your A-levels choices at a terribly unconfident age of adolescence," says Donald. "That choice is science or the arts. So girls who are even only a little bit unsure about their scientific competence are likely to give up science altogether."
While she persevered, Donald recognises that not all 14-year-old girls have the necessary support to boost their confidence in that moment. She believes that such support should be found in the education system. In the British Science Association's Presidential Address, which she delivered in 2015, she said: "Figures suggest that only around 5 per cent of primary school teachers have any sort of specialist science teaching qualification. If a school doesn’t have a single science teacher in its entire workforce, there may be none qualified or confident with whom to talk the ideas through. This is not likely to get children off to a good start in their exploration of the world around them."
Jess Wade, a physicist at Imperial College in London, believes that the key to improving gender diversity lies in rethinking our approach to the issue. The biggest mistake we have made so far, she says, is to think that girls need to be inspired about STEM-related careers.
Although many science education programs have focused on raising girls’ interest in science, the reality is, as the IFS report shows, that girls are already incredibly inspired and excited about STEM disciplines – they only lack the confidence to choose to make it a lifelong career.
"We have been doing things that look very good for the companies or organisations that are doing it" says Wade, "but I think it is naive to think that it is convincing enough to simply tell girls that STEM-related careers are great and inspiring." She says there needs to be more long-term investment in young people. "Girls need to have that person that they can go to and that will tell them about when to apply for work experience, how to write personal statements or understanding what the steps are for a research career."
Confidence boost comes with practical solutions, continues Wade, and educating girls about where gender stereotypes come from. Telling them that the unconscious bias is nothing more than that. Showing them the data that proves they have no reason to be less confident than boys in their ability to study nanometrology or complex fluids or evolutionary biology – such as the one released by EngineeringUK showing that there were just as many girls who entered GCSE physics as boys last year. And that there is no reason that this number should drop at A-levels.
Changing mentalities is a timely process that, in this case, is still in its infancy. Although there are many organisations such as TechSheCan trying to spread the message that any career should be open to anyone, they are still considered niche movements.
"TechSheCan does a fantastic job of showing young girls real-life examples of women who have succeeded in tech," says Donald. "But it is still going to take a while to change the conversation. Some people are incredibly wedded to stereotypes, because in a sense it is destabilising to overcome them."
The way to a scientific community that is welcoming of women, therefore, is still long. And if there is one thing that Amy Parish's story has shown, it is that research has a lot to lose from that.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
