Forum: progression of female students
A common experience in many universities is that the percentage of women decreases as the academic career ladder progresses (often called the “leaky pipeline”).
This is already apparent at the level of students: female undergraduate student seem to be less likely to continue to a mathematics master and later PhD degree.
- why are female undergraduate students dropping out?
- can we prevent this?
- Are there examples of good practices or institutional measures to prevent this?
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I’m collecting several voices here. The common theme is: the environment in maths departments is perceived as discouraging or even toxic for female students.
This may be:
– competition instead of collaboration
– “jokes” (I guess you all know what I mean)
– gender discriminatory comments or behavior from teachers
Voice #1:
“I am an undergraduate heading into a PhD program next year. I find that questionable behavior from male professors can be really discouraging. I’m sick of being underestimated at every turn and it contributes to burnout.”
Voice #2:
I dropped out of math after my bachelor (I’m now doing a PhD in Philosophy) and I seriously couldn’t wait to get out of the toxic environment at my math undergrad. It also ruined mathematics for me. I was highly interested in math per se before starting my studies, now not anymore.
In the ORTUS report by the LMS there are a few examples of good practise that seem to work, see Appendix F p.84.
https://www.lms.ac.uk/sites/lms.ac.uk/files/files/Benchmarking%20Report%20FINAL.pdf
We want to try to have tutors actively approach female undergraduates and encourage them to do a four year degree and started last year, but I am not involved anymore so no idea where we stand now. We had a big problem of not having enough women in our 4 year degree.
I read the report before, but stupidly enough overlooked the appendix with the detailed practices.
This is very interesting! Could you maybe elaborate on what exactly was the role of such a tutor? (e.g. how often did they meet, were the meetings specifically about doing a fourth year.) I was also wondering at which university this was such that I could maybe contact them about the current state?
Some of my top math undergrads choose medical graduate studies. One reason they tell me is that they want to help people, at which point I suggest applied math subjects like biotech lead to results that help people. But others state that they’ve read that academia is sexist to women and it can be very difficult to have a family and get tenure. I don’t understand how anyone could think it is easier for a mother to work in a medical profession with their long inflexible shifts than for a mother to be an academic with our highly flexible work schedules. But this myth just propagates with all the main stream articles coming out. Yes it is difficult being a mom with a serious job but at least in academia we are paid relatively well compared to other workers. As for the sexism, it is not worse in academia than in other professions. Watch how waitresses and nurses are treated. We need to tell our women students they are going to deal with sexism no matter where they work: now choose the job whose work is most interesting to you.
Another theme: Female students choose carefully.
What do I mean by that?
#1: “I don’t think that this research topic really worth all the suffering. I see the PhD students in their offices all weekend. That’s not the life I want to life, I want to have time for my friends and family as well.
#2: ” I wanted to pursue a masters in maths but i wasnt able to move cities, and the maths masters at the place i did my undergraduate were not interesting to me, so I did computer science instead, and now I’m a software engineer.”
#3: “The main reason I left math after my bachelors degree was that I couldn’t find math research jobs that interested me. I found only one research position in China that fit my interests at that point and the application said “only male”. I moved into software engineering.”
Hi!
I am a student employee at Utrecht University and we are doing a research about this subject. In a nutshell, we want to know why so many women do not pursue an academic career after their bachelors or masters and how we can prevent this. At the moment we are especially interested in practices done at other universities that have been tried with this goal in mind. Having this forum to our disposal is very helpful because many of you work at different universities and might know something about their policies. Thank you for all your comments so far!
In particular I was wondering if some of you could answer the following questions:
1. Does your university experience a leaking pipeline and has it tried to take action against it?
2. If so, what kind of action (or practices) have been tried and did they work?
3. If so, what were the positive effects and what were the negative effects? (Which problems did they solve or reduce, and which did they induce?)
Obviously, there are many reasons why there could occure a leaking pipeline and they are not all bad. (Some of the reasons why have already been mentioned on this forum.) We also try to take these good reasons into account and do not wish to force women into math who are just not interested. However, it seems to us that there are also ‘bad’ reasons which could be prevented or at least reduced by paying attention to them. These are the ones we would like to find practices against.
Some interesting comments are on yesterday’s Women in Maths day tweets by Sheffield Maths ED&I chair Alex Best: https://twitter.com/mathsatshefuni I outline some of it:
Hi!
Interesting question and problem. I recently finished my master degree in Applied Mathematics on a Dutch University and I continuoud as a PhD student at the same University. When I started in my Bachelor, the ratio male/female students was about 35/65 procent, but already at the end of my Bachelor I noticed that I was the only female student which finished the Bachelor in three years. During my master and now during my PhD I seldom meet female colleagues, but luckely I am still friends with the female students a met in the beginning of my students and outside of courses. Voices on this topic I frequently hear are:
– The stereotype of a mathematician is a white man, and I don’t fit in that stereotype. I just don’t see myself working between them.
– Male colleagues are very secure about there abilities, which reinforces my insecurity.
– I would like to work in a more diverse environment, and would like to have large social aspect in my future job.
– My lecturer told me that I should reconsider this math master, because it is a difficult master. (This student scored almost an 8 on average for her bachelor degree).
– I changed my clothing style, because of my work enviroment.
For me personally:
– I get annoyed of all the times that someone is mentioning the fact that I am the only girl in a meeting. It makes me feel different then the rest, and just want to be treated in the same way as my male colleagues.
– In the last months I received multiple declarations of love of some of my male colleagues. This makes me feel really uncomfortable, especially since I need to share an office with one of them.
– One colleague started giving me hughs at the beginning of every work meeting. I said something about this, and he replied in an okay way, but I less enjoy working together with this colleague now.
– Recently, a guy asked me : “Math, is that not something more suited for the guys?”
– Last year, a professor introduced me as: “This is our best female student”
etc. etc.
The combination of the above list maybe me really doubt whether working as a mathematician would be something for me, and mainly if I would be capable doing so (since a did not fit the steroetype almost everyone seems to have).