Friday 10 October 2008
by: Carolyn Y. Johnson, The Boston Globe
A new study to be published by the American Mathematical Society claims that environmental factors, not intellect, are what really limit women's math achievements. (Photo: Ruby Washington / The New York Times)
Nurturing climate produces more elite competitors.
It's been nearly four years since Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard University, made his controversial comments about the source of the gender gap in math and science careers. Still, the ripple effect continues - most recently in a study made public today on the world's top female math competitors.
The study, to be published in next month's Notices of the American Mathematical Society, identifies women of extraordinary math ability by sifting through the winners of the world's most elite math competitions. It found that small nations that nurtured female mathematicians often produced more top competitors than far larger and wealthier nations.
The message: Cultural or environmental factors, not intellect, are what really limit women's math achievements.
"The problem with Larry Summers hypothesizing that there aren't many women with intrinsic aptitude to excel at this very high level is . . . it's not that they don't have this level of intrinsic aptitude; it's that in many countries women that have this intrinsic aptitude aren't nurtured," said Janet Mertz, an author of the study and a professor of oncology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Unlike other data on gender and math, which depend on tests such as the SAT or state assessments, this study used a survey of the world's elite mathematicians to demonstrate that women with extreme math ability exist - although recognition varies by country.
Since 1974, tiny Bulgaria has had nine female competitors in the elite International Mathematical Olympiad. East Germany/Germany has had 10, and the USSR/Russia, 13. Over that same time, the United States has had three.
The study found a similar variation in another competition, the Putnam Mathematical Competition - a 12-question exam taken by college students in the United States and Canada in which most test-takers solve no problems. Over the past 16 years, 11 women have made it into the top 25 scorers. Three of those women were born in the United States, Mertz pointed out, and three in Romania, a country with one-fifteenth the US population.
"I think that's really interesting to compare what happens with other countries and see the examples of nurturing and what a difference that makes - that should open our eyes to what we're doing to kids at an early age," said Brian Conrey, executive director of the American Institute of Mathematics.
The controversial nature of the math gender gap debate was evident following Summers's comments at a conference in January 2005. Summers did not suggest that top female performers in math and science did not exist; he said they were fewer, as represented on faculty staff. But he went on to offer a controversial hypothesis, saying one possible reason was a variation in natural aptitude. That view drew on a 100-year-old argument that at the high and low end of achievement, there are statistically more men than women.
"My best guess, to provoke you . . . is that the largest phenomenon, by far, is the general clash between people's legitimate family desires and employers' current desire for high power and high intensity," Summers said at the conference, according to the transcript he later released. "In the special case of science and engineering," he continued, "there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination."
His comment touched off a firestorm of meetings and task forces. He later resigned.
Not everyone sees the new study as a refutation of Summers's view. Amy L. Wax, a professor at the Law School of the University of Pennsylvania, said that while the study shows evidence of culture's role, it does not disprove Summers's suggestion that differences in ability could also play a role.
Summers could not be reached for comment.
The study found that in cultures where math talent is fostered, female "mathletes" make up 12 percent to 24 percent of the children identified as having extreme math talent. In other environments, women are underrepresented 30-fold, the researchers found.
The study also looks at one population artificially divided by a wall - Germany - to show that when intrinsic talent in the population is probably the same, cultural factors come into play. Before reunification, West Germany began competing in the International Math Olympiad in 1977, and had no girls on its math team; whereas the East German team had five in the same period.
Mertz also found that 80 percent of the female tenured and junior faculty at the top five US math departments were born in other countries.
Nancy Hopkins, a biology professor at MIT who was an outspoken critic of Summers, said the new research shows that "this expectation that girls can't do math has real consequences."
There are many other factors in the math gender gap. Women may not be as motivated or drawn to math competitions as boys or may simply choose different careers. But the studies sound a warning bell about a culture that doesn't celebrate math.
"The article completely resonates with my experience," said Melanie Matchett Wood, who was the first woman to compete on the US International Math Olympiad team, in 1998.
Wood, now a 27-year-old graduate student in math at Princeton University, said that more recently she became a mentor to an undergraduate woman math major from Romania, who was surprised that the university had a special program to mentor women in math careers.
"In her culture, there wasn't an idea that women weren't as good, or even weren't as numerous in math," Wood said. "She hadn't grown up with that."
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