Why are there so few of us?
Is this is a problem?
Does this need to change, and if so how?
I am interested to hear others opinions on this topic.
This topic was sparked by Peter Rohde on his blog, and I quote “A new quantum blog, Room 408, from the boys at the University of Melbourne, has recently started” (emphasis mine).
Personally I’d like to promote the idea that women aren’t strange creatures that nobody sees very much (certainly the way it feels around here sometimes), but instead make up a healthy 50% of the population of the Earth.
February 26, 2007 at 12:51 pm |
Indeed what you say is correct in the context of the greater population. However, this is the key word – ‘context’. As it turns out, in the context of physics women are indeed strange creatures that nobody sees very much. The reasons for this are as follows. First, they are strange creatures because everybody in physics is a strange creature by definition. Second, they aren’t seen very much because in the context of physics there are very few of them. So indeed, in physics, women are strange creatures that nobody sees very much. Furthermore, my use of the term ‘boys’ is justified in the context of physics, because in physics we often take a first oder Taylor appromixation. In this case, the higher order female terms drop out.
Lots of love,
Peter.
February 26, 2007 at 12:54 pm |
Higher order “something” anyway
February 26, 2007 at 1:41 pm |
The reason I am answering these posts is that I want there to be more women in physics. I don’t want us to be approximated out (I am 25% of this office).
Yes, all physicists are strange creatures. Yes, there are few women in physics. But that doesn’t mean that there should be so few.
If I saw a picture of all the postgrads in physics in this department, with a sign above it saying “The Postgrad Boys in Physics”, I would be distressed. Calling us ‘the boys at the University of Melbourne’ is in a similar basket.
Also, in the original post when I said “I’d like to promote…” I meant in general, not just in physics. I should have quantified that.
Peter I’d be interested to hear your responses to the other questions I posed above.
February 26, 2007 at 2:50 pm |
This is what I found at urban dictionary while I was looking up the word. Word.
3. boys: your crew, posse, homies. your set of mates your real tight with. me and the “boys” were rolling deep the other night at the club.
Is this what you mean?
February 26, 2007 at 2:53 pm |
Hey, I agree, there should be more women in physics. Do you think I enjoy working in a department that is a complete sausage fest? Hell no. I want to work in Lara Crofts womb … ahem, room.
February 27, 2007 at 8:31 am |
Hi,
If the overall pool of students is becoming more diverse (it is), and physics departments are only successful in recruiting predominantly white male majors in a constant proportion, one would expect the number of students majoring in physics to decline.
So if we want to maintain our departments we need to attract and retain more diverse students. Data on the AIP website http://www.aip.org/statistics/trends/gendertrends.html suggests strongly that women leave physics between high school and choosing to major.
Somewhere in the intro/sophomore sequence something goes wrong – this would also suggest that something can be fixed.
Peter
February 27, 2007 at 9:40 am |
Hey, Room 408! Show us what you’re made of
Yes, yes. I am avoiding getting involved in the women in physics discussion.
February 27, 2007 at 1:31 pm |
That’s an interesting point, Peter Love. I often wondered whether there are any good reasons for trying to get more women in physics, and you’ve just given a good one.
However, you say the overall pool of students is becoming more diverse, but presumably there are also more student in total. So depending on the numbers, even if we do only pull in a constant proportion of males, the number of students in physics may still rise.
February 27, 2007 at 2:33 pm |
In my experience the number of female students in physics courses declines most significantly in the middle part of high school and then again in the middle part of the undergraduate period. It seems that this is earlier than the AIP statistics suggest because in Australia the time at which students have to decide about the general career path that they wish to pursue is earlier than it is elsewhere. I remember being asked to make choices that would affect my career in year 10, when I was only 14 or 15 years old. For whatever reason, studying physics is not an attractive option for girls of this age. Interestingly, though other disciplines may suffer from a lack of females in senior positions, at the end of high school I recall a proportionate number of girls studying chemistry, biology and psychology and even mathematics.
Perhaps the proposed changes to the Melbourne University system will allow students to defer these decisions until during the undergraduate period and will result in more females participating in physics at university level.
February 27, 2007 at 5:39 pm |
There is a famous poster, made in the 1950’s sometime, called “Men of Mathematics”. Emmy Noether is one of them….
February 28, 2007 at 1:23 pm |
Hi All,
zevans – yes, one could become bigger by, errrr, becoming bigger. However student numbers are pretty constant in my institution, so it won’t work here. Diversity tends to be increasing in most institutions for the simple reason that its a one-way street – if your student body was mostly white men in the past you can only become more diverse, according to the second law of demographics
.
astephens – its the same in the UK – everyone decides at 16 so there’s presumably a big drop off in the UK at that point too. The AIP numbers are obviously ameri-centric, but it’s nice to see data on this issue.
Peter
February 28, 2007 at 3:50 pm |
This is also interesting. Where is Mel?
August 21, 2007 at 3:21 am |
There is no “number” of females… only endless possible interactions that for one reason or another are chosen out of allowed possibilities… There is no of female to male ratio, this is only what you percieve it to be… Physics itself can only answer questions about the future by telling us all the possible scenarios and the proportions of the types of possible scenarios. We talk about a type of scenario being more likely to happen if it is one of the more popular types of scenarios. In other words, before an event we only know that one of these things is going to happen but we have no idea which one it will be. After the event, if it was one of the more popular scenarios that happened we generally exclaim “Yes, well that was to be expected.” Whereas if it was one of the unpopular scenarios we exclaim “Would you look at that!… In the end, though, it all depends on how you (self) classify the scenarios. For instance if you threw a pair of dice ten times and got 8, 1, 1, 6, 9, 3, 4, 9, 5, 5 this would generally be classed as a typical non-spectacular throw – unless, of course, this happened to be your telephone number! So maybe it is impossible to say what will happen but you could ask the question why have things happened the way they have? A need for a fate-principle can becomes apparent in this case… or random selection, if you will…lol… so the reality of there being any “more” or “less” female students than there are supposed to be only becomes projected by you… It is just what it is… there are no numbers or percentages to be put to it… and even if you could decipher the sum of all possible interactions…
as chaos theory attempts to and tells us, an insignificant movement of a butterflies wings in Australia could affect whether or not there was a hurricane in Florida, your or any human brain or any conceivable machine, just would not be intelligent enough to use this to their advantage.
So just be content that you are where you are in the knowledge that this is you are supposed to be at this point… surrounded by men… although, it surely would be nice for myself to have more women to look at… being a man and all and succumbing as well to the self-imposed imprints we all build for ourselves… our own self-created realities… LOL
February 10, 2008 at 8:07 am |
I’m doing a report for Women’s Studies and am trying to find a woman in quantum physics to do a report on. If anyone in here is able to email with me a bit for some questions I have, that would be awesome!! Or if anyone knows the name of the same that I can do online/library research on – this would also be greatly appreciated.
I see that the last blog was posted about a year and a half ago… but I’m going to hope someone will reply. Not only is there a lacking quantity of female quantum physicists there’s a lacking of articles!!!!!!!
Thanks,
Hauna/Hännah
February 25, 2008 at 3:24 pm |
Hi Hauna,
I know your last post was 15 days ago, but you are welcome to interview me. I am a female PhD student (one year in), studying quantum phase transitions.
Don’t know your email address, but mine is mmakin at ph.unimelb.edu.au
I hope placing my email address here doesn’t flood me with spam. Oh, wait, I’m already flooded with spam!
Mel.
March 15, 2008 at 11:21 am |
I think there are an increasing number of women in physics as our group photo (QI University of Leeds) proves (and I don’t think all our female members where there that day)
http://www.qi.leeds.ac.uk/images/stories/quantum_images/groupoct07.jpg
While we certainly don’t make up the majority of the group there is an increasing number year by year (3 new women this year, about 1/3rd of the new intake). I am not sure what the best way to get women into physics is. In the UK we see a major decrease in people studying physics at A-Level irrespective of gender and I think this is the main problem people in physics concentrate on.