FYI, my daughter’s teachers tell me she is fine correcting anyone (boy or girl) who just said something wrong in class, so I don’t think she has any problem “showing up the boys”. Of course she is only one data point, but from my interaction with her peers, I don’t think the old-school attitudes are affecting them as much as older people think.
How old are you? Are you certain such attitudes among young girls are still prevalent today?
I think the girls are being hurt by this. Specifically the perception of female math performance by society. Since girls need their own special math competition to excel, people will conclude that they must not be very good at math.
Even if it is shown that it is beneficial to have segregated learning for boys and girls, it still doesn’t make sense to have segregated intellectual competitions.
One might say “OK, you had your chance to learn math in the optimal gender-specific way, now show us how good you are by competing in a competition where everyone participates”
It’s like saying that kids who are home-schooled should take special SATs that are tailored to home-schooled kids, or that they should take part in the “Home Schooled Math Olympiad”.
Basically: Learn something any way you see fit, but then compete with everyone, and not only with people who learned it the same way you did.
If your theory is correct, then if the few errant males are also going to pursue an academic career in math, they will outshine even very talented females in math, which will lead them to disappointment. Or do you propose that universities have different math departments for men and women, or that math academic journals have different versions for men and women, so as not to make the women feel bad about all the accomplishments of those “errant males”?
In some sense it is very much like the Special Olympics. If girls need a venue were boys are excluded so that they can do well and “strut their stuff in math”, how is that not like Special Olympics, where you exclude the best athletes in the world, just so a sub-group of people can “strut their stuff” and feel good about themselves?
So you assume that girls are so much worse than boys at math that winning second prize in an all-female math competition is a cakewalk, easier than merely participating in a co-ed math competition. Nice.
*Would you find it as much fun to be the only A in a room full of Bs and not beat the crap out of all the Bs? This hypothetical lone girl has no guarantees that she’ll win the top prize. She might well feel that even a second prize would only serve as proof that girls are at best second-rate in math.
What other reason do you have for taking an all-female math event less seriously than a co-ed one? If you really believe that girls are just as good as boys at math, why do you consider merely making the team for a co-ed math competition a greater accomplishment than taking second-prize in an all-female competition? Sure sounds like you think if boys had been allowed into the event then that silver medalist wouldn’t have stood a chance.
Ah, so you’d condemn job applicants based on your personal dislike for single-sex events and unfavorable assumptions about those who participate in them. Even nicer. What would you do with a resume from a graduate of some “second-rate” school like Smith or Bryn Mawr, laugh and throw it in the trash?
Larry Summers, the former president of Harvard, got nailed for a speech that went over this topic. I can’t say if he was completely right practically speaking but he was right factually. You don’t have to be a supergenius to be outstanding at most jobs in your field. There are other factors that come into play like communication skills which females tend to do well at. Raw ability doesn’t always translate well into the outside world.
A quick Google reveals that among the girls who have competed in the China Girl’s Math Olympiad were this World Math Olympiad gold medalist. The members of the first American girl’s team to participate were selected based on their strong performance in the previous US Math Olympiad (PDF, p. 10). But I guess if these girls were REALLY good at math they never would have wasted their time with a second-rate event that didn’t even have any boys. :rolleyes:
Agreed, this is true for most jobs, but I’m not so sure you can get to the top of your field in math, if you’re not a math genius.
In any case, even if what you’re saying is true, that genetically males have a distribution that is overrepresented at the extremes (higher and lower), and thus in the coed math Olympiad the males would dominate, that still doesn’t excuse having a girls-only math Olympiad.
Consider marathon runners. As I understand it, people from Kenya and neighboring countries have some sort of lean muscle that gives them an advantage over other people, and that’s why most Olympic Marathon winners have been from those countries.
In that case, should we have a Marathon for whites only, so that whites who are into marathon running also get a chance to win some medals and not feel so bad?
Or maybe a whole white-only Olympiad, to be held in parallel to the existing all-inclusive Olympiad.
Didn’t think so. The girls-only math Olympiad makes as much sense.
If Nadezhda Petukhova can get a gold medal in the World Math Olympiad, then why does she need to go to the girls-only Olympiad?
All the arguments used so far for having a girls-only math Olympiad do not apply to her:
Girls are taught to not “show up boys”
Girls are taught to pursue more “girlish” pursuits
Girls may not be as good at the upper echelons of math, so they need their own competition so they can “strut their stuff in math”
Obviously none of these apply to her. She had no problem showing up the boys, she had no problem pursuing a non-girlish pursuit, and she had no problem “strutting her stuff in math” at the World Math Olympiad.
Why the need for her to go to a girls-only math Olympiad?
It is just a contest. The goal is to get more females interested in math and science fields. I am not for affirmative action either but the goal is admirable if it works. It isn’t a good thing if a freak few boys win most of the time and girls get discouraged because of that. I have two young daughters who are extremely smart and very interested in math and science. They score in the 99th percentile on both of those. I don’t want them to think that they aren’t good enough because they don’t score in the 99.99% percentile which is what it takes to win world-wide intergender contests. Sometimes good enough is just good enough and we have all known so called super geniuses that can barely tie their shoes or find their car in a parking lot. They have their place but the world doesn’t need a huge number of those types. Other skills are just as valuable too on top of that.
It doesn’t sound like anyone was forcing her to attend, so I’d say she didn’t need to – she wanted to.
*And yet she still chose to attend an all-female event after her victory at the World Math Olympiad.
Nadezhda Petukhova is the only one who knows for sure, but I can think of a lot of possible reasons. Maybe she didn’t share your disdain for all-female events. Maybe she didn’t consider it’s shameful to compete against other girls. Maybe she thought it was lonely being the only girl on the Russian World Math Olympiad team. Maybe she thought it would be fun to meet a lot of other girls from around the world who loved math too. Heck, maybe she just wanted another feather in her cap.
Why do you have this need to belittle all-female events and those who compete in them? Nadezhda Petukhova wasn’t a second-rate math student, and I doubt she felt she was “settling” by going to the China Girls’ Math Olympiad.
It’s China. China is much like America in the 1950’s. Women’s lives are still quite restricted and women absolutely are discouraged in many ways from "unbecoming’ intellectual pursuits that might scare off future husbands. If I were to go up to my co-workers and say “women are intellectually less capable than men and should not be trusted with the more difficult and important work” my co-workers would say “Finally, the crazy foreigner gets it!”
Why does America send a team?
It’s a world class competition, and people are going to want to participate in world class competitions even if they have some silly rules.
I mean, Olympians still participate the Pan-Asian games, even though it represents just a subset of the best. Are they lowering themselves by competing with a “second rate” group? No, they just want to participate in a top level competition of any sort.
A quick google search of “math gender” shows that the map gap in America has been slowly closing. Boys and girls now score similarly on standardized tests. In the 1950’s, only 5% of doctorates in math went to women. Now it is 30%. All the evidence points to the math gap being a product of culture.
And that conforms with my experience. When I was in high school, ten years ago, every year when I picked out my classes the guidance councilor would question my courses. He tried to steer me away from “hard” electives like physics and into things like yearbook. I had to really stand my ground. I really doubt I’d have met such resistance if I were a boy. It’s not really one big thing that pushed girls away from math, it was a thousands little things reinforcing the idea that women are bad at math and should not pursue it.
What would you do if you had two sons who were in the 99th percentile of math and science? What would you do to ensure that they don’t “think that they aren’t good enough because they don’t score in the 99.99% percentile which is what it takes to win world-wide intergender contests” ?
Would you be OK with some sort of math Olympiad that somehow weeds out the 99.99% percentile kids, so all the 99% percentile kids don’t think they aren’t good enough?
Let’s change this a bit and see how this works out:
"Why does China organize the China Blacks’ Math Olympiad?
It’s China. China is much like America in the 1950’s. Blacks’ lives are still quite restricted and blacks absolutely are discouraged in many ways from "unbecoming’ intellectual pursuits. If I were to go up to my co-workers and say “blacks are intellectually less capable than whites and should not be trusted with the more difficult and important work” my co-workers would say “Finally, the crazy foreigner gets it!”
Why does America send a team?
It’s a world class competition, and people are going to want to participate in world class competitions even if they have some silly rules.
I mean, Olympians still participate the Pan-Asian games, even though it represents just a subset of the best. Are they lowering themselves by competing with a “second rate” group? No, they just want to participate in a top level competition of any sort."
It will also benefit black kids from the US, who traditionally have a performance gap in math versus whites, and will give them a confidence boost.
Therefore, it’s a great idea to send a US team to the China Blacks’ Math Olympiad.
I don’t think so.
Did he tell you why? Were your grades good in those fields?
Do you have any anecdotal evidence from boys who had similar grades to you, that they were never steered away from “hard” electives?
Where did you grow up?
FYI, I think this is no longer happening. Out of curiosity, I asked my daughter, who is in sixth grade, what she thinks about a girls-only Math Olympiad. She said
“No way, it makes no sense! Why would I ever want to go to a girls-only math Olympiad?”
I said: “Well, some people say it’s because girls are taught to not “show up boys”, so a girls-only math Olympiad would allow them to shine more, and also because girls are taught to pursue more “girlish” pursuits and not things like math and science”
She said:
“These guys are living in 2,000 BC! I have never heard of such things in my life”