‘Because some countries considered male and female equality in term of mathematical abilities something not politically correct to admit?’
Or
‘The organisers don’t think girls are as good as guys when it come to Math’
I’m sure the organisers would have a PC explanation.
She makes some good points.
If we accept those, however, why restrict this sort of solution to the “few girls in math competitions” problem?
I assume the only caucasian on an otherwise all-black track-and-field team in some schools must feel a similar burden, or the only caucasian in an otherwise all-black basketball team in some schools.
To solve this issue (since we want to encourage everyone to participate in sports) should we create a white-only basketball league or a white-only track-and-field competition?
I strongly suspect everyone’s answer to the above is no. But why? Why is the discomfort of being the only white guy in a team of blacks (which I suspect deters many white guys from getting into certain sports) not as valid a concern as the discomfort of being the only girl in a team of boys (which deters many girls from getting into math)
“But dad, why should we go to the competitions organized by such countries? They have a backwards attitude, and we are supposed to go to the competition they are organizing to validate their backwards attitude?”
“But dad, why should we go to a competition that is organized by people who think like that, since they are obviously wrong?”
I have already covered most of my points but I will summarize.
It is just a contest
I have no idea what their motivations for setting it up that way but it is a good thing to try to get girls interested in math and science and give them role models.
The boys are almost always going to fill the top slots because a few of them tend to be freaks of nature that almost none of us could compete with no matter how good we consider ourselves at the subject. Let them shine but also give other people a chance. Lots of contests are segregated by sex and even ability level including sports like baseball.
That type of achievement doesn’t translate well into real world results. You don’t have to be a freakish supergenius at a subject to be competent at the vast majority of jobs, even in academia or other intellectual fields. Females excel in the biological sciences in particular (which does involve lots of math). Medical school admissions are close to equal now and undergraduate attendance overall is biased in towards the number of females who get a degree.
As I have asked you above, what about boys who are not “freaks of nature” at math? Why not have a mechanism for all non-“freaks of nature” to compete? Why only for girls?
If baseball is segregated by ability level, why can’t we have the same for math?
Also, so what if “Lots of contests are segregated by sex”?
For some things like sports, males are acknowledged to have a significant edge over females, so gender-based segregation is OK. But for intellectual pursuits, are we willing as a society to say that males have a significant edge over females, so gender-based segregation is needed in those too?
Just because it’s done in other intellectual fields (like chess) does not justify it. Maybe those should desegragate.
If you are worried that the success of freakish supergeniuses at math competitions will discourage females who, while not freakish supergeniuses, would still make good mathematicians if they got a job in the field, why is this not a concern for boys also?
That is, the vast majority of boys are also not freakish supergeniuses, and they are discouraged by the success of freakish supergeniuses at math competitions, and if only they became mathematicians, they could become very good in their field. Why aren’t you concerned about them also?
The entire answer is that it is just about role-modeling. I didn’t believe much about that earlier in my life but, as a father of two extremely bright daughters, I can see it clearly now. My oldest can easily win most local and regional contests in math and science for females (if they had them) but there are always a few boys around that pop off the charts. It sucks and is counterproductive to lose every single time if you have great talent and have the potential to be a female physician or a great professor someday. Again, we are just talking about a contest that is supposed to motivate young people.
My academic background is in behavioral neuroscience BTW so I am not just talking out of my ass.
It’s amazing to me that you can’t see that if you had two sons, they would also have the same fate. That is, they would likely be two extremely bright boys. Your oldest could easily win most local and regional contests in math and science for bright-but-not-geniuses (if they had them) but there are always a few boys around that pop off the charts. It sucks and is counterproductive to lose every single time if you have great talent and have the potential to be a male physician or a great professor someday.
I honestly don’t see why that wouldn’t be a problem for your sons. (Or do you claim that if you had sons, they would surely be those off-the-charts ones that always won at math competitions?)
If I had sons (and I never will), it is fine if they lose. Again, it is about role-modeling for girls. I don’t mean to sound like a bleeding heart liberal because I am just about the opposite. Girls can and do accomplish great things in math and science but it isn’t a good message to send out to the others and discourage them. Historically, they have been underrepresented in math and science even though that doesn’t translate into much of anything in the real world. The same thing is true with something like chess matches. A few odd males are always going to win a big tournament but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any good female chess players and shouldn’t be given a chance to strut their stuff. Lots of females can compete at the very high levels at this type of thing but the very highest levels are generally going to be a few male participants which discourages others from trying no matter how talented they are.
There isn’t really a shortage of basketball players and track stars in this country, AFAIK there are more graduating college than we have jobs for. Pro sports in this country seems to be doing okay and no one seems to be really worried about the lack of talent coming down the pipeline.
But it may be something of an overall loss to society if promising math and science types are leaving the pipeline early. And some people suspect that this is a particular problem for girls, do to factors other than natural ability. So the are targeting girls with programs such as competitions. They are half of the population, if you think you are not drawing as much talent from that pool as you could be than it makes sense to try to fix that.
I honestly don’t get why. If they never win any medals, and see that they have no hope of ever winning, due to the fact that they are smart but not geniuses, why is that less of a problem than for girls?
If you want to provide positive role models, to prove that they can do just as well in the math field as the men, isn’t it better to teach girls about successful women currently working in math and sciences, instead of making up a competition restricted to girls so they don’t get stomped on by the boys?
Also, it seems that math Olympiads are being dominated by Asian kids. Doesn’t that result in a lack of role models for caucasians?
Would you then be OK if we had a White-only Math Olympiad?
Can you show a cite that there is a shortage of math professors in colleges, or that there are more jobs than people graduating college, or that people are worried about the lack of talent coming down the pipeline?
Even if there is a shortage, which I doubt, why not address it holistically, for both genders at the same time?
BTW, since you do have two extremely bright daughters (which I assume are brought up to believe that they can achieve anything a boy can) can you tell us how you would explain to them why they should sign up for a girls-only math Olympiad?
It is simple as I explained up above. They are extremely smart but they can’t compete at the 99.999% percentile or above for test scores. It is almost always males that accomplish that but that doesn’t mean much except as a stunt. On the other hand, it is no holds barred for any career that they choose from engineering to medicine to professorship. There is a lot more to all those roles than that. Seeing a handful of males always win at such things is not a good thing for females to see time after time after time no matter how smart they are.
There are only a few things that females can beat males at in the very, very high end when it comes to official contests. One is aerobatic flying. Patty Wagstaff is a superstar with that but there are other contests that females excel in and lots of others that are incalculable. Females are also superior at super long-distance running. You would need seperate contests for that as well. I am not a feminist or a liberal in the least but there are differences between the sexes and it isn’t good not to give some people a chance to prove themselves. Everyone should be able to prove themselves whether it it academic or in sports. The sexes are not equal in ability at the high end but that isn’t very important in the real world.
You didn’t really answer the question “What would you tell your daughters?”
Would you tell them “Girls are good at math, but not good enough to beat the best of the boys, so girls need a girls-only math Olympiad”?
If I belonged to group A, and I kept seeing people from group B winning all the time, that would be demoralizing, but it would be no less demoralizing to know that people from group A need their own competition that excludes people from group B in order to ever get any medals.
For example, if I were a girl, knowing that that girls need their own competition in order to get any medals in math would be as demoralizing as knowing that boys dominate the coed version. I don’t think it would help at all.
So, as I asked above, since Asians dominate math competitions, are you OK with a White-only Math Olympiad? After all, all those white kids should be able to prove themselves in math. All those white kids need role models in math.
Also, are you OK with a White-only Track and Field competition, since blacks dominatethe all-inclusive one? Look at the recent 100m final: There is not a single white guy in the group. Young white boys seeing this are discouraged from getting into track and field, since they have no role models that show that white guys can do well in this area. So, a White-only Track and Field competition should be great.
Polerius, you realize that your daughter does not represent the entirety of the American experience? There are millions of girls being raised in households that don’t resemble yours at all.
Girls in the trailer parks and ghettos are getting different messages than your angel of a daughter. Girls in religious households may get exposed to different expectations. Girls from other cultural backgrounds may be expected to conform to the gender roles their parents grew up with. This represents a huge and meaningful chunk of America. So don’t tell me “my daughter says everything is peachy” proves a single thing. Of course the kids of (what I assume to be) middle class educated people have positive views of education. It’s everyone else that I worry about. They matter, too.
Anyway, the point is that we can’t do anything about China having different gender expectations. And there are advantages to competing and no advantages to not competing. So we go, even if the contest isn’t what we would organize.
And those boys who are outnumbering them at co-ed math competitions are also just teenagers, a group that includes an awful lot of horrible little jerks.
At age 15 or so I wouldn’t have wanted to be one of the few girls at a competition otherwise full of boys. This wouldn’t have been because I doubted my ability compared to boys, but because I would have doubted the ability of my male peers to behave civilly when they had me outnumbered. (I don’t think a lone 15 year old boy could expect to be treated especially well by a bunch of unfamiliar girls, either.) A co-ed academic event that had a fairly equal balance between girls and boys would have been one thing, but something where “co-ed” meant “a bunch of boys and maybe a couple of other girls” wouldn’t have sounded like any fun. Perhaps this would have been unfair of me, perhaps at a math competition the decent young men would vastly outnumber the bad ones*, but I probably never would have found out because I just wouldn’t have gone.
*The only “mathlete” I knew well growing up was the son of family friends, a boy several years younger than me. He was a sweet kid and had a lot of female friends, so I’m sure he was at the very least polite to girls he met at math meets.
For another perspective on this question, I just asked my wife (with whom we don’t agree that often). I said “I just found out that there is an international math Olympiad that is only for girls, what do you think about that?”
Her response: “That’s horrible! What sort of message is that sending to girls?”
Me: 
You guys have your reasons for liking the girls-only math Olympiad. For me, just on principle alone I dislike the idea of such a thing. We disagree. You guys can send your daughters to this competition. Mine would not want to go since she also thinks it’s a terrible idea.
Enjoy!
Liking? I for one never said I like it. It’s just the way things are. It’s up to everyone else to interpret the ‘message’ of the contest, and for someone from an Asian country which often cast females into gender roles, it is actually a good sigh that it is organised by all places, China. IMHO, you’ve been looking at it from a US perspective. But think about the good it does for places like China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, even supposedly a first-class country like Singapore and etc. Your little girl may say, “That’s horrible!” Someone’s else little girl in Vietnam may say ‘Finally!’
For example, just 40 years ago in Singapore, my mum’s parents considered it a waste of money to send her to school. She didn’t even have a GCE O level. And my grand-parents are second-generation immigrants from China!
I guess it’s a matter of perspective.
Dude, if you only want to hear opinions from people who agree with you, then say so in your OP. When you say:
[QUOTE=You]
What do you guys think?
[/QUOTE]
It generally means that you want to hear from people who may not agree with you. Which you obviously don’t, since you’ve pointedly only thanked the one poster who came in to agree with you.
