On being a woman in Maths

How is it like to be a woman in maths? Should you be one?

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Last week I participated as a panellist in another outreach event. It’s called Women In Maths, run by Christ’s and Trinity (Cambridge colleges). It’s for penultimate-year female and non-binary school students, considering to study maths at university. Last year, I worked for the event as a student helper. For obvious reasons, this time the event was reorganized to be held online. We run a Question & Answer session, which was a lot of fun. The question: “what is the gender ratio?” came up. It’s a classic – it also did in the college Maths Open Day, earlier this month. Since I feel partially qualified to talk about this, here are some of my thoughts on the issue.

The truth is that there are few of us. Since I don’t know how the situation is at other universities, I’m going to focus just on my experience at Cambridge. The gender ratio at undergraduate level is of about 15%. (The ratio seems to be better elsewhere.) In undergraduate examinations, women seem to perfom worse on average than men: see this table from this Varsity article.

How is it like?

Short answer: It feels normal.

Long answer:

It feels normal.

In my daily life, I rarely think about the gender ratio.

I can’t think of any way in which I, personally, am disadvantaged by being a woman. (I’ve heard arguments saying that on average men are more competitive than women, and that may benefit them in exams.)

I would not give any different advice to a female wanting to do maths than to a male.

Some practicalities, though. I found it strange at the beggining. I went to a mixed school, yet my closest friendship group didn’t have any male. Now most (but not all) of my maths* friends are male. Nothing wrong with this, but I found the transition to university strange in this aspect. By the way, my friends have all been very welcoming and friendly. I’ve never felt treated differently. Further, there is also some sense of community amongst female mathematicians. For example, we have the Emmy Noether Society.

*I also have non-maths friends, both male and female!

Should you be one?

Short answer: Of course, you should be one!

Long answer:

Your decision to study or not maths should not be influenced by the gender ratio. I never thought about it. (I’d have chosen maths even if I was the only woman, I think.) Don’t consider the ratio when making a decision.

I’m afraid maybe something might be happening indirectly, if girls are not encouraged to pursue STEM at school or take part maths competitions, etc.

So, if you are thinking about studying maths and worried about the gender ratio (for example, by reading this article)….then you are likely to be weighting this against studying maths. To make up for this effect, then I will advice: yes, you should study maths!