It was International Day of Women and Girls in Science on 11 Feb.
Although I don’t identify as female, I was raised and treated as a girl as I was growing up. And numerous times, I have been directly told or given the impression that girls are not as good at science or maths as boys.
When you face a question you can’t do, and when your brain keeps repeating what you have been told, that, “I am not good at this,” it certainly impacts how likely you manage to solve that question. Over time, I managed to dismantle these limiting mindsets one by one – it took a long while – until I realised and actually believe that I am good at this.
Angela Saini made precisely this point in her book “Inferior – the True Power of Women and the Science that Shows It,” which I read recently. In the chapter on brain and intelligence, she described how studies conducted in the US in the 70s and 80s, which found boys with exceptional talent in maths outnumber girls in a ratio of 14 to 1, have not been replicated. The ratio found in subsequent studies have been decreasing steadily to even as low as 1 to 1. This result has also not been replicated in other populations, where, in some, it is girls who outperform boys in maths. So the biological difference initially suggested may actually be a cultural difference.
These prolonged low-dose stereotypes that society impose on girls and women clearly has a negative impact on individuals as well as the society at large. How can we cleanse ourselves of these deep-seated attitudes in our minds and prevent it from spreading to the next generation…
Abellona U 