Women`s advances in math ability

Lawrence Summers, former president of Harvard University, erroneously said in 2005, “Women by nature are poor in math and science” and failed to win re-election. To overcome the backlash, Harvard selected historian Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust as his successor. As evidence for his claim that women are poor in math and science, Summers cited the low number of female mathematicians and scientists. His statement was half true. Women pursuing careers in math and science were rare in the past, but this has changed. Women accounted for just 8 percent of mathematicians in 1970, but 32 percent in 2009.

One deep-rooted perception is that men excel in spatial recognition capacity, while women are superior in linguistic capability. But this notion might be misguided. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin compared math test scores by students from 86 countries, and found that the less discriminatory a country is against females, the smaller the gap in math scores by gender. Female students in Iceland, where gender equality is the world`s highest, were superior to their male counterparts in the scores, and female and male students in Norway and Sweden showed no gap. This means that the prejudice that females are inferior in math to males discourage the former from improving their math skills.

The perception that females are weak in math is deep-rooted. Amalie Emmy Noether, a mathematician from Germany who was recognized for her excellence by Albert Einstein, was denied a lecturer position. The mathematician who recommended her asked, “Is a university a public sauna?” Ingrid Daubechies, president of the International Mathematical Union who is attending the 12th International Congress on Mathematical Education at the Seoul COEX, said, “It is prejudice that females are weak in calculation and poor in math.” She argued that this phenomenon results from parents and teachers recommending that females avoid occupations in math, and that females consolidate amongst themselves the prejudice of males that women who are good at math are picky.

In Korea, males have traditionally outperformed females in the math section of the college entrance test. A historical episode suggests that a prestigious university in Seoul offered a math test with highly difficult problems to admit fewer female students. Yet the gap between males and females is narrowing. According to the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, which is conducted every three years by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the gap in math scored by gender was 27 points in 2000, but narrowed to 4 points in 2009. Park Gyeong-mi, a math professor at Hongik University in Seoul and chief of the math congress`s public relations committee, said, “This trend is affected by a teaching method emphasizing practical application and communication in real life over recent years.”

Editorial Writer Chung Sung-hee (schung@donga.com)