Gender Bias in Mathematics

My latest issue of Mathematics Teacher arrived in the mail a few days ago.  One of the first articles, "Staring Down Stereotypes," gave several examples of stereotypes about mathematics:

• Men are better at mathematics than women.
• Mathematics requires only logic, not intuition.
• Mathematics is not creative.
• There is a best way to do a mathematics problem.
• Mathematicians do problems quickly, in their heads.
• Mathematics requires a good memory.
• Some people have a "math mind," and some don't.

The article also mentions Harvey Mudd professor Rachel Levy and her blog "Grandma Got STEM," which confronts the stereotype implicit in the direction to write an explanation to a math problem so simple that your grandmother could understand it.  The blog is a tribute to grandmothers in STEM fields and includes biographical information as well as many historical pictures.

The blog has a picture of the women from Bletchy Circle, including a link to an interview of Joanna Chorley, one of the women who worked there.  It also has a great collection of links including this interview with Eleanor Kolchin in the Huffington Post.  She was a programmer in 1946 and shared what it was like to work for IBM at the time.  She had to get married secretly because she would have been fired by company policy at the time.

The blog is inspiring, and proves that talent in mathematics and science is not confined to the young, or to men.  My own grandmother used to say to my two sisters and me, "Don't settle for a job serving a man - like a secretary.  Be an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer."  Her message was meant to convey that we could do anything we wanted.  My older sister is a computer programmer, I am a math teacher, and my younger sister went into the IT field.  Thanks grandma!