Serendip is an independent site partnering with faculty at multiple colleges and universities around the world. Happy exploring!

Reply to comment

eprins's picture

Why so many women avoid majoring in the sciences

Although I do believe that Bryn Mawr and other All-female colleges have been shown to have extraordinary numbers of science majors, I believe that this article perhaps touches on why women avoid the sciences. Since I have stepped on this campus, I have asked many of my classmates the same question: "what is your intended major?". As usual, I always get tons of English and History perspective majors as well as your share of psychology and art. I have not found too many women who are looking into Chemistry, Physics, or Biology.

Of course, as a perspective anthropology major, I have no problem with social science or humanities fields, but I do believe that there is a reason more women have not tried science. It has been shown that humans are more comfortable with what they know. We grow up in environments filled with music, art, and literature. Technology, science, and math are seen as something in our culture as only for the "smart people" and molecules and calculus are a bit harder to see as connecting to everyday life on the surface.

Because high school classes are so basic and cover topics so unattached to everyday life, students are left feeling uninspired. I will be honest and say that I remember very very little from my high school classes. It is only in college that the fun begins and science classes tend to take more specific approaches to scientific topics and student get to learn about the wonders of science. Yet, if students come to college thinking "I am not a science person and I will do everything in my power not to take a science course" they never get to experience science for what it really is.

Now, I bet you're wondering why I singled out women for avoiding the sciences. Although this has been improving, men are still more encouraged to major in the sciences than women. Men are encouraged to go into medicine and graduate school while for women, at least in my area, it is considered socially acceptable to simply get through undergraduate and then become a stay-at-home mom. The topic of gender and career is far to great for me to cover in a small post nor do I care to get into such a big subject so I will just leave it at this: If sciences classes were stronger in high school, more women would come to college feeling inspired by the hard science classes and willing to take classes at the undergraduate level.

Reply

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
To prevent automated spam submissions leave this field empty.
3 + 1 =
Solve this simple math problem and enter the result. E.g. for 1+3, enter 4.