Skip to main content

Not Just for the Boys - Athene Donald ****

Physicist and Cambridge college Master Athene Donald takes on the complex and important issue of the gender balance in the sciences. We get plenty on the problem and the vast difference there is between the stats in the biological sciences, where there are more female than males entering the profession, and subjects such as maths, physics and computing, where females remain significantly in the minority. We also see how career progression, even for the biological sciences, seems biassed against female scientists.

What is less clear is the solutions. One of the essential contributory factors, for instance, how science is taught in secondary schools doesn't get as much coverage as it deserves. Donald mentions the important aspect of hands on - how taking part in experiments is an important introduction, but health and safety has made it far less part of the curriculum - but not how to overcome this. And there's no real mention of the way that school science, particularly physics, focuses on the boring stuff. For example, the physics of special relativity, with its implications of time travel, could easily be taught at GCSE level - far more exciting and interesting than the usual stuff.

Elsewhere we get a lot on role models - I've never really had a role model and am not convinced they make a big difference to life choices. But it could be just that I'm not the right kind of personality for that to be the case - reflecting that no one size fits all approach will work. Again, I think we could have had more about solutions than is provided. Where the book really comes alive is when Donald talks about her own work and experience - I suppose this is a kind of role modelling, but I think you already have to have got the science bug before this becomes of interest.

It is certainly true we still have a long way to go in some subjects, but I think there could have been some recognition of how far we've already come. When I did Part II experimental physics at the Cavendish, a couple of years behind Donald, there were only about half a dozen women in the cohort. Things have moved on. In the science Twitter I follow, female scientists and their work get lots of coverage. And though Donald says (without evidence) 'female scientists as talking heads on TV are still rare', I'd say (also without data) that's just not true anymore. Interestingly, when Donald mentions black hole imaging, it's female talking heads that were featured.

One thing that isn't explored is the impact of science fiction (and gaming for IT). When I talk to scientists, male and female, they often mention science fiction as an early stimulus of interest, and many computer scientists began their interest in the field as gamers. It would have been interesting to see how much the gendered attitude towards these areas leads through to those taking STEM degrees, and how this could be encouraged in female readers and technology users.

This is a really important topic than needs addressing. Donald does so effectively, though the book might have been more effective from a scientist or science writer with a bit more journalistic flair. Even so, it's a significant step in making sure the discussion remains highly visible, which may lead to some more concrete and effective solutions.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Language of Mathematics - Raúl Rojas ***

One of the biggest developments in the history of maths was moving from describing relationships and functions with words to using symbols. This interesting little book traces the origins of a whole range of symbols from those familiar to all, to the more obscure squiggles used in logic and elsewhere. On the whole Raúl Rojas does a good job of filling in some historical detail, if in what is generally a fairly dry fashion. We get to trace what was often a bumpy path as different symbols were employed (particularly, for example, for division and multiplication, where several still remain in use), but usually, gradually, standards were adopted. This feels better as a reference, to dip into if you want to find out about a specific symbol, rather than an interesting end to end read. Rojas tells us the sections are designed to be read in any order, which means that there is some overlap of text - it feels more like a collection of short essays or blog posts that he couldn't be bothered ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ctrl+Alt+Chaos - Joe Tidy ****

Anyone like me with a background in programming is likely to be fascinated (if horrified) by books that present stories of hacking and other destructive work mostly by young males, some of whom have remarkable abilities with code, but use it for unpleasant purposes. I remember reading Clifford Stoll's 1990 book The Cuckoo's Egg about the first ever network worm (the 1988 ARPANet worm, which accidentally did more damage than was intended) - the book is so engraved in my mind I could still remember who the author was decades later. This is very much in the same vein,  but brings the story into the true internet age. Joe Tidy gives us real insights into the often-teen hacking gangs, many with members from the US and UK, who have caused online chaos and real harm. These attacks seem to have mostly started as pranks, but have moved into financial extortion and attempts to destroy others' lives through doxing, swatting (sending false messages to the police resulting in a SWAT te...
Post a Comment
Read more