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:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Infinity Machine - Sebastian Mallaby ****

It's very quickly clear that Sebastian Mallaby is a huge Demis Hassabis fan - writing about the only child prodigy and teen genius ever who was also a nice, rounded personality. After a few chapters, though, things settle down (I'm reminded of Douglas Adams' description of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ) and we get a good, solid trip through the journey that gave us DeepMind, their AlphaGo and AlphaFold programs, the sudden explosion of competition on the AI front and thoughts on artificial general intelligence. Although Mallaby does occasionally still go into fan mode - reading this you would think that AlphaFold had successfully perfectly predicted the structure of every protein, where it is usually not sufficiently accurate for its results to have direct practical application - we get a real feel for the way this relatively unusual company was swiftly and successfully developed away from Silicon Valley. It's readable and gives an important understanding of...
Post a Comment
Read more

In Seach of Sea Dragons - Matthew Myerscough ****

It's common advice to would-be authors of narrative non-fiction to open with something dramatic - Matthew Myerscough certainly does this with the story of his being trapped under an avalanche on Snowdon (while his girlfriend, also carried away remains on top of the snow unhurt). It certainly is dramatic, but seemed entirely disconnected from the reason I got the book, which was to read about fossil collecting.  Luckily, though, in the second chapter we get into a more conventional 'how I got interested in fossils as a boy'. Having recently reviewed Patrick Moore's autobiography and noting that astronomy was one of the few sciences where amateurs can still make a contribution, it came to mind that palaeontology is another - Myerscough is a civil engineer by trade, but just as amateur astronomers can find new details in the skies, so amateur fossil hunters have been searching for these relics for centuries. When I give talks in junior schools, the two topics that guarant...
Post a Comment
Read more

Robot-Proof - Vivienne Ming ****

As Vivienne Ming makes apparent, there seem largely to be two views of AI's pros and cons, both of which are almost certainly wrong. It's either doom-saying 'It'll destroy life as we know it' or Pollyanna-ish 'It'll do all the boring work and we can all be wonderfully creative and live lives of leisure.' Instead, Ming gives us a clear analysis of the likely trajectory for the workplace, particularly for the IT industry. She describes three 'equally flawed, intellectually lazy strategies' to deal with the impact of AI. The first is substitution and deprofessionalisation, using AI to allow cheaper 'AI-augmented technicians' to replace more expensive professionals, producing more low wage jobs and fewer mid-range. This does save money but leaves a company at risk of being easily outcompeted. The second is what Ming describes as the '"A-Player" Hunger Games', the approach favoured by Silicon Valley. This sees the growing rif...
Post a Comment
Read more