Article: Math, Tech and the Women Who Don’t Love Them

This article by Sally K. Ride is a fascinating blog post. She does vary when she conflates the issue of native-born vs. gender, but it is clear that there are real issues here.

The Math-Meetup group had many salient comments (here) and I have included my views below.

Also I think that the following comments to the blog post are very good. Specifically those talking about

• relative pay levels
• socialization issues in how girls are raised
• math vs. science

Regards..

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OK...I feel compelled to go out on a limb...

One reason I am interested in this is that I am trying to find a way to "turn the tide" away from American Idol and the latest Jude Law movie. To me this is related to the decline of American (brain-)power in general. I am also more interested in this than I am in specifically increasing the number of

• females
• native born
• minorities

Of course it is more fun (and in some ways "easier") to graivtate towards singing/dancing or sales/marketing and I am *not* convinced math can be made "fun".

I was always "wired" for it so it makes sense and it is beautiful, but it seems "natural" that it is hard for the majority of non-nerds. And to me, nerds will always be a minority. Hey, whad'dya want? It pays my bills!