Ada, Countess of Lovelace (1815-52). Poetry and mathematics conspired in her vision of a general purpose machine that could be programmed and reprogrammed to perform a limitless array of tasks.

A group of Brandywine faculty and staff is working to breathe new life into our summer Math Options program.  Run single-handedly for many years by Pat van Leuvan, a member of our Education faculty, Math Options was a highly successful day-long program intended to encourage middle school girls’ interest in math and science.  It lost its champion when Pat retired, but is being reinvigorated with the help of Lynn Hartle, Charles Helou, Janeen Madison, Jenn Zosh, and others.  The STEM fields, as you know, suffer a significant gender gap.  Math Options and similar programs are intended to narrow this gap.

The history and research on girls and women in the STEM fields paints a peculiar and complex picture.  According to Walter Isaacson’s history of the modern computer, for example, the digital revolution began with the theorizing of Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, whose mother pushed her to study mathematics as an “antidote to the poetic imagination”.  Isaacson argues that women, particularly women mathematicians, went on to play a pivotal role in computer science. Women were the theoreticians whereas “men were interested in building, the hardware, doing the circuits, figuring out the machinery”.  In the 1930’s women mathematicians were fairly common; during World War II many contributed to the war effort by developing programs capable of breaking German encrypted messages (the famous Bletchley Park project).  But history is largely silent on women’s contributions to the computer age; In the 1980’s women with degrees in computer science fell from 40 to 17 percent.

Recent research on girls and women in STEM points to college as the point of gender bifurcation. According to a comprehensive national report (National Science Foundation, Science and Engineering Indicators, 2012), girls are taking advanced math and science courses (except physics and engineering) at similar rates as boys — and performing well.  But a significant shift occurs at the college level, and disparities emerge, especially for women of color (I lifted the following summary from http://www.ngcproject.org/statistics):

• Women earned 57.2% of bachelor’s degrees in all fields in 2010 and 50.3% of science and engineering bachelor’s degrees. However, women’s participation in science and engineering at the undergraduate level significantly differs by specific field of study. While women receive over half of bachelor’s degrees awarded in the biological sciences, they receive far fewer in the computer sciences (18.2%), engineering (18.4%), and mathematics and statistics (43.1%) (NSF, Women, Minorities, and Persons with Disabilities in Science and Engineering, 2013).
• In 2010, 10.6% of bachelor’s degrees in science and engineering, 7.9% of master’s degrees in science and engineering, and 3.9% of doctorate degrees in science and engineering were awarded to minority women (NSF, 2013).
• In 2010, 3% of bachelor’s degrees in engineering, 6.1% of bachelor’s degrees in physical sciences, 5.2% of bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, 4.9% of bachelor’s degrees in computer sciences, 9.3% of bachelor’s degrees in biological sciences, and 13% of bachelor’s degrees in social sciences were awarded to minority women (NSF, 2013).

Potential sources of these disparities have been explored from a number of perspectives.  Social and cultural stereotypes have been implicated, as have peer pressure and socialization, and the “family-friendliness” of STEM workplaces.  There is surely much to be done to narrow the STEM gender gap.  Brandywine’s summer programming to encourage the interest, competence, and confidence of girls and young women in STEM is a good place to start.