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November 08, 2003
how to discourage women from studying physics
So last week I posted about Planet Jemma, a fictional webdiary of a first year physics student is supposed to encourage high school girls to choose to study physics. Unfortunately I hadn't actually read very far into the serial when I recommended it.
You read Planet Jemma in five or ten minute installments over the course of a fortnight. Each day you get an email from her or one of her friends, and you get access to a new episode her video diary and other bits and pieces on her website.
I'm up to day 7 now, and instead of seeing a positive example of a female physics student I'm finding the serial a relentless attempt to convince its audience that boys studying physics are dorks, that teaching assistants are male chauvinist pigs with pinups on their office walls, and that if you're a girl who's stupid enough to study physics you'll get your bum pinched and be constantly humiliated and laughed at. Here's the (fictional!) teaching assistant's website with his webcam shot of himself - you'll see the first day's version, since you're not logged in, but on day seven, the webcam image is of the teaching assistant grabbing Jemma's bum. The only experiments you see done in this fictional physics department involve dipping bananas into liquid nitrogen and seeing how they come out frozen. I mean, come on, we did more challenging stuff than that in high school. There appear to be no lectures, no lab reports, and Jemma's social life involves only handsome male media and design students (do you think that might be what the lads who made Planet Jemma studied when they were undergrads?) and her disappeared friend, Abby, who dropped out despite loving physics. Jemma's mum writes her emails asking why she didn't study English, and Jemma decides she's "bad at the practical stuff and the machines" though she loves the concepts.
Jemma does write us very simplistic notes on black holes and antimatter, explained in romance magazine terms. Even apart from the silly comments about wishing boys in black holes, they seem so much simpler than the Carl Sagan explanations of astronomy that my little sister and I were thrilled with when we were nine or ten, that I can't see how they can really be meant for fourteen year olds.
I totally loved Online Caroline, which was made by the same people who've created Planet Jemma. I'm less than enraptured by Planet Jemma, though. I cannot see how portraying male physics students as horrible, sexist pigs is going to encourage women to study physics. Maybe I'm naive (and no, I've not studied physics), but this seems to be creating, not even reinforcing, stereotypes that are way beyond the challenges women may meet in a male-dominated university environment.
Posted by Jill Walker at 07:07 AM in Media | Permalink
Comments
Just to mention that it would be more accurate to say "an American male-dominated university environment". In Spain more than half of all Physics and Math majors are women. Something similar happens with junior faculty. I wonder what makes Physics still a "male" area of study in the US.
Posted by: Ion at Nov 8, 2003 8:34:35 AM
Planet Jemma is British, so I assume physics students in Britain are mostly male, since they've spent money on this project trying to get more women to study physics. I'm in Norway, and here far fewer women than men study physics, maths and technology.
That's great, though, that Spain is so much more balanced in this respect! I've no idea why, and I don't know US figures either.
It's interesting, too, that you assumed that I was writing about the USA - I'm intrigued at the extent to which both a European like you (your URL suggests you're at Harvard but you blog in Spanish?) and Americans just assume that everyone else on the web is American. I'm not! Perhaps I make the same assumption, though? I must start tracking that :)
Posted by: Jill at Nov 8, 2003 11:42:37 AM
This is what happens when you start commenting on something before you actually click on the link you're commenting on :).
Actually, you hit on a very interesting question: To what extent the web is perceived, if not always as an American space, as a USA-centered one? I know and read myself far more blogs from the US than from my own country, Spain. Maybe my fellow grad students in the department of Sociology could throw some light on that. This is the kind of thing Netwoman writes great posts about.
Posted by: Ion at Nov 8, 2003 12:22:39 PM
It is true that male physics students (as well as math, CS, etc.) are generally more sexually frustrated. This is because women, in general, find extroversion, arrogance, lack of manners, and a bunch of shallow physical traits, more sexually attractive than intelligence, curiosity, civility, and other similar traits.
In sum, whatever stereotype that exists in this area is women's fault. It is their choices in sexual mates (in aggregate) that perpetrates the stereotype. In the end, male physics students remain sexually frustrated.
Posted by: Kendrick at Nov 9, 2003 12:04:34 AM
Also, what's this implicit stigmatization of stereotypes that I see on female-authored websites all the time? This is complete nonsense. Some stereotypes are obviously valid.
Here's a quick proof: If you say "All stereotypes are invalid." then you'd be making a stereotype about stereotypes, which would imply that your statement itself is invalid. Therefore, there exist some stereotypes that are not invalid. Q.E.D.
Posted by: Kendrick at Nov 9, 2003 12:10:57 AM
It being the UK explains a lot. I studied Physics in the UK (at Cambridge, where it is a fairly major subject - more Nobel prizes there than most countries have).
There you study 'Natural Sciences', picking multiple subjects in the first year, and specialising later, which can have a side effect of women specialising away from Physics.
Of about 300 2nd year student in Physics about 10 were women (this was 1986). I got on with a couple of them quite well, and I didn't hear tales of sexist TA's, though no doubt they got a lot of extra male attention through rarity.
The real discrimination was against scientists. There is a cultural contempt of science as philistine in the UK, and this shows up strongly at Cambridge, to the extent that even the scientists believe ti of themselves. Despite being scientists, and often musicians, playwrights and so on in their spare time, the scientists would join the stereotyping of their arty colleagues. yes, the 40-hour week of lectures and practicals gives less time to swan around dressed as Sebastian Flyte, but when a fellow student responded to mild ridicule of his scruffy appearance in class his response of 'why would I care, it's just a bunch of NatSci's' spoke volumes.
Posted by: Kevin Marks at Nov 9, 2003 3:35:04 PM
When I was studying in the UK there was a major effort being put on by universities to get more women into Computer Science and physical sciences. I remember talking to my dean about this though, and he expressed a very deep frustration, because the real problem was how few girls take physical science subjects in the last few years of school, so reaching out to 17-year-olds was useless because so many of them had already closed off the option of studying, say, physics.
At the time we had an awful system at school which involved most pupils narrowing down to only 3 subjects after age 16, making it very easy to drop all science. That system has now changed, and pupils study more subjects until the end of high school--I wonder if this has made it any easier for science departments to draw in female applicants.
Posted by: eldan at Nov 10, 2003 2:53:52 AM
Hi Jill
I'm one of the people who created 'Planet Jemma' and I feel honour bound to defend the project (a bit):
1. There is a narrative arc going on here. You're only on episode 7, halfway through the story. Jemma is at her lowest at this point, and dealing with a lot of issues at once (issues BTW that our research revealed were the key fears that put girls off doing science after GCSEs).
By episode 14 Jemma manages to triumph against all the terrible things that have been thrown at her, so in the end I think we present a very strong and positive role model for young women. And there a whole load of links to other sites on the Web showing women having successful and rewarding careers as scientists.
Bear in mind too, that to keep people coming back to a site like this, each episode has to be eventful and attention grabbing. If Jemma's life just rolled on as a procession of lectures, labwork, coffee and sleep, it wouldn't be very gripping...
2. Please note that the project was developed not just by 'arty' men. If you check out the credits on the site you'll see there were a number of women involved in the project, some of them respected scientists. Importantly, the storyline was developed by two women, having attended focus groups with teenage girls, talked to women scientists and read a lot of background research material.
3. This site is designed for fairly young kids (12/13/14). Our characters aren't meant to have 'adult' reactions. We're competing for attention against a whole load of TV shows, adverts, music videos and magazines that do deal in shorthand stereotypes and unsubtle emotions. Planet Jemma has been a difficult balancing act, trying to get at girls 'where they live' whilst leading them gently down the path towards the complex and challenging world of physical science.
4. I admit there are problems with compressing a whole range of issues into such a short narrative format. To get Jemma through her roller coaster ride in just 14 episodes has led - I think - to us rather rushing through the issues and painting with a very broad brush. On the other hand, we've had over 30,000 people go through the site and the feedback is generally positive.
Cheers
timw
Posted by: Tim Wright at Jan 8, 2004 1:29:50 PM
