Girl with Pen is extremely pleased to bring you the inaugural post from Allison Kimmich, Executive Director of the National Women’s Studies Association. Allison will be posting her column, Girl Talk, which explores truths and fictions about girls, the third Wednesday of every month. -Kristen
As a feminist, and as a professional advocate for feminist education in my work at the National Women’s Studies Association, I felt faint one day three years ago when my then-five-year-old daughter told me that “girls don’t do math.â€
Well, it turns out that my daughter was right. Last week the New York Times reported on a study that points to U.S. failures in math education. The article notes that the United States does a poor job of educating both boys and girls in math, but that we especially miss opportunities to encourage girls who could be excellent mathematicians unless they are immigrants or daughters of immigrants from countries where math is valued.
Or as one of the study’s lead author Janet E. Mertz puts it, “We’re living in a culture that is telling girls you can’t do math—that is telling everybody that only Asians and nerds do math.†Neither the study nor the article explores in detail what it is about American culture that undervalues math education, but the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls produced a report last year that offers some insights. The report notes that self-objectification (buying sexy clothes or asking parents to do so, and identifying with sexy celebrities) can “detract from the ability to concentrate and focus one’s attention, thus leading to impaired performance on mental activities such as mathematical computations or logical reasoning.â€