It is a truth universally acknowledged that a girl in a mathematics class must be in want of a good few more female friends. As both an English and Maths student, I’ve found the differences in demographic, style, and behaviour across these departments to be huge. While in humanities I share the same tastes as most of my classmates, in Maths I feel like an outlier—that one data point differing significantly from all the other observations. I began to wonder, were the stereotypes of the subject potentially clouding my vision?
Now, I adore the subject of Maths here for many reasons —the creativity, the real-life applications, the amazing professors. But another benefit I began to appreciate was the subtle flex in stating that I study it. For many people, the mere mention of the subject conjures up a cold sweat and traumatic school memories. Therefore, any prowess in the field is seen as nothing short of a superpower. I took pride at first in seeing people’s impressed reactions when I told them I studied maths, despite the fact that my grades were nothing to be impressed about.
But, as I begrudgingly fixed my attendance and looked around my lecture theatre, I started to wonder if there was really much to show off about my degree. Being the only one in my predominantly-female circles to study STEM, I was inclined to feel special; but this pointed to a gender gap that I was far less comfortable with. There’s no discernible difference between girls and boys in maths abilities as children, yet many studies show that boys tend to have far more confidence in their mathematical abilities, leading to it being a male-dominated field. I didn’t need to read the statistics to believe that— I drew the same conclusion after 5 minutes of being in my tutorials.
Another stereotype proven true is the fashion differences between many of the maths students and their essay-subject counterparts. Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to take a break from the sea of Longchamps and trench coats, but you would expect at least some trends to prevail. In a town as stylish as St Andrews, why is it that so many who roam the maths and physics buildings dress… like that? As I left my coding lab on a rainy Tuesday with my friend wearing a Hawaiian shirt, I wondered. Was it an act of defiance? Were they cutting to the very core of capitalistic overconsumption, and, by wearing their socks and sandals, bringing shame to all those superficial?
It can be hard to know whether the alienation some girls feel in STEM subjects is helped or hindered by labouring these stereotypes. For example, I have weekly coding labs that are more gender-segregated than a public bathroom. I’d walked into the class on the first week and simply sat with the only other girl I could see. We bonded subconsciously over our shared gender in a male-dominated environment. Would I have been better off attempting to integrate? As girls, it’s easy to feel unwelcome to join the stereotypical ‘boys club’ of math geniuses, fluent in Python, JavaScript and beyond. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
There are numerous differences I’ve noticed as a girl studying maths, some funny idiosyncrasies, and some glaring issues. But I think it wouldn’t be fair to write this article without acknowledging that we are all in the field for the same reason: a love of the most indomitable subject there is. Either that, or a flashy Msc(Hons) as a gateway into finance. Even though contact hours are primarily times to learn and improve, I found it helped so much to have friends and study buddies to encourage me there, of all genders. And honestly, when you’ve got a third-order, non-linear differential equation staring you down, who has time to care?