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From: cheryl@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU (cheryl)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.sci
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Why are there so few [female|black] physicists?
Message-ID: <719@batcomputer.TN.CORNELL.EDU>
Date: Fri, 25-Jul-86 09:39:37 EDT
Article-I.D.: batcompu.719
Posted: Fri Jul 25 09:39:37 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 26-Jul-86 13:42:56 EDT
References: <4368@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Reply-To: cheryl@batcomputer.UUCP (cheryl)
Organization: Theory Center, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Lines: 48
Xref: watmath net.women:11608 net.sci:1376

In article <4368@decwrl.DEC.COM> chabot@3d.dec.com writes:
>?:
>>>There is much evidence that shows girls have equal ability to solve abstract
>>>problems,and that ability diminishes because they discouraged from exercising
>>>it. That is reality too, even if *you* prefer to believe otherwise.
> 
>Cheryl:
>>There is also a correlation between the predominant sex of the teachers
>>at a stage of education, and which sex student excells at that stage.
>>Girls are better students than boys in elementary school--where most
>>of the teachers are women.  The situation reverses in high school and
>>college--where most of the teachers are men.
> 
>I don't think it's true that the ability diminishes.  The confidence in one's
>ability does, sometimes, and so does the confidence to demonstrate the ability
>in front of men.

Natural ability may not change, but when you've been working problem-sets
doggedly for several years, your learned ability goes way up.  On my SAT's
my verbal score was higher than my math.  After 4 years of Engineering school,
on the GRE's, my verbal score stayed the same, but the math was now much higher
than the verbal.  It's just a matter of what you spend your time on.  

In AP Chemistry in High School, there were only two men to demonstrate 
ability in front of.  One other student and the teacher.  All the rest
were women. This was partly my doing.  I went around socially to everybody who
had taken AP Biology and the top-tracked math course in Sophomore year,
and encouraged the women to take AP Chemistry ("Aw, it won't be that hard.
I'm taking it.  That means it will be *fun*" [I was also the class clown])
and discouraged the men from taking AP Chemistry ("It will be easier to
get an A in Reagents chemistry.  And besides, if you take AP Chemistry
now, they'll place you in sophomore-level Chem when you get to college,
and you might not be prepared for it.  I'm not taking AP chem, No-Sir-ee."
[so I changed my mind, heh-heh])

It worked.  There were 8 women and only 1 man the year *I* took AP Chem!
And it didn't matter at all whether or not we had confidence in front of
men or not, because all the men who *would* have taken it were too easily
influenced *not* to take it--we started calling them chicken-shits later
in the year.  Actually, it started out with 8 women and 2 men, but we women
got one of the men to drop out by (a) intimidating him by working our
buts off on the first few homework sets and pretending the material was
easy and (b) telling him that if he had to work that hard to keep up with us,
he'd probably be "HAPPIER" in Reagents' Chemistry.  We let up on ourselves
once we had driven him out.  The other one was just a masochist and a 
martyr so it didn't work on him.

Cheryl