Last week, Katherine Birbalsingh, controversial headteacher and government social mobility commissioner, made headlines by suggesting that one of the reasons why more girls don’t study A-level physics might be because they dislike the “hard maths” involved in the subject.
Accused of harbouring harmful and “outdated stereotypes”, Birbalsingh found herself at the receiving end of a social media outcry and a call to arms against her “terrifying” and “quite damaging” comments.
As a scientist with an MSci in Physics from UCL — and someone who studied “hard maths” — my kneejerk reaction was also one of outrage. I loved the challenge of the maths involved, both at A level and during my degree, as did my (male and female) peers.
I couldn’t help but wonder, however, why it is that boys are four times more likely to study physics than girls? Is it, as some argue, a result of social bias and preconceived “gendering” of subjects; maths and science as “male” and English and the arts as “female”?
At Birbalsingh’s own school, the Michaela community school in Wembley, just 16 per cent of A-level physics students are female, compared to the national average of 23 per cent. Birbalsingh makes the point that this uneven weighting is not for lack of encouragement or adequate teaching – her school has observed a great deal of success in dispelling harmful stereotypes – so there must be something else at play.
Many studies suggest that there are inherent differences in the male and female brains, how they are wired and how they work. Girls are more inclined to be empathetic and demonstrate perfectionistic behaviour, for example, whilst boys are more systematic.
This is not to say there is a difference in how well our brains work; it is a question of fundamental function, not cognitive ability. Birbalsingh did not say that women can’t do hard maths.
Biology aside, there are also many cultural influences at play. Women show a greater tendency to underestimate their own abilities, whereas our male counterparts lend themselves to bolder, more brazen confidence. In spite of schools’ best efforts to break down these social barriers, it is only possible to influence their students for a select proportion of the working week — the rest will be, on the whole, a product of environmental and cultural factors.
Trying to assign exact percentages to the relative contributions of culture and biology to the behaviour of free-thinking individuals in such a complex social landscape is challenging. The important thing is to distinguish whether young girls feel actively discouraged from pursuing STEM subjects, or if they simply don’t want to study them.
Over the last few years, there has been a push from schools, universities and parents to encourage young women to pursue STEM subjects, and, Birbalsingh’s comments aside, it does seem to be working.
For the first time in 2019, there was more science A levels awarded to girls than to boys, with girls accounting for 50.3 per cent of the combined total of biology, chemistry and physics A-levels awarded. In 2021, the cohort of girls studying the key STEM subjects rose again by 5.79 per cent and Maths is now the third most popular A level subject chosen by female students.
My motivation to pursue physics at a university degree level stemmed from a base interest and curiosity about the world around us. Maths, the language of physics, is a tool through which we can explore and analyse our world and we would be lost without it. I am willing to muddle through the “hard maths” of physics since, with interest, there comes a willingness to put in hard work.
It strikes me as strange that, in comparison, we rarely see headlines about the decline in the number of boys studying English, despite recent warnings from one academic that boys are losing out on essential skills and treat English as a foreign language. But aiming to fill a quota, whether it is force-feeding physics to female students or boys to take up more literary subjects, is detrimental and ultimately acts to belittle their achievements.
The freedom of students is devalued as natural ambitions and preferences are manipulated in order to reach arbitrary and ultimately unhelpful targets. Equal opportunity does not result in equal outcomes and the presence of discrepancy does not imply discrimination.
Our focus should move away from gender and focus on creating an education system that aims to neutralise subjects, allowing girls and boys to pursue their interests based on enjoyment and engagement alone.