" I can actually be very feminine here " : contradiction and hybridity in becoming a female mathematician (original) (raw)
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Finding a voice? Narrating the female self in mathematics
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If mathematics is a male domain, where does this leave women who do mathematics? In a world where there is little or no discursive space in which to be female, women who enter in must do identity work in order to achieve what is often an uneasy presence. This paper builds on recent research which suggests that some undergraduate women are however finding new spaces for belonging in the world of mathematics through critical reflection and collective challenge to dominant discourses. Focussing on an analysis of two women's narratives of their success in mathematics, it explores their multi-voiced accounts of self through the lens of Bakhtin's dialogism. It discusses the scope of reflexivity in creating new identity spaces in refigured worlds. Women, university mathematics, identities, refiguring, heteroglossia Introduction: mathematics as a masculine domain Since Walkerdine's argument in Counting girls out (1989) that girls' underachievement in mathematics during the 1980's was constructed rather than real, much research has focussed on understanding the ways in which women are positioned as "successful but not succeeding" in mathematics. In recent years, although girls have begun to equal or outperform boys at school level in the UK, for example, they are under-represented in postcompulsory mathematics pre-university (see Mendick, 2005b) and in undergraduate and postgraduate study, where participation in mathematical sciences subjects falls to 41% and 27% respectively (HESA, 2011, table 7). This pattern is an international one, as Forgasz, Becker, Lee and Steinthorsdottir's (2010) book demonstrates, and it demands an understanding of women's own self-positioning as "not belonging" in the world of mathematics, even when they are successful in it at both undergraduate (Solomon, 2007a) and postgraduate (Herzig, 2004) levels. Theorising this situation, Mendick (2006) argues that "doing mathematics is doing masculinity": choosing mathematics and being good at it compromises femininity, requiring "identity work". One manifestation of this uneasy existence is invisibility: for Walls (2008), girls and women in mathematics "are required to don a cloak of invisibility that affords them temporary status as honorary males in a male domain" (p.4), and like Walkerdine before her, she notes the heavy psycho-social burden of this position. Similarly, Rodd and Bartholomew (2006) argue that the lack of a discursive space for women who do mathematics creates problems for those who choose it at degree level: since the available identities and cultural norms are masculine, young women can only position themselves as good at mathematics by stepping out of the available female identities. They are more likely to choose invisibility as a means of self-protection from the difficulties of "being a mathematical girl". Alternatively, they may play down their achievements, "tapping into discourses about mathematics learning which place 'real understanding' in opposition to 'memorization', and generally associate 'flair' with boys" (44). A parallel distinction is noted by Mendick et al. (2008), who report that undergraduates tend to divide mathematics sub-areas into "masculine" and "feminine", masculine areas being perceived as more "intellectual". Undergraduate women are correspondingly more likely to berate themselves for "not understanding" (Solomon, 2007a). These studies underline Walls' (2009) claim that "boys and girls engage in their learning of mathematics at school as distinctly gendered social beings ... the subject of mathematics is itself constructive of children as gendered subjects" (p. 231). However, recent work (Solomon, Lawson, & Croft, 2011) has suggested that some undergraduate women are establishing new discursive spaces which enable them to take up an identity of mathematician which does not exclude being female. Crucial elements in this shift have been the availability of physical spaces in some universities which have fostered collaborative learning practices, together with critical comment on, and challenge to, dominant discourses about mathematics which position men as more able. This paper explores further how two women's narratives of self as both mathematician and female are constructed, as
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If mathematics is a male domain, where does this leave women who do mathematics? In a world where there is little or no discursive space in which to be female, women who enter in must do identity work in order to achieve what is often an uneasy presence. This paper builds on recent research which suggests that some undergraduate women are however finding new spaces for belonging in the world of mathematics through critical reflection and collective challenge to dominant discourses. Focussing on an analysis of two women's narratives of their success in mathematics, it explores their multi-voiced accounts of self through the lens of Bakhtin's dialogism. It discusses the scope of reflexivity in creating new identity spaces in refigured worlds.
Dealing with ‘fragile identities’: resistance and refiguring in women mathematics students
Gender and Education, 2011
Dealing with "fragile identities": resistance and refiguring in women mathematics students Many learners may be successful in mathematics but nevertheless see themselves as existing only on the margins of the practice, or as lacking stability in it-in this sense, they have what can be called a fragile identity. Although this kind of relationship with mathematics is not limited to girls and women, they do appear to express such fragile identities more often or more readily. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative data from undergraduates in three English universities, this paper presents an analysis of the way in which university mathematics is differentially experienced by men and women, and of the part this may play in women's ongoing narratives of self as mathematicians. It is suggested that some women resist traditional positionings in the mathematics world, drawing on local resources which enable a sense of agency as successful students and a refiguring of their relationships with mathematics.
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In this chapter, I analyse the responses of 50 learners (27 students in their final year of compulsory schooling, and 23 university students) to the prompt: 'Imagine a world where mathematicians appear on TV regularly, what kind of world is this?' The terrains of popular culture, and perhaps especially television, with its location in the domestic world of the home and its plethora of lifestyle, cookery and talk shows are often constructed as feminised spaces. I take as my starting point the struggles of our research participants to imagine what would happen when the masculine field of mathematics enters this softer, more feminine sphere. I look at where their imagination takes them and where it cannot. I am interested in asking: In what ways does this change mathematics and those who do it? And what are the pedagogic, epistemological and social justice possibilities of such fantasies? This book is no longer publicly available for purchase so I've uploaded it here. Reference: Mendick, H. (2008) Undoing mathematics? Troubling fantasies of gender and mathematics. In: A. Chronaki (Ed.) Mathematics, Technologies, Education: the gender perspective. Volos: Thessaly University Press.
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