Mathematics, Women in

Historically, women have had less involvement in mathematical activity than men. Although women's participation and achievement have increased rapidly across the world since the beginnings of the second wave of feminism, differences (particularly in participation) [Page 909]exist in the majority of countries. Many explanations have been offered for these differences connecting to a range of biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors. As a result, a range of initiatives has been developed to promote interest in mathematics among women. While some approaches see mathematics as a fixed body of knowledge and seek to change women so that more of them want to pursue mathematics, others have used the focus on gender to find different ways of doing mathematics.

The Western narrative of the history of mathematics is dominated by men. The male dominance of mathematics in the past is related to the way that women had few opportunities to pursue the study of mathematical and scientific work and to dominant ideas that such studies would affect their mental and physical health, being viewed as particularly detrimental to their reproductive capacity. Despite this there have been a number of women mathematicians, although their contributions have often been excluded or downplayed in official accounts of the subject's development.

These women include Hypatia, an early Egyptian astronomer and philosopher; Emilie du Châtelet (1706-49), a French mathematician and physicist who translated Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica into French adding her own commentary; Sophie Germain (1776-1831), a French mathematician who contributed work on elastic surfaces and number theory; Mary Somerville (1780-1872), a Scottish mathematician and scientist whose books brought ideas in physical science to a wider audience; Ada Lovelace (1815-52), an English mathematician who is generally acknowledged as the first computer programmer; Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), an English nurse and statistician who developed original modes for presenting data; Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-91), a Russian mathematician who worked on analysis and mechanics and was the first woman appointed to a full professorship in northern Europe; and Emmy Noether (1882-1935), a German mathematician who made far-reaching contributions to the fields of algebra and topology.

As education and wider society gradually opened up to women during the 20th century, more women were able to study mathematics. However, gender differences in examination attainment and participation persisted. These have been the focus of considerable attention since the 1970s when the education of girls and women became a focus in the West due largely to the influence of the second wave in the feminist movement. A range of organizations developed to address this issue, including the International Organization of Women and Mathematics Education, European Women in Mathematics, the Association for Women in Mathematics (U.S.), the Gender and Mathematics Association (UK), and the Ada Byron Organization (Spain).

More recently, the push to increase women's participation in mathematics has moved into the mainstream as part of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, and in many Western countries, as part of the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) agenda. In current policy, mathematics is seen as central to national competitiveness in the context of the new global knowledge economy. Within this, the promotion of women in mathematics is a route to addressing the decline in participation in the subject and to producing sufficient mathematically qualified workers to service the economy. Both in these policies and in feminist interventions, mathematics is viewed as a “critical filter” controlling entry to high-status educational and employment opportunities and to a range of cognate fields such as engineering, physics, and computing.

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