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MORE THAN JUST A NUMBERS GAME GDST Life 2022/23
MORE THAN JUST A NUMBERS GAME Girls officially overtook boys in maths last summer, capturing, nationally, more top grades in the subject than boys at both GCSE and A Level. We spoke to three GDST mathematicians, to get a sense of the significance of this, and what the future holds for girls who love maths. Before looking forward, it’s important to understand just how much the study and pursuit of maths have changed over the past 50 years – thanks to the crusading female academics who over the past 50 years have carved out a place for women in a previously very male-dominated world. Even a shallow dive into it quickly shows a culture that venerated the ideas of ‘youthful brilliance’ and ‘individual genius’, and had developed a system to deliver these prized attributes, like elite maths prizes, intense competition (one female
Dame Frances Kirwan DBE FRS, Oxford High School alumna
academic described it as “vicious as a boxing match”), post-doctorate research positions often requiring extensive travel and of course, the age-old bias of recruiting in one’s own image. Not quite the level playing field. Oxford High School alumna, Dame Frances Kirwan DBE FRS, Savilian Chair of Geometry at the University of Oxford and former president of the London Mathematical Society (LMS), talks of the “leaky pipeline”, and believes that the competitiveness in maths has put off girls and women in the past. “Many people get satisfaction from just solving problems, but others like the feeling that they are doing it better than other people, too,” she says. Today, at the University of Oxford, women represent around 30% of undergraduates but, says Frances, “The numbers start to go down as you go up the ranks. I think the number of women in our department is similar today
