Stanford University professor Jo Boaler clearly set out to write a thought-provoking piece on how to attract more women to science, technology, engineering and math. But somewhere along the way, she ended up ratifying some really interesting gender-normative stereotypes that no feminist will ever approve of.
According to Boaler, there’s no such thing as a “math brain,” and humans of both, either, or every gender (there are, of course, more than 30 or something), should be able to grasp even mathematics that require deep thinking.
But it turns out, women may process this type of information at a slower rate, so instructors, she says, should reduce their number of words per minute to below 100 – in other words, if you want women to absorb the basics of math, you need to speak to them more slowly.
This doesn’t make women dumber, Boaler points out, it just means that math education isn’t optimized for the female brain. Where men might learn math just fine in “speed-driven” math classes, women might require the ability to connect with a “deeper understanding” of the subject.
Unfortunately for Boaler, who is, herself, an advocate for women in the hard sciences, math and engineering, her theory is unlikely to win over feminists.
That group is more apt to consider internalized sexism and the fact that math and science aren’t subjective as reasons women don’t succeed in STEM—not that there is any objective difference in how each gender processes information.
And the notion that education could be optimized to physiological differences in biological genders flies in the face of “intersectionality.”