Opinions my own
I’m starting this page to gather my thoughts regarding academic life in the world of mathematicians.
Why I’m fed up with the idea of role models
Yesterday I participated in a nth (n>>1) panel discussion on women and mathematics. Worth to be noted: the majority of the audience was composed of men. Usually it’s more like 80% of women. It feels good to see men interested in the topic. Drawback: we heard a lot more of men than women, as was appropriately noted at the end by a young female colleague.
At some point the idea of having more role models for underrepresented groups in mathematics was brought to the audience by a certainly well-intentioned, white male colleague. Here I’m going to speak only for one underrepresented group: women. A group that represents half of humanity, in case one needs to be reminded.
Role models sustain prejudice
Why should role models be important? Well, in order to point out that yes, it is possible to a be a mathematician and a woman. Wait, what? Why in countries where girls have equal access to education as boys should this need to be said? I think that repeating it over and over can be counterproductive because it sustains prejudice.
A prejudice rooted in not so ancient views that women would supposedly not be able to do mathematics, nor of course being mathematicians. For instance, Henri Lebesgue would stress that women are ‘physiologically unable to absorb the vast programme of men’. Also, Richard Feynman recounted shamelessly in 1966 how he realized that ’The female mind is capable of understanding analytic geometry’ by overhearing female students talking about knitting. I can tell by experience that such views are unfortunately not extinct among current mathematicians.
Until late in the 20th century those women who managed to overcome hurdles were denied proper positions and recognition. Despite her achievements Emmy Noether was never offered a professorship until her untimely death in exile from the Nazi Germany. There are still very few female laureates of the most prestigious prizes. The second ever woman Fields medallist, Maryna Viazovska recently said: ‘’My dream is that women getting major prizes will be a routine event’’.
Role models are intimidating
Let us dream with her. We’re not quite close to reaching that point. Nevertheless, role models like Maryna Viazovska, or Maryam Mirzakhani (2014 Fields medallist) or Karen Uhlenbeck (2019 Abel prize) are quite intimidating.
Let’s take a less famous – at least for the general public – possible role model: Dusa McDuff. In 1991 Dusa McDuff recounted publicly her struggle in her academic life. But wow, everything in her story is intimidating, from her background to the places where she worked and the people she worked with or lived with, and of course her achievements. Would any school-age girl identify with her?
We could multiply examples of extraordinary female mathematicians that are usually presented as possible role models. I will quote only one, whom I have known since she was a graduate student: Laure Saint-Raymond. Take a look at her rocket-like career, not to speak about her private life. Isn’t she intimidating?
As a matter of fact, she’s among the female mathematicians who claim they are ‘very happy’. After she concluded with these very words a panel discussion on women and mathematics earlier this year, I had a short conversation with her.
As it turns out, when stressing she is happy her main point is to avoid deterring young women from engaging in mathematics. She fears indeed that all these panel discussions regarding women and mathematics, let alone action against sexual harassment, be counterproductive.
Role models are a lesser evil
We face a leaky pipeline, and we must find ways to fix it. There are so many steps in their lives when girls and women tend to give up mathematics. Let us as a community cherish and mentor our too few female students and colleagues if we are to increase their number.
In this respect, role models who can mentor the youth in maths departments are a lesser evil. As long as we speak of ‘ordinary’ role models, not those mathematicians having incredibly impressive records.
A pitfall of mentoring is indeed that patronizing is never far away. It can happen that mentors, irrespective of their records, misunderstand their task and behave that way. Most often, mentoring turns out to be needed to counter patronizing or bragging attitudes that are likely based on gender bias.
Instead of fighting against bad behaviour of some individuals we try and train women to stand it, and adopt a more ambitious, more competitive attitude. I think we miss the point in doing so. I agree with the British mathematician Eugenia Cheng that the world of mathematicians should be more ’congressive’ – a word she coined to settle her view.
This situation starts very early in girls’ lives, as has been documented for instance by the French sociologist Clémence Perronnet. Do boys need to look into the lives of laureates or any other mathematician before engaging in mathematics? I doubt so. It should be the same for girls. They are half of the children. There is absolutely no reason why they shouldn’t be interested in and good at maths as much as boys.
Wishes for the future
Let me conclude quoting again Viazovska: ’’Maybe this prize [her Fields medal] could have a positive effect on young women, but what is much more important is what happens early at school — the hard, everyday work that is done by parents, teachers, university professors.’’ So please everybody, let’s work and fix the leaky pipeline!
July 19th, 2022
PS: This text has been translated to Italian and published on MaddMaths!
This text has also been the main material for an op-ed published in French by the Gazette de la Société Mathématique de France 175.