Masculinities in Mathematics (Educating Boys, Learning Gender)

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"We desperately need more people with good mathematical qualifications to fill many posts in numerate occupations, yet the numbers choosing to continue studying mathematics have fallen over the last 10 years. This book is important as it investigates how mathematics is aligned with masculinity and hence is not attractive to a significant part of the population. It is also challenging, scholarly, and a thoroughly good read. It reports the results of carefully designed research on gender and choice, and includes some fascinating individual case-studies. It should make us all reflecton what we are doing and how we can repair the damage." Margaret Brown, Professor of Mathematical Education, King's College London "The book speaks to me as one of those texts that will become seminal in mathematics education. It is original, refreshing, and despite a complicated plot, points to some ways forward. It is engagingly written, if at times perhaps a little bit no-nonsense in tone. It will be of interest to teachers and teacher educators, as well as providing a theoretical stance that should inform future research."
British Educational Research Journal The study of mathematics, together with other 'gendered' subjects such as science and engineering, usually attracts more male than female pupils, particularly at more advanced levels. In this book Heather Mendick explores this phenomenon, addressing the important question of why more boys than girls choose to study mathematics. She combines new research with an original theoretical approach to argue that 'doing mathematics is doing masculinity'. The book illuminates what studying mathematics means for both students and teachers and offers a broad range of insights into students' views and practices. In addition to the words of young people learning mathematics, the masculinity of mathematics is explored through historical material and cinematic representations. Heather Mendick discusses the ways in which the alignment of mathematics with masculinity creates tensions for girls and women doing the subject. These tensions are sensitively explored through interviews with young men and women, to show how doing mathematics fits or conflicts with their gender identities.
Finally, the book explores the implications for teachers, including ways to promote gender equity in mathematics education. This is key reading for students on courses in gender and education, mathematics education, gender and curriculum, and social justice.

Masculinities in Mathematics (Educating Boys, Learning Gender) Review

Scholars have moved away from discussing "masculinity" to discussing "masculinities." Usually that means discussing cultural characteristics of different types of males: older vs. younger, gay vs. straight, white vs. of color, etc. Here, however, the author deems mathematics as a masculine activity and thus she speaks for males and females performing different masculinities. The title may lead some to think this book would entirely concern males and that is far from the case.

The author thinks multidirectionally. She asks how math shapes women and also how women shape math. She troubles, she would say "she queers," the idea of "choice." She seeks to prove that just because females opt out of math doesn't mean it was not a forced decision.

This book may frustrate readers. The author begins by analyzing students at three different schools and then drops them. There are several chapters that have nothing to do with her interview pool. The author wants to destabilize binaries, what Wes Crichlow refers to as "Manichean" concepts. Still, many chapters drop that theme altogether. As an American, it's still difficult for me to understand A levels and O levels and all that. But if you translate her concern into, "Why do so few women major in math during college?", you'll understand her ideas. The author does a lot of gleaning. She'll describe something she observed and then apply all kinds of theory to back it up. So many feminist writers build off of Adrienne Rich mostly or alone or Simone de Beauvoir mostly or alone that it may jolt readers the way this author pulls concepts from everywhere and the kitchen sink.

To her credit, the author basically says, "Math is just as racialized and classed as it is gendered, but I'm focusing on gender here." When discussing Black students, she brings up Black scholars. However, many of her subjects were Asian and she says close to nothing on their ethnicity. I wonder if Asian-American studies has really impacted this nation in a way that an equivalent hasn't been achieved in Britain. When I took calculus, all the female students were Asian and they composed half of the class. Because their fathers or both parents were doctors, they wanted to be doctors too and knew math was a requirement to that goal. Taking advanced math didn't damage their feminine identity in the slightest. It's a bit troubling when you have a multiracial pool, yet only the Blacks are deemed racialized.

This book is not an easy read. Even I'm surprised that I read this while not being in some fancy graduate school. As much as the authors critiques the idea that seeing more female mathematicians would bring more women into the field, I think the author acts as a role model in that she can conquer both math and gender studies at a time when many would think even intelligent people can only focus on one or the other. You have to be a very sophisticated reader to understand this text.

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