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Fighting Sexism With Math
Numbers don’t care about your gender
When I was an undergrad at MIT, I remember being in a study group one time. I was the only woman in the group. The rest were either white or Asian men.
We were discussing a problem, and I immediately jumped to the right answer.
No one else believed me. I hadn’t done the work to prove I was right.
I waited for about 15 minutes while they did the work, and came to the same answer I had jumped to. I pointed out that I had done so. At first, they scoffed, then one of them said, “Wait a minute, she really did know that was the answer.”
After that experience, I made more of an effort to “show my work” even if I was able to get to the answer without doing so. Since I majored in a heavily math-focused field, engineering, being able to prove my point helped me a great deal.
For example, at one job, my managers constantly gave more credence to a male colleague assigned to the same project even though he was not very bright. However, whenever he and I disagreed, I politely showed the math.
In a male-dominated field, this allowed me to gain credibility.
The lovely thing about math — it doesn’t care about gender, race, religion, or culture. It’s black and white.
