- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Open University Press; illustrated edition edition (16 Jun 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 033521827X
- ISBN-13: 978-0335218271
- Product Dimensions: 22.7 x 15.4 x 1.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 634,179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
Masculinities in Mathematics
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
"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 reflect on what we are doing and how we can repair the damage."
Margaret Brown, Professor of Mathematical Education, King's College London
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.
About the Author
Heather Mendick is currently working as a research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Education at London Metropolitan University. This book is based on her first big research project, her doctorate, carried out at Goldsmiths College, London, between 2000 and 2003. Before this, Heather worked as a maths teacher for seven years in schools and colleges something she enjoyed and will go back to if the whole academic thing doesn't work out. Apart from educational research and feminisms, her enthusiasms include vegetarian cooking, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and chocolate.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
This book is organized around the question: How do people come to choose maths and in what ways is this process gendered? Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
This book is organized around the question: How do people come to choose maths and in what ways is this process gendered? Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
This is an excellent book and well worth reading if you are at all interested in mathematics, gender roles, or post-structural styles of research.
The book is very accessible and written in an engaging and thoughtful manner; the writer being compassionate to all positions but compelling in her arguments.
The reader is taken effortlessly through the complex theoretical arguments which surround a post-structural take on gender and social research. Her personal research is both interesting and very valuable, with the weight coming from the thorough treatment of the often moving 'stories' of individuals. Mendick's work raises many worthwhile, though some may say controversial, points for consideration - these are issues that are so ingrained in our very nature that unless we are asked to ponder them from such alternative positions - they could easily be missed and accepted as the truth.
For any undergraduate or postgraduate (as I am) this book offers an accessible and enjoyable introduction to this area and style of research. The first section alone gives an excellent introduction to the place and position of gender roles, mathematics and post-structural research - Mendick takes you on a comprehensible tour of the pivotal research and influential thinkers in the field, ranging from Walkerdine and Butler to Foucault and Freud.
For any researcher, this book offers a chance to step aside from the mundane and prescriptive discourse of writing and 'doing' research. It gives you space to think and question what you may perceive to be.
For any teacher, this book gives you a chance to consider the roles we play in the classroom and the way in which we may unwittingly encourage such gender divisions.
For anyone interested in the role of popular culture (or the media) in society, this work offers an excellent take on everything from Buffy to Countdown, and films such as Pi and Good Will Hunting. Thus if you are interested in exploring the constructed hierarchical divide that we position as high and low art - read this! and watch Mendick weave effortlessly between these unnecessary extremes.
Finally, it really is fun to read!!!
The book is very accessible and written in an engaging and thoughtful manner; the writer being compassionate to all positions but compelling in her arguments.
The reader is taken effortlessly through the complex theoretical arguments which surround a post-structural take on gender and social research. Her personal research is both interesting and very valuable, with the weight coming from the thorough treatment of the often moving 'stories' of individuals. Mendick's work raises many worthwhile, though some may say controversial, points for consideration - these are issues that are so ingrained in our very nature that unless we are asked to ponder them from such alternative positions - they could easily be missed and accepted as the truth.
For any undergraduate or postgraduate (as I am) this book offers an accessible and enjoyable introduction to this area and style of research. The first section alone gives an excellent introduction to the place and position of gender roles, mathematics and post-structural research - Mendick takes you on a comprehensible tour of the pivotal research and influential thinkers in the field, ranging from Walkerdine and Butler to Foucault and Freud.
For any researcher, this book offers a chance to step aside from the mundane and prescriptive discourse of writing and 'doing' research. It gives you space to think and question what you may perceive to be.
For any teacher, this book gives you a chance to consider the roles we play in the classroom and the way in which we may unwittingly encourage such gender divisions.
For anyone interested in the role of popular culture (or the media) in society, this work offers an excellent take on everything from Buffy to Countdown, and films such as Pi and Good Will Hunting. Thus if you are interested in exploring the constructed hierarchical divide that we position as high and low art - read this! and watch Mendick weave effortlessly between these unnecessary extremes.
Finally, it really is fun to read!!!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
Math + Gender Studies
2 May 2007
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
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.
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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