COMMENT
PHYSICS: DO GIRLS AVOID IT BECAUSE IT’S TOO HARD?
In late April, head teacher Katharine Birbalsingh commented that girls didn’t like physics and are put off it because of the hard maths
In 2021, 23 per cent of students taking physics A-Level in England were female. Five years ago it was 21 per cent, so any progress is glacial. In April, while giving evidence to the parliamentary Science and Technology Committee, Katharine Birbalsingh, a head teacher and chair of the government’s Social Mobility Commission, was asked why this was, particularly in reference to her own school where only 14 per cent of physics A-Level students were female. She replied that they just didn’t like it and were put off by the hard maths.
The evidence suggests otherwise.
Firstly, in 2021 girls did (a bit) better than boys in both GCSE and A-Level maths. Secondly, the maths in physics A-Level cannot be harder than the maths in maths A-Level – and 39 per cent of maths A-Level students nationally are girls (and 59 per cent in Birbalsingh’s school). So given girls do well at maths when they take it and are more likely to study maths at A-Level than they are physics, it doesn’t follow that it’s the maths that is putting them off. So what is behind the gap?
Let’s start with A-Level choices. When students choose their subjects, they are influenced by three main considerations: what they want to do as a career (including university requirements, if relevant), how much they like each subject at GCSE, and what their friends are doing. An Institute of Fiscal Studies report found that while girls see science and technology careers as well-paid and secure, they are put off by their perception of them being male-dominated, particularly in the physical sciences, engineering and computer science. In those sciences where women are at least equal in career representation, such as medicine, veterinary sciences and biology, there is a high female representation at university. All these subjects place a greater emphasis on biology and chemistry than physics.
“While girls see science and technology careers as well-paid and secure, they are put off by their perception of them being male-dominated, particularly the physical sciences”
This results in a negative feedback loop where girls are drawn towards fields with more women and pushed away from fields with fewer women.
The Institute of Physics and the Institute of Fiscal Studies both highlight that girls are less satisfied with physics teaching at school than the other sciences.
Compounding this issue is that girls are less likely to see themselves as physicists (‘self-concept’) and are also less confident in their ability, despite performing just as well as boys. The reasons for this are many – and go all the way back into infancy. Parents differ in how they judge the ability of sons and daughters in toddlerhood and in how they praise their children.
This carries over into school, with teachers tending to overestimate boys’ ability and underestimate girls’ ability in maths.
The Institute of Physics has warned explicitly about the need for a whole-school approach to avoid lazy stereotypes around girls and physics, as even throwaway comments can have a great cumulative impact on girls as they contemplate their futures. As an interesting aside, the proportion of female computer science graduates in the US dropped from 33 per cent in the early 1980s to under 20 per cent now – a decline precipitated by the introduction of the personal computer, and marketing campaigns aimed almost exclusively at boys.
It is natural that students will be influenced by which subjects their friends are picking. A study from Switzerland showed that even when girls and boys start the school year with similar levels of interest in science, this changes under the influence of their peer group, with girls starting to prefer science less. In single-sex schools, both boys and girls are more likely to choose A-Level physics, but the effect is more pronounced for girls. The mirror problem exists for boys and subjects like English, languages and psychology, which can be seen as ‘girl subjects’.
The above issues are interconnected, but I believe they are made worse by our curriculum. We are unusual in high-income countries by asking 16-year-olds to specialise in three subjects – in most countries, students take at least five and often more until they leave school.
One impact of three subjects at A-Level is that anyone considering science as a career is forced to choose two out of three from chemistry, biology and physics, since maths A-Level is important across the sciences.
A second impact is that as girls perform better across the board at GCSE, they have more options at A-Level.
Physics, maths, engineering and computer science deal with topics from the very nature of existence to inventing new technology that can transform our lives and address society’s biggest problems. They offer entry into well-paid, interesting and diverse careers.
There are solutions (and participation of women in physics degrees is much higher in some other countries), but they involve both addressing differences in how we treat boys and girls from the moment they’re born and thinking again about how early we are asking our young people to specialise in their education.
Christina is a mathematician and professor of operational research at University College London.