I doubt you have spent time teaching undergraduate physics.
Your assertion that the male students might have dropped out because of the "frou-frou" exercise is easily construed as chauvinistic.
Unless you are a female student in physical sciences or math, I don't think you can really understand what its like to be told, implicitly and explicitly, for most of your secondary and college education, that you are inferior to your male peers.
But here's a hypothetical for you. You come to my company for a job interview.
When you come see me, I ask you what your favorite subject is and I let you talk about it for twenty minutes. Then we start talking about the job.
When you see Bob next door, he immediately starts drilling on topic.
I doubt you have spent time teaching undergraduate physics.
Why do you doubt that? I did a bit of teaching during my PhD, though never an entire lecture course.
Your assertion that the male students might have dropped out because of the "frou-frou" exercise is easily construed as chauvinistic
This concerns me less than whether or not it's likely to be true.
Unless you are a female student in physical sciences or math, I don't think you can really understand what its like to be told, implicitly and explicitly, for most of your secondary and college education, that you are inferior to your male peers.
Ah, the old "unless you belong to group X you're not allowed to comment on this" line. I have nothing for this.
* But here's a hypothetical for you. You come to my company for a job interview.
When you come see me, I ask you what your favorite subject is and I let you talk about it for twenty minutes. Then we start talking about the job.
When you see Bob next door, he immediately starts drilling on topic.
Which interview do you perform better on?*
I have no idea. It's possible that the stress of being judged on what my favourite topic is might cause me to stress out even more. In any case, it's a pretty nonequivalent situation.
There are two types of physics students... the ones who are really at university to learn something else, and the ones who are at university to learn physics. I was in the latter category. Going to my first physics class and having it being a hand-holding exercise instead of a "listen up you pricks, F = ma and you'd better not forget" lecture would have seemed like a waste of precious lecture time. Of course, a female student could easily have felt exactly the same way.
Unless you are a female student in physical sciences or math, I don't think you can really understand what its like to be told, implicitly and explicitly, for most of your secondary and college education, that you are inferior to your male peers.
I'm a woman. My undergad major is "Environmental Resource Management" and I have a certificate in GIS (a 2/3 male field and my classes were all about 2/3 male). I don't know if I am just oblivious or what, but it was the last week of GIS school before it dawned on me that the majority of women consistently occupied the last two rows of seats in class and a few other women floated around the classroom but I was the only woman who usually sat up front (assuming a seat was available up front, which it usually was). I occasionally wonder why I seem to live differently from other women and why I seem to not hear or not take to heart (or something) such "messages". Where are women hearing these messages? (Serious question -- I've wondered about this for years. What am I missing??) Anyone have any thoughts?
I've had practical obstacles to my success that were related to being female. Most of those disappeared with my divorce. But I really don't get where or how such brainwashing occurs for most women (even though it seems pretty clear it does occur).
Unless you are a female student in physical sciences or math, I don't think you can really understand what its like to be told, implicitly and explicitly, for most of your secondary and college education, that you are inferior to your male peers.
I honestly don't believe this is the actual problem. Students of both sexes encounter negative attitudes during their schooling. It's just that women are more likely to take it to heart.
The average male physics student (I include myself in this) has something of an underlying belief that they understand the world better than everyone else. It's an expression of the extreme male brain.
I doubt you would find the same characteristics in male students studying, say acting.
> Unless you are a female student in physical sciences or math, I don't think you can really understand what its like to be told, implicitly and explicitly, for most of your secondary and college education, that you are inferior to your male peers.
I keep hearing this "inferior to your male peers" bit, but oddly enough, when I was in high school, the higher-level math and science classes were mostly populated by girls. The more respectable the class was, the more female-skewed the sex ratio was. I think I was the only person in my physiology class with a Y chromosome. This was in the American Midwest, in a vaguely lower-middle-class area.
To this day, I still don't know what was up with that.
Physiology was just one example. I could just as easily have talked about the highest-level classes my high school offered in math and the physical sciences, but they all had longer, clunkier names. All of them had that same female-skewed sex ratio.
You pose this question as if the answer were obvious, but I'm not only stupid enough not to see it, I can actually think of couple of reasons it could go either way, and they do not feel construed (to me, anyway). On several occasions I've asked people enrolled a couple years ahead of me about their favorite subjects and pet projects and whatnot, and while they were friendly and everything, they were uncomfortable reflecting about their schooling in front of a (relative) stranger, and they grew even more uncomfortable when I tried to coax them to discuss our discipline by talking about my own pet projects or struggles.
On the other hand, It's perfectly normal for interviewee to be nervous and underperform, and twenty minutes of chat on relevant and familiar topic would seem to dissipate impact somewhat.
Your assertion that the male students might have dropped out because of the "frou-frou" exercise is easily construed as chauvinistic.
Unless you are a female student in physical sciences or math, I don't think you can really understand what its like to be told, implicitly and explicitly, for most of your secondary and college education, that you are inferior to your male peers.
But here's a hypothetical for you. You come to my company for a job interview.
When you come see me, I ask you what your favorite subject is and I let you talk about it for twenty minutes. Then we start talking about the job.
When you see Bob next door, he immediately starts drilling on topic.
Which interview do you perform better on?