Closing Doors Report- A Level Physics

On Monday a report was published about the gender bias of advice and encouragement given to girls to study those subjects traditionally studied by boys. From the Institue of Physics (IOP) website-

Professor Peter Main, Director of Education and Science at IOP, said, “For the first time, the full picture of the effect that gender stereotypes have on students’ subject choices is becoming clear and the results are very worrying.
“We are highlighting these findings to encourage schools to think seriously about gender balance. Leaving these stereotypes unchallenged creates unfair and unnecessary barriers and stops students achieving their full potential.”
The report investigates six subjects – physics, maths and economics, as three that show a male bias; and biology, English and psychology, three that show a female bias.
Although individual teachers are clearly important, the evidence strongly suggests that it is the school culture that determines whether the damaging effects of gender imbalances are overcome or at least reduced.

The statistic which was quoted on BBC 6Music News throughout the morning was "1 girl to every 4 boys studying A Level Physics". I can relate to this, I kicked up a fuss to get a second Physics class to run in the correct options block at high school so I could take both Physics and English! (My other three subjects were Chemistry, Music and Maths- I was part of that great experiment/total f*ck up known as AS levels ;) )

I was the only girl in my class of six.

I did feel like there was an expectation I would never be top of the class or excel in the subject, that I had to prove myself, to my male teachers, to my peers in the class. More was expected of me too- I was a girl- I had an example to set in terms of behaviour and standards, my work should have been tidier and I wasn't expected to easily understand the maths to do the mechanics equations!

The report highlights that it is generally the school environment that affects the choices young women take, and my school, though it had an exemplary exam record and was often highly praised for many things, did have quite arcane views on gender equality. I had been encouraged to study Physics by my lower school science teacher Mrs Gwillam, who unfortunately had left by the time I got to the Sixth Form. She was a wonderful and inspiring teacher who gently took her time to tell me that I would do well at Physics and I shouldn't be put off by the obvious and wide spread male domination of the subject.

I did, as I said before take English Literature as well in my AS (lower sixth) year... a fact that one of my teachers and I used to enjoy joking about since he had gone back to college to study it later on. Although as I progressed through the modules I, more than once, found my exams for these two subjects scheduled in the same date and time slots... statistically the combination of these two subjects is so rare that it's not seen as a problem to the exam boards to sit them in the same period.

That said there are two shining moments of acceptance from my male colleagues which really stick out for me.
Once in the first year when we had a quite frankly dozy newly qualified teacher. One day while he was on a course he left us some work from the textbook. We were already struggling as a group to catch up after his confusing and unstructured lessons, so my classmates were bamboozled by the task and asked me if I would teach them what I understood. I stood up in front of the class and explained the principles on the board to our group. It won me a huge amount of respect from my peers and they began to come to me for help. It was nice... Although they rarely called me by my first name... I was Zig... One of the boys.
A similar exchange happened in our final term... One of our teacher's decided to ask us to bet if we could answer a question using a stack of monopoly money... I stood up and explained an equation from the astrophysics module of the course. The rest of the class were agog... They just couldn't see how I'd worked out the answer so quickly. I was of course a girl... so I was allowed to be confusing... my sex could be used to dismiss my ability as quickly as praise it!

I did for a short time consider studying a combined degree of both Music and Physics as there is a huge and significant overlap in the subject, but it's not a widely offered combination and in the end I was genuinely put off by the male bias I encountered. When I did finally get to study Music I did find that in the first year of my degree I was at a slight advantage to the rest of my Practical Music Technology class in the understanding of how sound is created and recorded. I was also significantly more advanced in my expectations of technology than my arts peers, but by then I was up against a whole new set of prejudices against those who wish to study music and not focus on performance with the goal of becoming famous/professional musicians!

If I had my time again I would go back and apply to study Physics at one of the best Physics schools in the world! So if you're a young woman and you're reading this don't let your school put you off enjoying Physics... you're most probably brilliant at it and you should totally study it. Your brain is just as fantastic and inventive as any man and even though I love The Big Bang Theory physicists aren't all like Sheldon Cooper!