Title IX for Science!

So, while many women are now professional biologists and doctors and psychologists and sociologists and lawyers and politicians, they don't represent a large percentage of physicists, engineers or computer scientists.

Some are suggesting using Title IX to fix this. On the one hand, Title IX is a law about equity in education. All education, not just sports. And I do believe that computers would be better if more women were in the field. And I believe women are just as able to do physics and math as men are.

But while sexist coworkers are still a problem, it does seem clear that there is a natural difference in interest between women and men. There's anecdotal evidence that testosterone makes math interesting. And left to their own devices, women choose socially relevant fields to the exclusion of computers and physics.

I think quotas are problematic. Some make the argument that it would appear that women are being put into programs they're not capable of getting into without affirmative action, leading to worse sexism and discrimination.

I personally suspect that the problem is one of interest, and we need to change how we teach physics and math and computers to make the applications clearer, and to make the tasks more relevant to life. That's how we make science, all science, and all learning in general, interesting to girls. We haven't done a good job of it yet. We can, and we should.