Body consciousness: stereotypes ¡®still hold back female scholars¡¯

Stereotypes about attractiveness and androgyny still hold back the progress of women in the sciences and mathematics, a scholar has argued.

Eva?Maria Kaufholz, a PhD student at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, has traced these stereotypes back to literature on the?Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya (1850-91), the first woman?to obtain a full professorship in Northern Europe.

Early biographers claimed that Kovalevskaya¡¯s achievements were partly spurred on by her jealousy of a more attractive sister or that her allegedly androgynous looks reflected the fact that, by excelling in mathematics, she had broken down a ¡°natural barrier¡± between the sexes.

Later writers, keen to present her as a role model, assured their readers that the professor at what is now Stockholm University was ¡°the full package¡± and ¡°the best-looking mathematician of either sex¡±.

Ms Kaufholz said that similar stereotypes can still be found. Examples were pink ¡°I¡¯m too pretty to do maths¡± T-shirts and the online comments when the late Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman to win the Fields Medal in 2014 (¡°Congrats! She¡¯s very beautiful¡± and ¡°That¡¯s a female? She has more testosterone than I do¡±). Equally pernicious was the continuing ¡°gender bias in the attribution of creativity¡±, based on the age-old assumption that women can be competent scientists but never truly creative.

The stress on looks and androgyny, however, had also led to what Ms Kaufholz described as ¡°a counter-movement assuring us that even female mathematicians and scientists can be sexy¡±. She cited Marie No?lle¡¯s 2016 film?Marie Curie: The Courage of Knowledge,?in which the Nobel prizewinner ¨C described by one reviewer as ¡°so hot, she¡¯s radioactive¡± ¨C devotes most of her time and energy to a passionate affair with a married man.

Although Ms Kaufholz acknowledged that such portrayals ¡°have feminist interests at heart and want to show that you don¡¯t have to be ugly to be a mathematician¡±, she was opposed to their continuing stress on ¡°body consciousness¡± rather than achievement. Presenting her research at Imperial College London earlier this month, she ended her talk with a montage of photographs showing colleagues of many different shapes and sizes in order to demonstrate that ¡°being a female mathematician is not connected with the way you look or present yourself¡±.

¡°You wouldn¡¯t have a movie where Albert Einstein is chopping wood so we are sure he¡¯s a man,¡± Ms Kaufholz pointed out. ¡°Nobody has ever considered that to be necessary. But we need to assure viewer that [female scientists] are women. And that can only done in a sexual way.¡±

matthew.reisz@timeshighereducation.com