Simple equation to multiply girls excelling at maths - Sydney Morning Herald

"Simply cutting off their career options" ... girls who decide not to study maths. Photo: Andrew Taylor

When I lived in the inner city, I wanted to send my two sons to the local public high school. But they didn't teach physics. As a mathematician, I understood the large number of jobs where you needed physics; any type of engineering, science, veterinary science and medicine to name a few. I thought it would be limiting their career options if I didn't expose them to physics. So I paid for them to go to a private school where they were taught physics; to give them options.

Girls who decide not to study maths - a number which seems to be growing alarmingly of late - are simply cutting off their career options. This seems ludicrous at a time when we have a dire shortage of female mathematicians and computer scientists in this country. The trouble is, we have fewer role models in Australia to show our young girls the way than they do in countries throughout Asia and the US.

In the US, there is a group called Women in Mathematics, of which I am a member. No such group exists in Australia.

In 1979, I wrote a paper about women in mathematics, and the false perception many people - including girls themselves - have that women cannot ''do'' mathematics. This is not true. Not has it ever been true. Even then, more than 30 years ago, the number of women obtaining maths honours degrees was steadily increasing. I attributed this increase to the consciousness raising due to changing community attitudes to to women. It is no longer unfashionable for women to obtain a mathematical education. But it still hasn't translated into too many high profile female maths whizzes blazing the career path for young girls.

When one of my sons took part in a maths competition at the University of NSW in 1985, there was a question from the audience about why there were not only so few girls in the competition but also so few women involved in the judging up on stage. The university dean asked the audience if there were any female mathematicians in the room. I went up on stage to tell them not only did I have a degree from their university (which they didn't know about) but I was also the first woman reader in combinatorial mathematics in Australia. I was also the first person to teach cryptology at an Australian university (the University of Sydney) and the first woman professor of computer science in Australia. But I did not have many female colleagues. Nor did I have role models. At Parramatta High School where I was a student from 1956 until 1960, all my maths teachers were male. That's not the case today; but it's up to those of us who have had great careers in maths to speak up for its strong points.

Part of the problem is, I believe, there are not too many primary teachers who like maths. I was at a party recently talking to a primary school teacher who said she couldn't do fractions. So I wondered how could she teach them?

It is time for an army of retired volunteers (women especially) to go into our primary schools and high schools, to show young girls in particular how important it is not to give up on maths. We have to show them, via practical application, how important it could be for their future. When I was a classroom volunteer in Canberra, as well as trying to teach binary arithmetic, I took the class on an excursion to see an early computer, which I explained, could do binary arithmetic much faster than humans. The headmistress at the time thanked me, and said she wished she'd had a teacher who had taught her maths like that when she was a child: she might not have ended up hating it.

When I look to cultures like Korea, Japan and China, I see a large number of girls excelling at maths. It is not that they are more clever, there is just an emphasis on rote learning and scholarship we don't have here. They are not better at maths, they are just coached to be better. So maybe the maths plus girls problem is about how we teach it.

And how girls perceive maths. Over the decades, I've often heard girls think boys won't like brainy girls. But brainy boys like brainy girls. Maybe we should all be encouraging each other in the maths department - it's a simple equation that could have a multiplying effect.

Jennifer Seberry is a cryptographer, mathematician, computer scientist, and a professor at the University of Wollongong. She was formerly the head of the department of computer science and director of the centre for computer security research at the university.