As the greatest minds in mathematics prepare to honour the latest Fields Medal laureates, some are wondering about the dearth of female winners and how to fix the problem — starting in school classrooms.
In a famous passage from his memoir, A Mathematician's Apology, GH Hardy claimed that mathematics, "more than any other art or science, is a young man's game".The medal is widely regarded as the maths equivalent of a Nobel Prize, but only one female mathematician has won it in 86 years
The Fields Medal, the so-called maths Nobel, is awarded every four years, with next week's ceremony to be held in Finland after being stripped from St Petersburg because of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. "Sixty per cent of undergraduates in mathematics [in Australia] are men, and 40 per cent are women. But by the time we get to professorial level, 91 per cent are men," said Amie Albrecht, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of South Australia."But, along the whole pipeline, including at high levels, we tend to … underestimate women's and girls' performance and contribution.
Dr Albrecht said women battled not only "unconscious bias" but "structural barriers" at various stages of their careers.