This week, the Fields Medal for
Mathematics was awarded to the first woman ever. This medal is
commonly called the Math Nobel Prize, and is the most prestigious
global award in Mathematics. Maryam Mirzakhani, a Harvard educated
mathematician and professor at Stanford University in California, was
one of four mathematicians awarded the medal this year. Should we be
surprised that it has taken until 2014 for a woman to be acknowledged
with math's highest honor?
Flash back to 1980. I am one of two
women enrolled in the mathematics major in a department of about 100
men at Ramapo State College, Mahwah, New Jersey. I'm 31 years old,
mother of an 9 year old daughter and an 6 year old son. Ramapo
cataloged me as “Returning Adult” because I was returning to
college after marriage and motherhood, to learn to do something other
than secretarial work, the only job I'd trained for since high
school. Curious about computer programming I took an Introduction to
Computer Technology course and I was hooked. With an eye on a good
employment outlook, I quickly enrolled in more computer courses, but
I still needed some advanced math courses for the Math/Computer
Science BS. So there I was, in my final semester, sitting in a
required Abstract Algebra course, trying desperately to comprenend
the incomprehensible, knowing I absolutely had to pass this math
course to graduate.
Defeated, I was about to throw in the
towel and switch my major again when my math professor gave me the
best gift he could ever give me. I asked for clarification of a
concept in class. He turned to me, red in the face, boiling over.
He yelled, no screamed, “Get out of my class! This class is for
men, not for you, and I will not be interrupted by a “girl”
again!” I was horrified, but sat down, literally cemented to my
chair. He stared a minute, shook his head and went back to his
oblivious chalk and talk. But I didn't hear another syllable of his
talk because suddenly the “Rocky” theme song was playing in my
head and kept getting louder and louder!! da da daaaaaaa...!! da da
daaaaaa......!! da da daaaaaaa...!! da da daaaaaa......!! I would
not give him the satisfaction; I decided at that moment I would not
fail.
Through sheer grit and many all-night
test practice sessions, I passed the course, I graduated, and I got
the IBM computer programming job I wanted. Of course naively I
thought I had left behind the 'all male, only girl' computer science
imbalance. I was wrong. When I walked into work on that first
Monday morning, I was one of two women in a department of 100 men –
hmmm.
A recent New York Times Editorial
states that there is “a striking absence of women” in the board
rooms of technology companies and the numbers of women employed in
software programming and computer engineering jobs has actually
dropped since the 1990's high of 34% to 27%. With only a few
exceptions, life at the top of technology companies is strictly a
boy's club and probably will remain that way for a long time. I've
been witness to the imbalance throughout my career in business and in
higher education. Truth be told, way back in 1980, it was another
math professor, also a man, who got me interested in computers. He
noticed I liked algebra and suggested that I take a class called
“Fortran IV”. I signed up, and discovered that computer
programming was like building puzzles in new languages, and provided
me with a challenge I had never experienced before. That professor continued to encourage me through every course where I was most often the only woman sitting in a classroom full of young men.
So if I was successful in my career
choice, I thank the math teacher who encouraged me, but I also thank
the math teacher who was a bigoted jerk. I succeeded because of one,
and in spite of another. Bravo to all the teachers out there who
mentor, teach and model, and boo hiss razz to those who don't.
Congratulations to Maryam Mirzakhani,
for her super achievement, and congratulations to all the rest of us
– the women and girls who continue, even in 2014, to swim against
the tide of outdated opinions about what we should or should not be.
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" I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.! "
-- Maya Angelou --
