Becka Wall, Program Assistant

Yesterday a Taliban member in Pakistan approached a school bus, asked for 14 year old student Malala Yousufzai, and when a classmate identified her, he shot her in the head and neck and injured two others. Malala was targeted for speaking out against the Taliban for murdering locals and closing girls’ schools at a time when the government seemed to be appeasing the extremist group. She is in critical condition, and doctors believe that her wounds aren’t life threatening. At this time, she appears to be doing well after having a bullet removed from her head.

Malala was featured in a New York Times documentary a few years back, telling reporters that she wanted to be a doctor; her father encouraged her to go on to become a politician. In 2009, she kept a diary series for the BBC, discussing her fears about going to school and retaliation from the Taliban:

“SATURDAY 3 JANUARY: I AM AFRAID

I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taleban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat. My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taleban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools.

Math is important. It seeps into our everyday lives in ways we don’t even think about. We all – well, some of us - know the important feeling of triumph after successfully creating and sticking with a budget (when that happens, I personally feel like draping a flag over my shoulders and doing a victory jog around my neighborhood), or decoding important statistics on our own. Not to mention that science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers are relatively well-paid, and more women in STEM fields could help close the wage gap between men and women – women make only 77 cents to every dollar men make.

Too many girls steer clear of STEM courses, beginning at an early age. Even though women make up a majority of college and graduate students, only 19% of physics bachelor’s degrees and 16% of master’s degrees in engineering and engineering technologies have gone to women. Girls are presented with a stereotype that girls won’t do well in math from an early age, and 57% believe that they would have to work harder in a STEM career to be taken seriously. Popular chains among teenage girls create t-shirts that advertise that the wearer is “Allergic to Algebra”. Even teachers have bought the hype. High school math teachers tend to rate female students’ math abilities lower than those of their male peers, even when test scores are comparable. In universities, women face blatant sexism and uncomfortably pervasive objectification of women in their departments.

So how do we fix this? Well, for a start, we need more female role models and mentors. In 2005, women made up only 19% of all full-time math faculty! Which is why I’m thanking god for Winnie Cooper.