Math, Science and Japanese women

I was never a Rikei type of person. “Rikei” (理系）is a Japanese word meaning “scientific” basically. It became very clear to me that I wasn’t very scientific by the time I was admitted into one of the top public high schools in my town. The goal of my high school is to increase the number of students being admitted into the top national Universities throughout Japan, so they had their own agenda even before we started our curriculum.

Even in the West, Science and Engineering are heavily male dominated. Are men better at math, computer, biology..science? I don’t know but these fields are typically male dominated and despite the effort the government is putting to increase the opportunities for female scientists and engineers, it still has a long way to go. I work with these people everyday so I know how competitive these fields are..

and they are not at all woman friendly..

I am not trying to make any excuse about my poor performance in math and science in high school, but unrealistically rigorous curriculum and heavy discrimination against women definitely did not motivate me to study harder to compete with those men.

In Japanese schools, there are several homeroom classes. Basically once a year, usually in Spring Semester, school forms several homeroom classes for students and we will do everything with these classmates assigned to the same class everyday..until the next March. Unlike the west, students don’t usually move from classroom to another classroom. Teachers come to our classroom so we were literally stuck in this room.

And in our junior year, our high school started to pressure us more and made us take the internal exam. The reason? is to determine who should go to the “advanced” classroom mainly for future scientists and engineers. They selected about 45 people total and there were less than 6 girls in the class. These people had to study in the same room dominated by male students and teachers were super harsh to female students too. They had to even go to the PE class together..that alone, I wasn’t very comfortable.

I wonder if I would have been more interested in learning Science if my teacher was willing to motivate women. They didn’t seem to care less about training women because their focus was the top male students usually. If female students happened to be one of the top science class student, it would have been sensational and teacher would feel a little awkward around that person. These women seemed to be all good with sports, smart..and I wasn’t very athletic, can’t really think with my left brain..so even if they offered me to join the “science” class, I don’t think I would have survived..don’t even know if I would want to spend the last two years of high school in misery of being stuck in a room full of male students.

I think men are better in math, computer science, engineering and science in general are incorrect. Maybe they are more likely to use their logical side of the brain more than women and also they are reinforced by the environment and the society to take the risk and jump into the competitive fields at a young age. Women are often told to do something more mellow and we can go to college but the goal is to marry and stay at home. That was a traditional way of Japanese thinking so women in Japan were definitely disadvantaged in science. 

Giving incentives to businesses to hire women may help in the long run..more women gain the confidence they needed back and return to work, Japan may still have a chance to recover from this recession.