08 | March | 2024 | Mathematics, Learning and Technology

March 8th 2024 is International Women’s Day.
We’ll start with an image from a few years back that have shared before but I think still says it all! Thank you, Steve Lomax – Photo courtesy of the wonderful children of Mansfield Green E-ACT Primary, who shared this wonderful response to the task ‘Describe a mathematician’…

Some useful references on women in Mathematics:

Third Space Learning – 9 famous female mathematicians and their impact – Sophie Bartlet
London Mathematical Society – Success stories, category Women In Mathematics
From the American Mathematical Society: Women Doing Mathematics. Note there is much information on this site. Women@NASA caught my eye.
European Women In Mathematics
MIT highlight MIT Women in Mathematics
From the Cambridge Core blog, this series of blog posts describes many influential women
WISE – whose purpose is to “Enable and promote the participation, contribution and success of women in the UK STEM workforce.”
Girls Who Code is an international non-profit organisation “working to close the gender gap in technology by teaching computer science, bravery, and sisterhood”.
Stemettes is an award-winning social enterprise working to inspire and support girls, young women and non-binary people in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Maths) careers.

From the Advanced Mathematics Support Programme, Find ways to encourage girls to study Mathematics. Note the free resources here, including (for girls and boys!) Maths, Opening the door to your future, a leaflet which explores the post-16 maths qualifications available to students, to help them decide which one is best.

Note also the 30-minute presentation, Why Study Maths, for students and parents/carers which is about the importance of studying maths post-GCSE. It outlines the options available and provides compelling reasons for choosing to take an advanced maths qualification. Slides and speaker notes are available to download. These resources could be an excellent way of helping Mathematics Departments link curriculum learning to Careers, for all students, helping to meet the Gatsby Benchmark on this.

From Lucy Rycroft-Smith back in 2020, see this wonderful collection of books about Maths by women. Lucy chose 13 books, I like the way she has categorised the books, a book for the artist, for the rebel…. Brilliant.

On the subject of books – I do like Libby Jackson’s “A Galaxy of Her Own” aimed at students in Years 1 to 9, which includes fifty stories of inspirational women in space.

For further resources…