Vanilla 1.1.9 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.
I don't think that Ryan meant that you should post this as a question on MO. Rather, the people who would be able to give the best insight are precisely those that aren't on MO so you need to find some other way to reach them.
Not only do I not know the answer, I'm not even sure what an answer should look like. As far as I know, there isn't much explicit sexism on MO, so explanations gravitate towards vague speculation of the form "women find the voting too impersonal." It's probably possible to substantiate such claims, but I doubt I could tell if somebody had done it. For example, I don't know how much to trust things like this: How Women and Men Use the Internet.
Alexander: I agree that there might be some subfield effect. Do you know of any data backing up your claim that alg. geom. and logic have less women than mathematics in general?
and some general comments: there may be a "how women and men use the internet" effect. It would be interesting to know if on other stackexchange sites, women are underrepresented relative to the number of them in the "natural" population from which the site's users would be drawn.
And I don't think that we can safely generalize from data on "how women and men use the internet", even if it's correct, to data on how female mathematicians and male mathematicians use the Internet. As you may have noticed, mathematicians are unusual.
Out of curiosity, have any of you asked your female colleagues about this? I feel like anecdotal evidence is better than no evidence at all.
By the way, if people think that some aspect of MO that the moderators have control over is contributing to this gender gap, we would really appreciate hearing about it. Ob viously, we know it's a delicate issue and would completely respect your privacy.
@Noah, indeed, this was discussed, along with an article for the Intelligencer. Then we all got busy! Anton is writing a thesis and I've been applying for jobs, and we've barely had a chance to talk about MO recently, let alone written articles.
Perhaps "the meta collective" would do better than the moderators at this. :-)
@Ryan: I think it's a bit much to seriously doubt that there is a large gender imbalance on MO. Yes, we do not have perfect information about the gender identities of all the participants, but the amount of information we do have is much larger than in many real-world scenarios. It doesn't take a statistician to see that all available data points to the fact that the gender ratio among active users on MO (i.e., those who register and ask and answer multiple questions) is at least 10 males for every 1 female. The phenomenon is painfully clear.
I have asked female colleagues about MO and a lot of them (the younger ones, at least) are well aware of its existence and look in on it from time to time but simply don't have the same kind of steady-bordering-on-addictive interest of the typical (i.e., male) MO user. I have commented to several of them that the whole SE platform seems designed to appeal to the competitive impulses of men in a way that it simply does not to women. (I should say that none of them have replied, "Oh my god, you're absolutely right!" They usually say something like, "Hmm, I'm not sure. Maybe.") There is a lot of research on the different ways in which men and women communicate: for instance, the linguist Deborah Tannen has spent most of her career studying this topic, and along with a lot of other people I read her first book on the subject ("You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation") soon after it first came out, and it had a big impact on me. But you guys (sic!) know what field I'm a professional in, and it's not linguistics, psychology, sociology or gender studies, so it does not seem worthwhile for me to continue to air my own quasi-empirical quasi-academic impressions here.
Here is some data I would be interested to see: do any of the SE sites have a much larger percentage of female contributors? Which ones? (moms4moms.com may in fact be more than 50% female, but the immortal Jon Skeet is still one of the highest rep users on the site!)
Here are a few scattered thoughts on this subject.
First, I'm skeptical of the suggestion that the competitiveness of MO is a major factor in discouraging women from participating. I'm skeptical precisely because MO really doesn't feel competitive to me. However, it's possible that's the case because there's relatively little competition on MO in the fields in which I post answers, and it feels more competitive in algebraic geometry, for example.
Second, I think the gender imbalance on MO is just part of a larger pattern of how male and female mathematicians use the internet. (As Michael Lugo pointed out, this is a somewhat different from the better-studied issue of "how men and women use the internet".) As far as I can tell, female mathematicians, as a group, are much less active on blogs than male mathematicians. (The last time I said this on meta.MO, someone posted a link to this blog, and since then I've started following this blog, but I think the point stands.) I suspect this larger phenomenon can be at least interpreted, if not exactly explained, in light of the research Pete mentioned about differences in how men and women communicate, but I'll follow Pete's lead and stop with that observation.
Third, it's worth keeping in mind that the vast majority of mathematicians of any gender don't actively use MO. This means that getting useful anecdotal evidence, as Qiaochu suggests, may be more difficult than it sounds -- one should also be asking male colleagues about MO, and it is likely to take a long time before one gets enough answers to perceive any gender-correlated pattern.
I find the question a little loaded. One could just as easily ask why so many male mathematicians choose to be active on MO. It's being read in a loaded way too. @Qiaochu Yuan suggests we answer this question by asking women. There are two sides to any perceived imbalance.
I think the simultaneously social, and yet impersonal nature of communications on forums seems to suit many men very well. Suits me well.
Dear Sigfpe,
At least in the United States, there is a traditional gender imbalance in mathematics (with many more men than women), which was created in part by the explicit discouragement of women pursuing advanced mathematics. In light of this state of affairs and its history, and in light of the fact that many mathematicians (although perhaps not all) are interested in eliminating this gender imbalance, I don't think the original question is all that loaded, and I don't think that the statement "there are two sides to any perceived imablance" is a very helpful analysis (even if it is literally true).
Best wishes,
Matthew
Ryan- The 141 highest reputation users contain no users I have any reason to believe are female, and all but 2 or 3 for whom I wasn't reasonably sure were male based on pictures, names or personal acquaintance. In fact, only one of 300 highest reputation users is someone I believe is female (of course, I could be wrong; some of those users are anonymous and I don't know their gender). Obviously, users who use the site less often still count, but this makes a 10:1 ratio seem pretty optimistic.
@Emerton This phenomenon is not simply about the "traditional" phenomenon of gender imbalance in mathematics as the premise of the original question is that we are looking at a male/female ratio on MO that is higher than that in the world at large. Additionally, MO might not be representative of mathematicians at large. It is a subset made up of those who like to make active use of online tools. I believe it might be just as reasonable to ask why men like to interact this way as ask why women might not.
Izabella Laba has responded to this thread on her blog: http://ilaba.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/why-im-not-on-mathoverflow/
Here is a very interesting comment by Izabella.
To me, the “reputation” system looks like a formalized version of the same informal evaluation systems that social groups have been using forever. If a woman has noticed in the past that she is being taken less seriously than her male colleagues, she’ll expect the same on MO, for example that she’ll get fewer points than a male colleague for the same knowledgeable answer. The point system encourages a competitive mindset, and I think that mathematicians tend to be competitive by nature. If you’re female and expect to start with a huge disadvantage just for this reason, you may well be discouraged from participation.
This of course is based on general life experience, not on anything that has actually happened on MO. I’d love to see MO develop a reputation (heh) for treating women fairly.
Dear Daniel,
I have no opinion on whether the sociology of MO is interesting for a sociologist, but what I might call the practical sociology of MO is of interest to (at least some) mathematicians, insofar as it relates to more general issues of participation in mathematics. The diagnosis and solution of problems of participation in mathematics are (in my view) not ones that we should ignore until such time as a professional sociologist comes along and prescribes a solution. Rather, they are problems which are of interest to mathematicians, any solution to or amelioration of which is likely to come from mathematicians (because no-one else is has much stake in the issues, or is in a position to do much about it, other than perhaps university administrations and granting agencies, but surely their influence is second order at best).
Regards,
Matthew