CAMBRIDGE — Heads bowed, faces focused on the equations in front of them, hundreds of girls worked furiously on a series of math problems in an MIT lecture hall on Saturday morning.
But tens of thousands of dollars in prize money was not the only thing on the line.
Now in its sixth year, the Math Prize for Girls competition is aimed at deflating gender stereotypes that organizers say dissuade young women from entering technology- based fields. Started by the Advantage Testing Foundation in 2009, this year’s contest brought about 270 girls in grades 7 through 12 from around the United States and Canada to MIT. Zoe Feng, 18, a high school senior in Troy, N.Y., competed in the Math Prize for her second time. “It was intense, but also really fun and creative,” Feng said, adding that “the test requires you to think and approach problems from different angles.” Originally from Hangzhou, China, Feng came to the United States for high school. To her, being a girl never seemed like a disadvantage when she wanted to pursue math. Kaiming Sun, 46, of Belmont, whose 15-year-old daughter, Stephanie Zhang, is a participant this year, said the event helps reassure girls that they can be “equally as good as boys.” A female-focused math event is needed to bridge the gap between men’s and women’s involvement in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, also known as STEM, organizers said. “Girls perform as well as or better than boys in math classes in grade school, but there is an alarming drop-off in the number of young women who study math in college and pursue math-related careers,” Ravi Boppana, the competition’s cofounder and “There’s not a bunch of ‘boys can do better’ in China,” Feng said.
41
Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker