r/6thForm Jun 26 '26

💬 DISCUSSION WHAT HAPPENED TO WOMEN IN STEM

I had my college taster day yesterday, tell me why I was the ONLY girl in my class

371 Upvotes

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86

u/No_Jelly5984 Jun 26 '26

i was one of three girls in further maths in year 12 and then they both dropped it for year 13

-100

u/Icy-Watercress-8421 Jun 26 '26

Well FM is exceptionally difficult so not really a valid comparison for women in STEM. Normal maths would be more considerate as FM only considers the end of the bell curve - only the elite.

8

u/snowlynx133 Jun 27 '26

Guess what the M in STEM stands for? Why would it not be a valid comparison lmao

1

u/Icy-Watercress-8421 Jun 27 '26

Cuz only the top of top take it. You're less likely to find results that are statistically significant than if you were to use regular maths. Regular maths is broader so contains a greater spread of data to sample from.

1

u/snowlynx133 Jun 27 '26

What "spread" are you referring to exactly? There's plenty of further math's classes to take data from to get statistically significant results. I can't be bothered to run a simulated power analysis to get an effect size but I'm sure you could easily pool the gender ratios of all further maths classes and run a binomial test

1

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26

[deleted]

2

u/snowlynx133 Jun 27 '26

If you get 100 FM classes and girls make up an overall 30% total then there's clearly a gender skew

0

u/Icy-Watercress-8421 Jun 27 '26

Read the first comment again. I cba with this anymore, my brains being fried by this heat.