Girls do the maths: a sociological survey on female high school students in mathematic class
"Les Cigales" is a scientific culture initiative aimed at high school girls carried out by the Institute of Mathematics of Marseille.
This project, born from a collaboration between sociologists and mathematicians, helps to better understand gender inequalities in math and provide proposals for reducing them. Every year, a group of researchers hosts around twenty young girls interested in maths for a one-week internship to encourage them to pursue a career in this low feminized discipline.
How effective is this intensive single-sex math week in fostering or strengthening vocations in high school girls? Does it manage to bring towards higher studies in mathematics young girls who would not have chosen them?
For the 2021 edition, the internship has been the subject of a scientific partnership aimed at analyzing and evaluating the project: it has been accompanied by an on-board sociology survey, through questionnaires, interviews, and observations. It has a double ambition: first, it aims to complete the sociological knowledge of the social construction of relationships with mathematics by closely analyzing the period of adolescence and the social relations of gender and class that play out there. Then, it also seeks to evaluate the effects of an action to promote equality in mathematics.