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Reply 1
If you look at www.unistats.com you can search for "Physics" at whatever university you want, and then it'll tell you the gender ratio. I think normally it's about 70:30 or 80:20 male-female. At all the Physics open days I've been to, there's been more than 1 female, so you probably just got unlucky.
Reply 2
We have 4 in the second year at Bath :smile:
Reply 3
looking at a few unis on unistats, it seems that its 20-25% girl physicists.
my year is probably closer to 10%
There is a serious problem attracting british women into physics and the physical sciences in general.
Yeah, I'd say it's around 10%. However, that 10% are dead cool usually.
Not usually many girls in physics, surely you picked that up from the number who took it for A level a your school?
naa i found that there were girls doing physics at alevels but they tend to go into medicine or physiotherapy
but i dont know y it isnt popular for girls:s-smilie: its wierd
Reply 9
I did an article on this at my school... my sister who's a physics teacher tells me girls may avoid physics because when they're surrounded by males -- who generally tend to be a lot more confident and upfront with their thoughts -- will feel reluctant to show interest; then there's also peer pressure etc... Whereas my physics teacher thinks it's pretty much because females just don't like physics in general

Either way it's such a deep and complex problem :s-smilie:
There's only been a couple of other girls on open days i've been to so far, but to be honest I quite like that. I guess it's just seen as such a dry, analytical subject, which would make it appeal more to boys, whereas girls would usually go for more creative subjects like english lit or art.

I'm going to stop my hideous generalisation now. :p:
Is this why (male) physical scientists eventually end up as the classic 'crazy scientist'? Should I withdraw my application and study history :s-smilie:?
erm you can meet people outside of your own department you know :s-smilie:
True - but i'll be jealous of them all because they'll be studying subjects i can't... :smile: however i was meaning more once people have graduated and are working - work places tending to make up more of a social life than uni courses (at least this is true with most people i know)
Reply 14
There are some girls who study physics. It is a traditionally male dominated subject but i don't think the situation is oppressive to girls.

And i agree with the above statement, girl physicist are usually quite cool :smile:
Reply 15
At all the open days I've been at there have been about 1/3 girls, or maybe 1/4. I know Bristol is proud that they have nearly a 50:50 ratio, or so they say.
apparently it's 23% female here at shef uni... that suprises me though, i thought it was less.
i was at an all girls school where we were encouraged to become feminists and prove we could do anything we wanted better than boys could :p:
still... i ended up in a class of 4 doing A level physics (i think the other class was 6 or 8 people) and out of 120 in our year, only 2 of us went to do physics at uni. Telling people i do physics usually gets a 'why the hell would anyone do that, it's too hard' reaction, but i don't know if that's common to both sexes.


i just noticed that computer science at sheffield has a 94:6 male to female ratio... (my degree began as physics and computer science)
Reply 17
subterfuge
Telling people i do physics usually gets a 'why the hell would anyone do that, it's too hard' reaction, but i don't know if that's common to both sexes.


Oh yeh, unfortunately us guys get it too.
Frodz
Oh yeh, unfortunately us guys get it too.

heh your learnig physics at manchester uni, my auntie in law teaches physics there has myfanwy lloyd taught u yet??
Reply 19
elderberry_fairies
heh your learnig physics at manchester uni, my auntie in law teaches physics there has myfanwy lloyd taught u yet??


From her website looks like she teaches astrophysics lab. I'm a straight physics student so probably won't be taught by her.

Nice to see physics is in the family though :smile:

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