The gender gap: what it’s like to be the minority

Junior Neal Singaporia, a member of the yearbook staff, is quite the ladies’ man. So, he said, yearbook is perfect for him.

“I definitely noticed the large amount of girls in yearbook in comparison to guys,” Singaporia said. “And at first I was taken a back because it’s definitely kind of daunting. But I’ve grown to like it because all the guys in the class are chill and having three times the ladies makes me three times the ladies’ man.”

Yearbook does indeed sport a 3-to-1 “ladies” to “guys” ratio, so Singaporia is correct in his mathematical deduction.

Such gender imbalances are common place in many organizations on campus, such as chess club, Heart Skate (female dominated), where there is a conspicuous discrepancy between the number of boys versus girls.

The only guy in guard

Similar to yearbook, boys are rare in Color Guard or Winter Guard. Senior Michael Woodruff coexists with 30 or so members of the opposite gender this year.

Woodruff, who has been in guard for two years, joined because the guard instructor wanted to get more males in guard.

“I wanted to try something new that I thought looked like a fun challenge,” he said.

Although guard is traditionally considered more feminine because of many aspects that focus on dance, this has never discouraged Woodruff, who said that most guards of comparable size have more boys.

“I feel fine about being the only male. Some of the girls respect my courage for joining,” he said. “My love for guard outweighs anyone’s opinions.”

Chicken soup for the worried club president

For club presidents worried about having all members of one gender, senior Sophie Kang’s story provides reassurance.

Kang, who joined Model United Nations as a freshman, said she was the only girl during her first two years.

“I think it’s just the nature of these public speaking extracurriculars that tend to draw more guys,” she said.

“When I first walked in the door, I was a little bit apprehensive. However, once the meeting began I started to feel more at ease because the club was relatively small and casual. I kind of realized that most, if not all, the members were Indian guys,” Kang said, laughing. “But it wasn’t particularly obvious or detracting from the atmosphere of the club.”

Now, Kang said, the imbalance has almost evened out, which she thinks is for the better.
“It’s gotten much better and we have many more girls in our club now … but its no denying that there are more guys than girls.”

Women can’t drive. Does this relate to AP Physics?

A quick google search for “women can’t park” yields 1.13 billion results, as opposed to one as commonplace as “Jeremy Lin,” with 424,000,000. Is it true that women are somehow worse at navigating a vehicle than a man?

Scientists think that early men developed a better sense of navigation because they had to hunt for food. Essentially, those who were spatially challenged either died off or became the hunted.

In a study from Iowa State University, 4-year-old boys were already surpassing 4-year-old girls in spatial ability by a ratio of 4:1. While girls did just fine at seeing two dimensions in the brain, boys had the ability to see a third dimension.

Not surprisingly, women have more car accidents. Women average 5.7 accidents per million miles driven while men average 5.2 accidents.

However, men are far more dangerous driver. Studies show that 73 percent of all people killed in accidents are men.

“I see that in my parents,” said junior Emily Che, who has a twin brother, Eugene. “My mom sucks and actually has had a few accidents. My dad’s faster and has better control, yet he did run over my mom’s foot once.”

How does this relate to AP Physics? AP Physics utilizes a lot of spatial reasoning and ability, and the ratio of boys to girls in AP Physics is around 3: 2.