While the disparity between numbers of female and male students in many areas of science has been shrinking, the imbalance among physics students is shrinking at a much slower rate. ”Science anxiety” may be to blame, says Jeffry Mallow, Ph.D, Loyola University. Mallow, who conducts a ”science anxiety” clinic each fall, surveyed 226 Loyola students this academic year. He found young women, more often than young men, described themselves as being anxious. Among the students who expressed anxiety, he found ”a significant difference between females and males in level of science anxiety.” Mallow says female students at Loyola tend to enroll in what he terms ”softer”
sciences to meet their science requirements. ”Nearly three times as many men as women are taking introductory physics as majors,” he says. ”In physical anthropology for non-majors, twice as many women are enrolled as men.”
