No, it’s not a “male chauvinist pig” from the Seventies saying this, it is a Woke feminist.

At her Substack, journalist Toni Airaksinen notes yet another instance of the ongoing war on math. University of Delaware doctoral candidate Casey Griffin’s claim that the “rational thought” and “objective truth” on which it is based are masculine qualities that unfairly shut out women:

“Men have been associated with rational thought, absolute and objective truth, and autonomous and individualist behavior,” writes Casey Griffin, a professor and research assistant at the University of Delaware.

“Given that the U.S. system of education, particularly secondary and postsecondary institutions, was created by men, for the sole purpose of educating men, it is not surprising that it was developed with ‘masculine’ qualities.”

Griffin also contends that rational and objective truth hurts women who want to feel comfortable and accepted in STEM classrooms like mathematics, because such truth is a masculine quality and does not align with women’s more holistic sense of truth.

“Professor Blames Math’s ‘Rational Thought’ for Women’s STEM Struggles,” December 13, 2024

Her paper, part of her PhD program, was published (open access) in Women’s Sense of Belonging in Undergraduate Calculus and the Influence of (Inter)Active Learning Opportunities.

Griffin’s solution, says Airaksinen, is more feminism in math: “I hypothesized that incorporating feminist [teaching methods] into math classes might support women’s retention in STEM. Feminist pedagogies aim to position not just the instructor, but all students, as sources of knowledge.”

The obvious problem is that a “holistic sense of truth” is fine for spirituality but it will not provide the precision that mathematics requires. To be more or less right about what will happen when a rocket returns to the launch pad is not useful. Being exactly right is essential.

But is it true that women can’t get on in math? There have been a number of famous women in math, including computer pioneer Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) and Emmy Noether (1882-1935), developer of Noether’s Theorem.

One wonders what they would have thought if they were urged by an alleged feminist to dispense with rational thought and objective truth because those qualities are supposedly masculine. They could then never be sure that they had actually proved any theorem by the use of logical deduction.

Whatever problems women may experience in math, we can be fairly sure that striking at its heart is not a solution.