The other day I was paging through an old math book of mine called "Litton's Problematical Recreations" to see if the problems might be challenging enough for the budding math genius in my family.
But I found myself focusing more on how sex roles have changed since 1971, when it was published. In the book, each word problem has a little woodcut illustration, and guess what? All of the doctors, professors, scientists, athletes, computer programmers, travelers, salespeople, and Scouts are men (granted, there are only male prisoners and safecrackers, too). The only females pictured are a student, a girlfriend, a bad driver, a palm-reader, hopscotch players, an angel, a bride (and later a surly wife), a little girl whose father owns a yacht, and a librarian. There are both male and female hippies and card-players. A group called "League Against Restrictive Diets" contains an equal number of fat men and women, as does a group of six random people (you have to prove that "either three are mutually acquainted or three are mutually unacquainted") and a group of tea drinkers.
It was really quite startling.
No comments:
Post a Comment