Hamilton’s High Level Classes: Divided by Gender

Photo by Cora Kuhlenbeck.

For decades on end, American female students have been pushed to pursue college degrees as well as partake in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics-related activities. Women have been encouraged to challenge themselves as hard as they can in school. After all of this effort, how far have girls come? In regards to education, it is quite possible they have come farther than their male counterparts.

Graph created by Sarah Gerovac from reported data by Hamilton High School AP teachers.

Being a female member of the school’s robotics team, I have experienced many people coming up to me when I speak at one of my team’s community demonstrations. As soon as I ask if they have any questions about the robot, I am told excitedly, “Wow! It’s so wonderful to see girls in STEM,” or “We need you girls to stay involved in math and science.”

On one occasion, I was pondering this fascination that I’ve witnessed members of older generations having with females being involved in such activities, and I thought about the actual structure of my robotics team. Although we are composed of predominantly males, a large portion of our leadership is female, and females have some very crucial positions as far as getting our robot built. Soon after this observation, I noted the obvious gender ratios in my classes- I have only two males in my AP English Language class, and even more surprisingly, only two males in my AP Chemistry class.

Many studies have shown that predominantly females are choosing to take higher level, AP classes in high school. According to a 2018 news report by the Burlingame B, 2.10 million females took an AP test in 2013, which proved a stark contrast to their male peers, as only 1.75 million males took an AP test.

However, there are certainly some AP classes where females are underrepresented. In AP Calculus, female students made up only about one-third of test-takers in 2013, and in AP Computer Science, female students made up only a slightly higher percentage. While these are traditionally male-dominated subjects, this gap shows that there are still high-level classes pursued mostly by males.

Although these classes exist, the fact still remains: there are more females in the United States taking higher-level classes than there are males. I found my own statistics from Hamilton High School’s AP teachers over the past few years, and noted gender trends of students in classes ranging from AP Chemistry to AP English Language to AP Government. Overall, females were more likely to be taking these classes than males. In math-related, government and history-related classes were more likely to be taken by males.

This influx of females taking difficult courses may ultimately stem from the reality that females have, over many decades, needed to work hard to prove themselves as capable human beings. Before 1919, women in the United States did not even have the right to vote and their ideas and opinions had essentially no value. Progress was steadily made from there. Stereotypes of males being likely to be interested in math and science still exist, as evidenced by my firsthand experiences of people being amazed that I, a female, could partake in a robotics program.

Women are becoming more involved in higher levels of classes, even in high school, and are continuing to push themselves as hard as possible to excel in education. With these current growth rates, what can expect of our female students in years to come?