Interpreting the Sex of Mathematics Through Gender Roles

Unlike biological sex, gender gives men and women a little bit of certain roles and meaning. Considering the individual’s construction processes as well as the pressure created by the social structure on the individual, the aim of the study is whether gender can be attributed to mathematics, which is an abstract phenomenon. In this view, the study aimed to reveal which gender roles mathematics educators ascribe to mathematics as a result of their socio-cultural structure and experiences. For this purpose, in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 educators. In the study in which the gender of mathematics was determined as the main theme, it was tried to evaluate how the interviewers made sense of gender roles through classroom approaches, documents they used, and their colleagues’ classroom practices. After all, all of the participants attribute certain gender roles to mathematics. While the participants attribute the female gender to mathematics with their organizing, helping, productive and fertile roles, they identified mathematics with the male gender with its strong, unquestionable, cold, and serious roles. As a result, the roles that mathematics educators attribute to mathematics are the meanings they construct by being influenced by the social structure as a result of their experiences in mathematics. So much so that, as a result of this interpretation, mathematics educators portray mathematics as an individual in social life.

Cite this article as: Özdemir Baki, G., & Karakuş Umar, E. (2022). Interpreting the sex of mathematics through gender roles. Educational Academic Research, 47, 1-10.