The Guardian’s alt-text here was “girls science math.”
“Wow! We’re science and mathing! We’re science and mathing SO HARD!”
A few people have asked me to weigh in on the Guardian’s recent foray into SCEINCE JOURNLISM, “Girls and science: why the gender gap exists and what to do about it.” With its discussion of nature, culture, science and female gender roles, it is scandalously encroaching on my turf. There’s nothing I love more than a rousing discussion of How To Get More Girls Into Science! And yet, the article seems calculated to enrage pretty much any female scientist who reads it, with suggestions for getting girls interested in science that include “use lots of bright toys and colors!” and “have her cook!”
The author, one Emma G Keller, uses the word “domestic” four times. She asserts that the gender gap in the STEM fields can be closed by getting girls to bake more cookies.
Lady-science should always be performed in pairs, because females are better at socializing and giggling than males are.
Click to read more, but pour yourself a 1950′s drink first.
You know what, The Guardian? I’d like to know what your problem is. The entire article seems like it’s trying to bait me personally! I mean, Emma-G has done her absolute best to learn nothing from the “Science: It’s a Girl Thing!” debacle, offering advice like:
- “Shopping is filled with math problems, particularly if your daughter wants something that is too expensive.”
“This is a really great way to encourage girls to identify with a positive role model!”
- “Never tell her the answer. Ever.”
“COWER IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE GREAT UNANSWERABLE HORRORS OF THE ABYSS, YOUR MIND BUBBLING WITH QUESTIONS THAT YOU DARE NOT SPEAK, AND KNOW THAT I WILL DO NOTHING TO HELP YOU. THERE ARE NO ANSWERS, MAMMAL. NOW BAKE, BAKE LIKE THE LITTLE FETUS T̛͇̰̯͗̊ͣ̉̂̚H̅ͣͩ͗̃Ą̤̱͌̏̾́Tͬ̎̎͌̆̓͛ͅ ̥̲̱̻̾ͧͥ̚Y̧̹̖͓ͫ̅̉O͇͇̬̱͚ͯ͆ͯ͋͒ͣU͉̻̱̻͆ͩ ̞̪̱̠̣̬͔̒̆͌͐͆A͓̤͌R̷͈̖̜͍̝̯̾ͩ̈E͒̉͐̄ͤ̐”
- “Keep doing jigsaw puzzles, even when she seems to lose interest.”
“Because women’s lives are all about forcing themselves to do things that they HATE. So make her wash dishes with you while her brother and father play games that are actually fun!”
- “Scientific theory fires her imagination when connected to current or domestic affairs, or when she can empathize.”
“This puppet represents Imaginary Numbers, and Sally’s shitty dog thing represents the Economic Theory of Mercantilism. WE HAVE NO IDEA WHAT WE’RE DOING”
- “Make your domestic scenario more mathematic and scientific.”
“Yup, this is LITERALLY what Emma G Keller of The Guardian told us to do! Mathematic isn’t actually a word, though, is it, Mommy?”
“SHU̢T͏ UP, I̡ ͡D̡ON͠’T̵ ̡AŅS̛W͡E͘R ͜Y҉ÓU͞R̴ Q̀U҉ES͏TION͘S”
- “Encourage the same kind of collaboration in your sleepovers or birthday parties. Have the girls cook dinner, or bake cookies or tie dye t-shirts together.”
“Why yes, this IS just like having a scientific paper scooped at a conference composed of 75% old white men! Mommy, I’ve learned a great lesson about collaboration today!”
- “Never accept language such as “I can’t do this” or “I’m bad at math”"
“T͞h́e͏ loss of͘ a̸u̴t͜o̵no̴mo̧u͜s iden̢t͟i͡ty is ͡a ̵del͡íc̡i̢ous͟ ̡t͡hińg͞ to̢ ́the ͡d̴aem͏on ̵G͟i͏lgamot͠h͏e͏r̀”
- “The numbers of females entering medicine is increasing every year with women attracted by the empathic nature of medical science.”
“Yeah, I’d have to say that it’s the empathic nature of medical work that attracted me to my profession. That and the love-starved hotties rolling around in their underwear. And the porn.”
Why does the Guardian do this to me? I think they’ve teamed up with the Daily Mail, forming a coalition “ScIenec JOurlanism” campaign just to torture me. I must have missed something, or pissed one of them off somehow, surely! Who was it, though? Was it the Guardian’s science history blogger, who told me “not to be too controversial” if I didn’t want to get rape threats? Or was it some more subtle cosmic crime? And now that we’re staring glumly into the bottom of our sherry glasses, resigned to living in a world where all of our accomplishments must be viewed through the pink-tinted lens of Living While Female, how can we continue living our lives?
Well, Friend of Blog Laura kindly linked to a response piece, also hosted by the Guardian, which may yet give you a little spark of faith in the publication, if such a thing would help your weary heart. “Boys and Science: The Gender Gap and How To Maintain It” is actually very funny, and I am very grateful to the lovely Laura for sharing it. The article contains some great tips to teach science to boys:
As well as teaching them about science, there’s a chance they’ll be so incensed by the injustice of your behaviour that they eventually become a masked vigilante themselves, like Batman. Everyone likes Batman, and he’s a scientist.
[...]
If the Hunter-Gatherer gender divide holds any weight, then male brains have evolved to think like hunters. Use this to teach your son about biology, taxonomy and the environment by abandoning him in the woods or similar undeveloped area. His hunter’s brain will immediately kick in and ensure his survival, and he will turn up at home some days later, with a much greater understanding of the natural world. He may also be filled with fury and resentment, but that’s not a problem. Scientists don’t need to be happy.
Well played, Dean Burnett.
Anyway, the author-ess of the original article is proving to be quite cranky on Twitter, insisting that anyone who criticizes her must limit themselves to commenting on her article with a long list of ways to actually engage young women who are interested in STEM fields, which rather sounds like a demand that the Internet do all of her thinking for her while driving up her pageviews and making her look popular. But because the House of Glass has explicitly stated that it endorses constructive criticism, I will outline a rough program for Attracting Females to Science.
Step One: Attract Females Into A Lab Environment Using Trails of Snacks.
NOTE: snacks are actually unsafe and inappropriate in a working laboratory environment. lure the female in with lies and false promises instead, as well as sparkly girl-talk about lipstick and pink berries.
Step Two: Attractively Position Haunted Scientific/Magical Objects Within Reach.
The naturally shy female must carefully approach the intimidating scientific tools and equipment in her own time. Do not scare her off with loud noises, non-complementary colors or startling numerical sequences.
Step Three: Without Knowing Quite What She Is Doing, Her Female Intuition Will Lead Her To Select An Artifact Of Great Power.
One pipette to rule them all
One pipette to treasure them
One pipette to bind them all
AND IN THE DARKNESS MEASURE THEM
To every generation, a princess scientist is born. And verily, the princess scientist must journey through many lands, complete many quests, upgrade many weapons, and place many haters to the left before she will be Queen.
Step Four: Now the Female Has Entered The STEM Fields. You Win!
As a passionate scientist, science communicator and tutor, I have seen time and again that haunted pipettes of great power, possessing a piece of the radioactive soul of hivemother Marie Curie, are really the only way to go forward with this. The reason for the gender gap in STEM fields is actually because Curie’s radiation decays over time, so the half-life of female scientists is on the wane. We are actually fading and going West, leaving the earth to the hands of Men.
Thank you for your time.
=====
Director’s Notes:
While we’re on the subject of hot labpunk scienceglam princesses: here.
*snickers* Yeah, that is a really ridiculous article. I think my favourite thing about it is that the article itself implies that part of the problem is that girls are conditioned to think they’re just not as good at science and math because of gender stereotypes… and then all of the advice they give is based on ridiculous gender stereotyping!
Also, I can say that as someone from a country where girls do better at both science and maths at school, THAT ADVICE IS SHIT. *ahem* If you’ll excuse my language.
Whoop! Hi Amy! Sorry, you got in while I was changing the image formatting.
I think that is my very favorite thing about the article too, and I’m glad you said it, because I was too busy gnawing my fist and quietly losing my mind to be particularly coherent about any of this. (SEE EXHIBIT A: THIS ARTICLE.)
<3
And what a useful image formatting change it was – I still saw some of the pictures with a black-ish layer (I know I pointed that out already and then you changed the whole layout and I thought YEAH GREAT and later found out that there were still some pictures looking strange) but now it’s all gone! :O
MAGIC SCIENCE!
That was what made me so mad! I was reading the first paragraph and I was like ‘yes, yes, girls are conditioned to believe they shouldn’t do science, yes’ and then suddenly the urge to SMASH became uncontrollable.
Just, seriously?! IT’S SUCH BAD ADVICE WHY WAS IT PUBLISHED IN THE FREAKING GUARDIAN ARGH WHAT *smashes*
Exactly!
I felt like that gif of Elodie herself, where she first smiles broadly while waving her finger and then she gets more and more aware of what is said there and becomes all sad and/or disgusted.
(I’d like to post it here instead of describing it but I’m not sure about the image/gif html code in the comment section.)
Image code is awesome and warmly welcomed in the comment section! You open with one angle bracket then img src =”url of the image here in quotes.html” close bracket.
Thus
Daemon Gilgamother appears to have Freddy Krueger lurking on the other side of that sheet. Sure, he wants us to think it’s just a shadow, but I’d know that hat anywhere.
Should that make me more or less likely to science? On the one hand, perhaps I have to science to get him to go away. On the other, maybe he will scratch me to death (after coming out of that inevitably-stretchy sheet) if I touch a calculator instead of a dish towel. Help, help, my tender, sparkly lady-brain cannot compu- *boom! fizzle, smoke, etc.*
Seriously, though. That article was terrible.
This wins the award that I’ve just made up for Best Comment of the Day, or perhaps it should just be the award for Weirdest Unexpected Journey Through The Mind of A Stranger (And I Liked It.)
YAY
Belatedly, this made my day! I have all the warm-and-fuzzy feels. You rock.
I am a (female-identifying) Not-Scientist, I left behind magic sciency things at A-Level [frankly there were less explosions and alcohol than I had previously been led to believe] but but….
This article give me the rage. I don’t want to learn about science for the colours and the shopping and the cooking, when I want to do science its cos I want to prove shit for reals (and therefore win arguments) and because I want to know ‘how’ and ‘why’ and ‘what happens if’ because I am like every other 6 year old at heart
I like how she suggests exactly nowhere that you ask your daughter to critically examine and observe the world around here.
Because that would be too much SCIENCE for a little lady who’s going to quit for her husband after she gets the Nobel Peace Prize.
*her, and the she in question is Keller.
Welcome, PoliteMachineGun, hope to see more of you!
Oh dude, I once got that at a grad school interview! Girls who look like me tend to leave scientific fields to get married, apparently. I didn’t get the position because I was “too pretty.”
hahahahaha ohhhh dear. I’m not sure what’s worse, the fact that my “prettiness” basically consists of “giant eyes” and “giant breasts,” therefore rendering 80% of women “too pretty” for science… or the fact that marriage supposedly stops your work? I mean, I married a scientist and somehow ended up with MORE WORK because I am now responsible for all of his grammar.
Of course, I would drop labwork in a heartbeat if I was offered a seductive, enormous, and very, very well-endowed…
… CHARITABLE TRUST IN MY NAME SO THAT I COULD SET UP THE ELODIE U. GLASS FOUNDATION AND MAKE OR BREAK THE CAREERS OF A THOUSAND POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS HAHHAHAAHAHAHAHAHA
As someone who has always loved science but opted to go a different direction out of a sense that I lack the patience needed to do good science, I nonetheless want my daughter to ‘get’ and love science and math, even though her natural inclination seems to be toward the arts and she has learning differences that do not mesh well with conventional teaching methods.
Fortunately she thus far has not perceived science to be too hard,” thanks to ample opportunites for a hands-on approach, and when she started going that way with math, we shopped around until we found a math curriculum that she enthusiastically dubbed “fun math.” She calls it that not because the material is any easier than other approaches, but because the way it teaches works for her. She is as enthusiastic about going to a science camp this summer as she is about theatre camp.
Growing up, no one ever told me “girls can’t do X” or that I myself couldn’t do “X.” I am raising my children the same way. If we could just get the whole society to get on board with that notion, gaps would shrink quickly.
YES YES ALL THE THIS
Please see my wordsplosions on the previous post re: why I love this so much.
Thank you for being awesome for your daughter! Who is also awesome!
I LOVE THE INTERNET TODAY
I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BLOG
Awesome way to teach an arty kid about evolution: take her to a natural history museum and have her draw fairly-closely related animals and guess where they lived! That’s how Darwin did it, basically. That and he also organised some toad treats.
I’m an artsy girl who loves science! My parents encouraged me by helping me find the answers to my why questions, instead of just telling me the answer. There were many brightly colored children’s magazines like Muse and NatGeo Kids and Odyssey involved. I still read the back issues sometimes. They’re really awesome if your kid likes magazines.
Oh man – I loved Muse so much! and old magazines will always be one of the great reservoirs of imagination, I think.
I really didn’t like that guardian piece , it started off okay and then before you knew it you wanted to burn things once the “get them in the kitchen” stuff started. Great response, love the pipette stuff, also glad to have found the other guardian article.
bahaha! It was a tricky progression, wasn’t it? You started off enthusiastically nodding along and you find it hard to pinpoint exactly when you starting to go OMGWTAF.
It was such a nightmare of a piece. Also I was so disappointed that the guardian published it…i kinda half had faith in them….so very misplaced. Did like the send up though for the boys…that at least was funny and meant to be …as opposed to funny in an “oh god, my soul is withering and my eyes melting as I read this” kinda way.
Reblogged this on Note To Self.
haunted pipettes of great power, possessing a piece of the radioactive soul of hivemother Marie Curie, are really the only way to go forward with this
I am inclined to probably-very-awkward exultations of affection to you for this. <3
Awkward displays of affection are how I communicate <3
Just to say Elodie that your skill at choosing 1950′s pictures to illustrate your points blows my mind!
I cannot get over the battleships picture with the mother and daughter doing the washing up in the background. I mean, really now!
The Guardian article just confused me. I started reading the beginning and couldn’t see why it had triggered a HULK-SMASH, then I got a little further, and still didn’t see. Like, those ideas would totally work for getting young girls into science, right? I mean, I did lots of baking as a kid, and I used to question everything all the time and ….Aaah, no!!! Foiled!
Because of course, the thing that got me into science was definitely not the fact that I was by far and away the brightest kid in my class, who loved learning things and getting to understand how stuff worked and whose parents gave her encyclopaedias and science books to read and took her to the London Science Museum at weekends, and generally encouraged her to do well at things she liked.
Oh, wait, I see it now!
You mean that parents encouraging their kids to work hard at the stuff they enjoy, pointing out to their girls that they can too do science and maths, with schools offering careers advice that’s not ‘no, you are only suited to the caring professions or secretarial work’ and female scientists making an effort to reach out to school kids about their work will help convince girls there’s something in it for them. Oh, and taking positive action to support women in the early stages of their science careers and providing routes of progression so that they can reach positions of influence will help redress the imbalance in the STEM fields. I seriously expected so much more of the Guardian, I may even write an email.
Oh man, Nessie, I am writing a post about this right now. It’s actually really hard, since I don’t want to sound bitter or negative, but I occasionally find it disingenuous as a science communicator/role model/feminist to “GET GRRLS INTO SCIENCE!”
It’s like, well, sure, I warmly encourage interests and passions & think that everyone will benefit from a curiosity about science and the natural world, and surely it is a shame that young women are socialized not to be “good at” science and math, and I would like to fix that. And of course I love to talk about my work and get excited and passionate about teaching science.
But. I’m not going to GET GRRLS INTO SCIENCE because HAVE YOU MET SCIENCE? Science-as-she-is-played is noooooot really a fun game. It isn’t supportive; there aren’t any Cool Happy Lady Role Models Who Have Made It. I personally find it rewarding and I enjoy lab work, as well as loving the lifestyle of an academic marriage. I love to come home and chat with Dr Glass about my/his/our work, and I adore that we share this. I would feel intellectually frustrated in a different field. And I do enjoy my day job. But I often joke that to make it in academic science research, you need a fucking wife. Academia is a pyramid scheme and our society isn’t set up to help women do well in it. It’s not the interest that’s lacking, it’s the support.
I’ve got a dozen tabs open with research papers and university statistics that indicate that actually? Young girls are pretty cheerful about science – not equal, but smashing barriers and gaining ground – and women are happy to enroll in undergraduate science programs, with the Life Sciences becoming positively female-dominated. Buuuut they all evaporate before making faculty, because the academic game DOES NOT OFFER FUCKING ROUTES OF PROGRESSION TO YOUNG FEMALE RESEARCHERS. I love the way you put that.
As of right now I’ve written about 3000 words trying to put this right without being too complain-y, but I’d love to add your words too, if that would be all right with you?
Elodie, that would be more than all right. *faints with joy*. No seriously, please feel free to quote me at length.
Because, yep, Science, is… not nice. I can’t think of any other industry where the roulette to rise up the ranks leaves you stuck at the level below middle-management. As for it being a pyramid scheme, I assume you’ve see the Profzi Scheme comic? *headdesk*
You’re so right about the lack of role models too. I do know female PIs, some of whom even have families (kids), but they all make it look like you have to be even more organised than the blokes. Or, as you said, they have someone behind them fulfilling the typical wifely role of homemaker. It’s nice to know that it’s possible but they make me (and I’m assuming others) doubt that I can manage to juggle things anywhere near as effectively as they can, such that I would actually manage to maintain a scientific career.
Somewhat tangentially, what pisses me off most about this topic is that there is so little public discussion about what people do after a PhD if they decide they don’t want to become academics. To plagiarise myself here, “I decided to do a PhD because I wanted to become an academic, but without any real idea of what being an academic actually entails. I didn’t know that only ~20% of PhDs stayed in academia for more than 2-3 years, nor that ~50% would end up in industry, with the remaining 30% being evenly distributed across health, education, business, and marketing” and the final few percent in ‘other’ jobs. Those figures were taken, I think, from this report published by Vitae.
There was also this article in the Guardian, which highlighted the finding that only 12% of female chemistry PhDs even *wanted* to stay in academia, compared to 21% male chemistry post-grads. Which is appalling, frankly. The original PDF is on the Royal Society of Chemistry’s website.
As for WHY women were less likely to want to stay in academia, the Guardian article summed up the report findings pointing to lack of suitable role models and “[the] string of post-docs is part of a career path…that require[s] frequent moves and a lack of security about future employment.” I myself was specifically told to expect to move at least once every two years and that really, if I wanted a to head a lab then I would need to have that all-important Fellowship by the time I was thirty. Nevermind that I would quite like to be settled, married and with kids by the time I’m thirty-five!
So yeah, bitter? Count me in! Can’t wait to see your finished article.
Thank you so much for writing that, because I think I have made the choice to Leave Research. Which is sad, and scary and huge, because this is what I trained for help help help, but I don’t want to work in science the way it is now. I don’t want to work 12 hour days regularly for little pay, pull 6 day weeks for fun and have it assumed I’m only here till I make babies anyway. It’s such a shame, but science-as-she-is-currently-played? Not my game, not in the long run.
I feel I should sing an adapted version of ‘Don’t Cry For Me, Science’ or something…
Oh, I know that song!
Don’t cry for me, Academia!
The truth is I never left you
All through my wild days,
My sad existence,
I kept my promise,
You kept your distance….
If you don’t mind, I might quote you too! If you’d like to chat about leaving research, I’m happy to support you. I think you’ll never, ever ever regret getting a degree in biological science; it’s one of the very best things you can do for yourself, in my opinion. I stand behind that firmly. But I also believe that there isn’t much reason to run yourself over and over into a brick wall for minimum wage, either. I mean, you can do that if you want to – people do! – but a professional Brick Wall Runner gets weekends off.
I would be totally happy to be quoted! To be honest, I’ll still be looking for a job in research when I immediately graduate (and I would actually seriously LOVE some tips on that if I can possibly impose on you), it’s just that I’ve really decided that it’s not for me as a career. Yes, like NessieMonster says, it’s possible to have a decent work-life balance and be a scientist, but it’s HARD, and I frankly don’t love it enough.
I love that pro Brick Wall Runner gets a weekend off…and PhDs don’t.
I’m very glad I’ve done the degree I have – I may well go into genetic counselling, and even if I never use it, it still rocks and was really interesting. But yeah. It’s a tough career.
I’m struggling with the same thing. And seriously, I’ve nearly quit my PhD three times already, which works out as once a year so far. Feeling like my PhD/job is a prison is/was the worst. Which, given that my Year 1 teacher told my parents that I would be going to Uni some day, and that throughout undergrad, I knew a PhD was what I wanted most, is heartbreaking, soul-crushing and mind-destroying.
I am not staying in academia a moment longer than I have to. I’m going to take a year out, doing sort-term jobs in a city I love, until I figure out what the hell I do actually want to do. It is scary as fuck, knowing that actually I have no clue, but also, I can’t fail if all I set out to do is experiment and play.
That said, for anyone else reading, it IS possible to do science as a 9-5 day job, without having to work weekends unless you actually want to, with considerable flexibility over holidays/working hours and part-time-ness. In my group at the moment there is one mother about to come back from maternity leave, two female post-docs with teenage children, and three other post-docs (one woman, two men) with one or more children under the age of three, all of whom are doing the flexible working hours thing. The points are 1) it is possible to have a life-work balance but 2) you are seriously unlikely to get to the top.
It is a complete and utter balls-up.
I’m really sorry that academia appears to be even further away from gender equity than the rest of society. One field which really needs PhDs and other science people is international development. And is reasonably reasonable to work in.
That’s a great point! There are lots of amazing things you can do with a PhD (which is why I still gladly intend to earn one, after all the experiences I’ve had!) and studying science opens up a LOT of doors. Nessie’s comment about our role models not really knowing about job opportunities outside of academia is spot-on. Thanks for this cool information – it’s certainly not a job I’ve ever even thought about! (see?!)
Can I just say that I love this comment section?
You are all so honest and open and I love hearing how you feel about your job and your work and your plans and everything. Not because I think it’s fun or anything that sometimes you find out that things aren’t going to work out as you’d plan, but because I feel like you share something with us here that’s really important. And I love that.
I’m just glad to get it out in the open. The more visibility about these things the better.
Hi there! Do you use Twitter? I’d like to follow you if that would be okay. I’m
undoubtedly enjoying your blog and look forward to new posts.