A study was released earlier this month, finding that American students are far lacking in science compared to the rest of the world. Nothing shocking there really. But you know what sucks? It looks like we may really need Danica McKellar’s books more than we thought. The study found that while both boys and girls are lacking in math, girls are much harder hit:
In elementary school, girls do as well as or better in math than boys. In middle school, Mertz and her colleagues suggest, girls with an inclination for math begin to lose interest and fall behind, mostly due to peer pressure and societal expectations. Throughout middle and high school, social stigma and lack of appropriately challenging educational opportunities for the mathematically precocious becomes a hard reality in most American schools. Consequently, gifted girls, even more so than boys, often camouflage their mathematical talent to fit in well with their peers.
It seems that this is making it’s way deeper into the norm. Math, and by extension, science, is more for boys. Our culture reinforces it more than anything. Take this example of science kits that are marketed towards kids that elle found. Girls need science disguised as a spa kit, while boys get funky and fun science experiments. This is just one example of an endless stream of crappy girl toys, but I best switch gears, since this isn’t my focus…at least not this time.
Now if, after bucking the norms, they grow up into smart young women who embrace their geekiness, smarts, and femininity, then they have a tougher time. Being judged on their looks, like when they are young and attractive, is just one issue. Like the Nerd Girls, who focus on being smart with embracing their nerd aspects and femininity. The Newsweek article published on them was atrocious, with the two women authors playing up the sexiness aspect, when that’s not what they are about.
Once women graduate, get into ar career, and become successful, then it seems that the criticism increases. Take some recent examples.
A recent letter to Nature Magazine, via Sciencewoman, seems to think that women just need to not enter science if they are going to leave. The major problem with the end of the letter is the assumption that women leave because of children or family obligations that are in conflict with their career. Apparently they didn’t read The Athena Factor, which concluded that the major problems are hostility of the workplace culture and isolation. There does need to be more work done to help make science careers “family friendly”, and that would help both men and women, but blaming women for leaving, without even doing the research as to why they leave, is detrimental.
Unfortunately it’s even women in science who hurl the criticisms and insults at other women. Take a comment about Dr. Isis:
I liked it [Dr. Isis’s blog] at first but now the writing is just a steriotype [sic] and a pretty poor one at that. Thing that bothers me more is that this cartoon personality makes female scientists sound like shoe fettish [sic] ignorant bimbos.
Dr. Isis did not like this comment, as I wouldn’t either, and as a response she wrote quite a rant.
A woman who is aggressive, or who proclaims to anyone who will listen that she has the potential to achieve great things, is not a bitch. A woman who chooses to wear high-heeled shoes is not a slut, a bimbo, or a tramp. We need not be ashamed of the things that make us women (though, granted, we all embrace and express our femininity differently and that should always be acceptable). Neither our bodies, the social/gender roles we may choose to embrace, or our decision to or not to parent children, should ever have the capacity to limit our academic success. The first time it is deemed acceptable to suggest that someone is hurting science because of who they are, and not because of the quality of the science they produce, is the time I hang up my labcoat, turn out the lights in the lab, and hand the keys back to the status quo.
The whole thing is awesome, and I agree wholeheartedly. Attacking a woman with a sexist attack hurts everyone, and fighting against those type of attacks, even when you don’t agree with the woman’s positions, is how feminism works. Zuska at Scienceblogs also weighed in with more goodness:
The problem, you see, is that women aren’t really allowed to be ANYTHING in science. If you are a hot goddess then you are Not Serious and Not A Real Scientist and you are Ruining Science For Other Women Who Are More Serious and so on. If you are just a regular goddess (like Zuska) then you are an ugly hairy-legged man-hating feminazi who needs to get laid and Not A Real Scientist and Ruining Science For Other Women Who Are More Reasonable.
It’s just like always. A woman has to be smart, but not too smart, attractive, but not too attractive, want to be a mother, but not have it interfere with her career or it will hurt all women…it’s just hard to avoid any kind of criticism for being a woman in a science/math career. Hell, sometimes just being a woman in general. I just hope by the time Baby Grrl gets older it’s at least a little better for her. I don’t ever expect sexism to go away completely, but the less she has to deal with it, the better.
Technorati tags: women in science, stereotypes, feminism
