Science: It's a Girl Thing

I hate to be uptight, and potentially militant in my desire for some semblance of gender equality in the STEM fields...but WTF!

This video was produced by the EU commission for Science and Research, and its intent is to lure women into math and science by telling them, "It's ok, ladies, you can bring your lipgloss with you to the math conference!"

You know that I strongly support a woman's right to express her femininity in the realm of the mathematical community, but marketing mathematics as a girly accessory, just isn't going to cut it. Do we think that the reason women are underrepresented in science fields is because the labs aren't pink enough? Would women be more likely to study math if we introduced combinatorics as a study of how many shades of lipstick I can wear on my vacation?

Promoting these ideas is suggesting that women aren't capable of appreciating the complexities of math and science, for the sake of math and science.

In fact, this article suggests that marketing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) fields as the "girly" and "sexy" thing to do, is actually highly demotivating for young women. The message being, wow, so now I have to live up to this culturally rigid standard of beauty and try to get tenure?

I think there's certainly a need to develop strong female role models in the STEM fields, and I think it's fine- wonderful, in fact- for such role models to embody and sense of femininity and confidence. But let's be clear, femininity and mathematical ability simply have nothing to do with one another.

Science: It's a Human Thing.

<3