As a response to the NYT infographic showing that girls underperform in science in the US, Canada, and Britain compared to the rest of the world, The Guardian has published a list of ways to get girls interested in science.
Among their super brilliant suggestions from “experts”:
- Color code all the crap in your house, because girls like colors.
- Make girls read all the instructions for their toy kits out loud because “it’s amazing what girls skip when they don’t slow themselves down for this step”.
- If a girl doesn’t understand something, just make her memorize it.
- Cook more! Because measuring and timing things is mathy.
- Point out the math in domestic activities, like shopping! (Especially “if your daughter wants something that is too expensive” – because us ladies are so irresponsible with our money).
Basically, those of us with lady brains need to slow down and read instructions, because we can’t build Lego sets otherwise, memorize stuff cause it’s just too hard for us to grasp, and use cooking and shopping to understand math concepts.
The entire point of the infographic was to demonstrate that boys and girls don’t have different intrinsic science abilities, but that culture plays a huge role. So one might think that maybe boys and girls don’t have different interests because of intrinsic sex differences; maybe they have different interests because of culture? The Guardian has obviously failed to figure that out; instead, they resort to age-old stereotypes about women to come up with patronizing and insulting suggestions for getting girls interested in science. Guess what? Girls are already interested in science, and they’re already good at it. It’s just that certain cultural and societal influences make it more difficult for girls to see science as something they can pursue.
Wow just skimmed the article and it is unbelievably sexist, I totally agree with your points. Why does the author assume that these are potential problems unique to girls? As a female biology undergraduate and volunteer at a science museum I have no personal experience that would indicate that girls are under-represented or underachieving. The guardian appear to have launched onto some statistics and had fun imagining sexist ways to ‘make girls better at science’. Phew, a little angry there.
Thanks for commenting! Unfortunately girls are very underrepresented in the sciences (my physics classes had at most a few girls in classes of 20+). This underrepresentation is especially apparent in physics/math/comp sci; I think the numbers are a bit more equal in bio and chem, at least at the undergraduate level. It’s great that you haven’t noticed any underrepresentation though – I’ll take it as a sign that things are getting better
I just fail to see why certain people believe that being able to do science and math isn’t intrinsic to one’s gender yet hobbies and interests are. If my parents attempted to spark my interests in science by relating it to cooking and shopping they would have failed miserably. Cooking and I mix like water and oil, and growing up in a working class family made me a very frugal child. I suppose it would be too logical to ask lady scientists what peeked their interest in science, what made them choose their career path, and what they think could be done to interest and encourage other females to go into science.