Please read this.
http://www.miller-mccune.com/education/making-science-girl-friendly-pays-gender-dividends-33777/
This is an article in which a researcher suggests that the female population could be convinced to enjoy science if feminine things like cosmetics were associated with it when taught in school. While I understand that this
could convince a new crowd of girls to show some interest, as a female who finds science fascinating, this research/suggestion is rather disturbing. Although this article does not claim that females are useless at science or that our gender requires superficial incentives to participate in anything academic, I almost feel that it hints at that. Therefore I take a bit of offense.
Not all girls are created equal. Some are nerdy and love science, math, literature (or Harry Potter, comics, science fiction if we’re going non-academic), others prefer the arts and still others do focus mainly on more skin deep things like their hair and make-up. Yet there are those that embody all three stereotypes, like me. Basically, someone can love cosmetics and be inspired to like science through learning about the chemical make-up of their make-up BUT a girl can also enjoy science and, completely separately, curl their hair and wear lipstick. You can have A as well as B and vice versa. They aren't mutually exclusive.
Similarly, boys are not created equal either. Some prefer sports to science. Yet I don’t see any articles about boys needing encouragement to dive into physics by studying the force a baseball is hit with. Double standards.
Still, I do understand that males outnumber females in scientific fields and typically score higher on science exams. And while I respect researchers’ interest in evening out these statistics, they walk the fine line of calling females shallow and unintelligent and resulting in more harm than help.
Then again, I’m a feminist. And while I’m a math and science honor student nerd (I’ll prove my credentials: I took AP Calculus in sophomore year and AP Calculus II as a junior and passed both AP tests; recieved a 5 in AP Chemistry this year) I prefer the arts and that’s what I’ve chosen to pursue as a career. Perhaps that is the bigger problem. Girls often have a broad range of interests and talent in most of them, enough that they can choose many paths for their future.* And if science isn’t what calls to them the most then c’est la vie.
In short, while this article is attempting to gain female interest in scientific fields, they are perhaps going about it incorrectly by focusing on shallow incentives.
*Not to say that boys cannot have more than one area of interest as well. However, in my immediate experience, the women that surrounded me in school had more varied interests and were more skilled in each than their male counterparts, ON THE WHOLE. There were some very brilliant exceptions
