3 ms·
I like how for some of them the "before" was a male and "after" was a female--especially with the girls. There's always an uproar about how there's a distinct
by tiffani 16y ago
I like how for some of them the "before" was a male and "after" was a female--especially with the girls. There's always an uproar about how there's a distinct lack of women in science and tech, so it's good that this trip helped them alter their ideas about what and who a scientist could be.
We still live in an age, though, where kids can go for a while through school with only hearing about Madame Curie and a few others (Magaret Meade, Jane Goodall, Sally Ride, Mae Jemison, etc.) as women scientists. Not taking anything away from them, but efforts to change that are always nice (both for boys and girls). I can remember being in quiz bowl at that age and knowing that anytime the moderator asked a question mentioning a female scientist, the ladies above were the likely answers.
- crystalis 16y agoIn a similar sense, I look forward to the day Neil deGrasse Tyson replaces George Washington Carver in grade school.
- barrkel 16y agoAn interesting observation I read about a week or two ago when this first popped up was that not a single boy changed the sex of their prototypical scientist - every one was male - but some of the girls who drew males first did.
- sliverstorm 16y agoOf course not. Boys envision themselves as scientists in the future (at least I did), and so they project some of their traits onto the prototype. It wouldn't make sense if I, at 12, said 'I want to be a scientist.' and then all the scientists I drew were women.
- anateus 16y agoIn general what happened was that after the visit the kids start identifying scientists as actual people rather than an archetype, and thus, closer to themselves.
- derefr 16y agoRegarding there only being a few famous female scientists: the currently-accepted ev-psych. explanation is that men have a greater standard deviation in levels of achievement-seeking behavior. In any (objectively quantifiable) meritocratic field, you'll see women mostly in the middle, with men at the top and at the bottom. This means that the "stand-outs" will always be male-dominated (as will the "drop-outs", mind), unless the field has some sort of selection effect favoring women.