Across the world, women are massively unemployed in science, technology and engineering fields. And less and less, girls are enrolling in these subjects at school. University science courses are dominated by blokes.
But is this really the answer? This bizarre video has been released in the US and it’s going viral fast.
The campaign is supposed to show women and girls that ‘science does not just mean old men is white coats’.
Does this trivialise the contribution of women to science of it is just a bit of harmless fun that might encourage more women to give science a second chance?
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Less and less? Do you have the stats to back this up? I'm mother to an 11 year old female "nerd" who wants to either be a an engineer or lawyer, she's currently working her way through "A briefer history of time". She's an attractive, popular and confident little thing and I've never thought of the sciences as being inappropriate for her because of her gender. I thought the clip was fine. What's wrong with science being "a girl thing", and what's wrong with science being fun?
As a female scientist I am not offended by this. I may not be strutting my stuff in the lab in stillettos, but I do consider myself fairly feminine and have not found this undermines my credability as a scientist. My love of pink and purple stationary did become a running joke when working in a group of men, but I never felt they perceived me as less capable for it. And I think most female scientists and engineers have a sense of humour about it - there are whole industries around pink protective clothing and "geek chic" jewellery.
But do I think it is inspiring - probably not. It is a shame to see money spent on something like this instead of strategeies that do work to attract and retain women in science and engineering; job stability instead of being at the mercy of the grant cycle, family friendly workplace policies, alternatives to the "publish or perish" model of promotion that punishes women for taking career breaks to raise children, availability of female-friendly safety equipment ...
I think most of all this misses the point that SCIENCE IS INSPIRING and doesn't need to be dressed up with glitter and high heels. I am involved in a program called Scientists in Schools (http://www.scientistsinscho..., which pairs working scientists with teachers and their classes to give them a real insight into science and scientists. It is something I encourage all scientists to get involved in - kids are amazed by the science we do every day. I fell pretty confident that the visit to my lab that some of my students made this week got them a whole lot more excited about a career in science than this video!