http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-trouble-with-barbie-science

apparently just slapping some lipstick on a PhD doesn't cut it in inspiring girls to think they too could 'do science'.

maybe the models were too feminine? maybe they're feminine in ways that make them seem frivilous not just feminine?

what the heck is feminine, anyway?

No substitute for knowing real women doing real science. That's my take on it.

My DD hasn't ever had it cross her mind that girls might not be good at science/math, because it seems patently ridiculous given her understanding of the world. Her mom is a scientist, as are several of our female family friends.

Excellent! yeah, that does seem to be how it boils down per the article.
found this nice quote on wikipedia re: femininity...
"While the defining characteristics of femininity are not universally identical, some patterns exist. Gentleness, empathy, sensitivity, caring, sweetness, compassion, tolerance, nurturance, deference, and succorance are behaviors generally considered feminine."

I think I vomited in my mouth a little.

I have not yet talked to my 9yo son about whether there are sex differences in math and science ability, but scores for contests such as the AMC 8 or for talent search participants taking the SAT are broken down by sex, and he has noticed that there is a difference. Like father, like son .

So, Bostonian, have you told him that those differences have dramatically lessened over the past 20 years?

And see, my pragmatic child (also like her same-gender parent, I suppose) looks at that same data set and recognizes that there is an opportunity there... you know, since relative gender disparities from any set of causes means that those who do shine are facing less competition for opportunities. They are that much more desirable for not having a lot of peers following in those same footsteps.



She doesn't see "you can't because you're a girl," she sees "isn't it cool that you'll be that more more desirable by virtue of relative scarcity?"

Teens and tweens have very sensitive BS sensors. Engineer Barbie is bound to set it off. Barbie is just not an engineer, even with a pocket protector and slide rule in tow. (Ergh hate Barbie even did as a child.) Women in pencil skirts and high heels don't dance around labs juggling test tubes and lipstick tubes.

IMO the girls who reject the failed attempts to "feminize" STEM described in the article realize the images presented are completely fictional.

I work in a non-STEM male dominated field. I love to wear great clothes and shoes and look as good as I can (in a classy and professional way I hope.) Looking good gives you an edge. Looking like Barbie would be a major professional liability. One of the most talented women in my field wears no makeup and obviously throws on whatever is handy every day but she is deeply respected for her tremendous ability.

I hope that teen girls can learn to aspire beyond "girly" and find and use their best talents in a productive and satisfying way. Find a real woman who is accomplished and relatable in these fields like Ms. McKellar to make STEM seem more attainable. Trying to sell frothy fiction as reality won't work, especially with this audience.

If aversion of STEM is linked to an aversion of geeks (as the article implies), perhaps a lesson in tolerance ought to be on the menu. In my experience as a sort of chameleon who is able to fit in with just about any group, geeks are really good people. Also, there are definitely a substantial number of engineers who don't fit the geek stereotype in the first place.

Look, it's simple. If we want girls to enter STEM fields in greater numbers, we just need to emphasize the modeling opportunities.

Your succorance is noted, but as a male, I cannot offer you nurturance.

As I said, I have not discussed the topic with him. When he noted the sex difference in average scores, I just pointed out that there was considerable overlap in the two distributions.

What got my DD9 interested in Lego was watching the Feminist Frequency videos that discussed the STEM skills that playing with Lego develops, and how Lego's marketing had changed over time to position Lego as "not for girls." The idea that The Man was keeping her down really lit a fire under her.

Ditto for articles explaining how girls are societally conditioned to give up / assume they aren't smart enough, and boys are conditioned to work harder.

She had camp at the Air & Space Museum this summer, and the K-3rd grade group was about evenly split between boys and girls. She was in the 4th-6th group, which did some activities with the 7th-12th group, and there was at least one week where there was only one other girl in both older groups combined. What made the difference there was having a few weeks where there were at least 2 other girls in her age group, and having one of the adult woman coordinators take DD under her wing after DD had an anxiety attack right before camp.

If such conditioning were widespread and effective, you would not
expect to see a much higher percentage of females than males getting bachelor's degrees, as is currently the case in the U.S.

According to this particular article in the NY Times (data as of March 2012), there is still a 0.7% gap, males over females holding bachelor’s degrees.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/education/census-finds-bachelors-degrees-at-record-level.html

Agreeing with what Bostonian stated though, women are 60 percent more likely than men to earn a bachelor's degree by the time they are 23 according to the article linked below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/10/post_644_n_821577.html

Right, I had the second source in mind, since it refers to current degree attainment.

No, you'd expect to see more girls getting degrees in "easy" fields, and more boys getting degrees in "hard" fields. "Give up" doesn't mean "drop out of school." It means, "You got a 37 on your first physics-for-engineering-majors exam, so decided to major in [some non-science field] instead."

For example, http://www.econ.uconn.edu/seminars/20082009/papers/zafar08.pdf

Also mentioned in that study is the belief (held by both men and women) that women are treated most-worst compared to how men are treated in STEM fields. IMHO, Engineer Barbie and "oops, that's my lipstick not a test tube" biologist just exacerbate that belief - girls conclude that everyone in the lab will assume they're like that, and treat them accordingly.

The abstract of the paper you cite refutes the idea that sex differences in choosing STEM careers are due to girls being conditioned to assume they are not smart enough:

"Gender differences in beliefs about academic ability explain a small and insignificant part of the gap; this allows me to rule out females being low in self-confidence as a possible explanation for their under-representation in the sciences. Conversely, most of the gender gap is due to differences in beliefs about enjoying coursework, and preferences."

For some strange reason, this thread inspired me to revisit Gaston's song with my now teenaged daughter.

A close friend and I used to sing show tunes in the lab. Gaston (from Beauty and the Beast) was a perennial favorite. Gilbert and Sullivan were also particularly fertile territory. Well, and Tom Lehrer. Which sort of goes without saying, really.

I never applied any lipstick at work, so it really wasn't a problem mixing that up with the P-32 pig or the high-speed centrifuge tubes.

Anyone for a chorus of "Nitrile is a Girl's Best Friend?"

Lol, yeah, I definitely don't get the 'deference' bit, but most of the other stuff doesn't sound bad for any sort of human to exhibit, female or male.

Deference likely being a reference throughout history and influenced by Biblical directive, not necessarily modern day typical practice.

Tell that to all the teen boys in this country who get beat up for exhibiting sweetness. It happens.

DeeDee

"Gentleness, empathy, sensitivity, caring, sweetness, compassion, tolerance, nurturance, deference, and succorance"

If you act this way in my profession you will a step stool on someone else's climb to the top. Should it be this way? No. Is it? Yes.

Just as, if you dance around in a short skirt and flirt with all the men in sight in my workplace (my mental image of one of the STEM recruiting video scenes described by the article) you will go nowhere professionally. Well, I take that back. You'll get somehwere but probably nowhere that you WANT to be.

Surely we can be "feminine" outside of these paradigms? The typical Madonna/whore thing?

In a recent novel about being a woman investment banker in a very male dominated field, the working woman main character is completely ignored by a good old boy client in a meeting. She muses that because she is not his mother, sister, wife or a potential hook up he has no idea how to fit her into his world. This thread made me think of that.

I just went with the "turn the other cheek" approach to life, figuring that was morally obligatory.

I got smashed a number of times without fighting back.

This seemed to confuse people more than anything else.

Perhaps it's because I work in a male-dominated STEM field (IT Engineering), but I don't think anyone would ever describe me using the characteristics listed for females. I prefer being honest, intelligent, straight-forward, and sarcastic.

Sweet? Gentle? These are not traits that are going to get you far in IT.

I would like to see a comedian who could do the type of material for women that Chris Rock has done for African-Americans. Somebody needs to be out there on the edge to make it okay for chicks who just want to do STEM work without having to defend their gender conformity or lack thereof, and to encourage discussion. I'll be pushing my DD in this direction, but it might be a better fit for someone with better social skills

I think we all have to, or at least are wise to, adjust our character depending on the role we're in at any given time to achieve the best result. Of course we can have the mindset that we are who we are and everyone else can adjust but that seldom works out for optimal outcome.

It's not so much that we are who we are, but rather that there is a character ideal that we are supposed to be in all situations.

So, ideally, you should never adjust your character even if that results in a poor result.

That is true of virtually anyone though, not just women involved in STEM.

Everyone has the option to not adjust their character and live with the result even if it's poor. We all make our own decisions if we wish to play the game. That will never cease. It may get better / worse depending on the circumstances / field but it will never cease, just shift to another area.

Or you can try to destroy the game. That's another option.

When I was little, I wore pink.

Gasp.

And I played with Barbies.

A lot.

I sewed clothes for my Barbie dolls, and I orchestrated a boatload of weddings and parties and lots of drama.

I also, from time to time, had a funeral for one of them after my brother and I would experiment with his stash of m-80's (back when they were legal) and some of my older Barbies.

I chased lizards and had a pet horned toad. I climbed trees and played kick ball.

It never occurred to me that I either had to be feminine or something else.

I still refuse to accept that tenet. The whole comment about "throwing up a bit in my mouth" at the description of femininity grated a bit, as I embrace most of those character traits and am happy that I do. I also run a tech company and deal with engineers in a mostly male industry. And I've yet to let anyone else's attitude about whether I'm too nice, sweet, frilly or any other adjective change who I am or what I am doing.

I am a strong supporter of women-based STEM advocacy groups, but only if the focus is on creating opportunities. This whole angry, fight-the-man attitude is tiresome to me and has no real benefit.

My daughter played with Barbies. She also is about a non-conventional as they come. She skateboards in lacy skirts, scales a rocky cliff in frilly tops and embraces the high tech world of graphic art as easily and readily as she hikes out into the middle of nowhere to create graffiti in an abandoned arroyo. The fact that she is so different than me makes me proud, because it lets me believe that I fostered an environment that let her decide who she was enough to be comfortable being whatever that was.

So bring on the feminine and frilly and sweet and gentle. It doesn't have to be all we are, but it should be something we're able to be without settling for less that what we want to be.

Parents are more concerned about effeminate boys that girls with masculine traits, as discussed in an NYT article

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/magazine/whats-so-bad-about-a-boy-who-wants-to-wear-a-dress.html
What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?
By RUTH PADAWER
August 8, 201

...

Relatively little research on gender-nonconforming children has been conducted, making it impossible to know how many children step outside gender bounds — or even where those bounds begin. Studies estimate that 2 percent to 7 percent of boys under age 12 regularly display “cross-gender” behaviors, though very few wish to actually be a girl. What this foretells about their future is hard to know. By age 10, most pink boys drop much of their unconventional appearance and activities, either because they outgrow the desire or subsume it. The studies on what happens in adulthood to boys who strayed from gender norms all have methodological limitations, but they suggest that although plenty of gay men don’t start out as pink boys, 60 to 80 percent of pink boys do eventually become gay men. The rest grow up to either become heterosexual men or become women by taking hormones and maybe having surgery. Gender-nonconforming behavior of girls, however, is rarely studied, in part because departures from traditional femininity are so pervasive and accepted. The studies that do exist indicate that tomboys are somewhat more likely than gender-typical girls to become bisexual, lesbian or male-identified, but most become heterosexual women.

***************************************************

I would not go along with my boys being too "girly".

This is a sad comment to see in a forum dedicated to supporting children who are born different, whom society does not understand and has difficulty accepting. Forcing a child to adopt a gender role isn't any different from forcing one to accept a mainstream classroom environment.

I think it is all about the parents. My mother was as "girly" as you get, spending her last dime on a new dress, shoes or hat etc.

But she was good in math before WW2, was proud of it and became a doctor. She pushed me to become a doctor, a dentist, someone in charge and expected me to be good in math. I never had doubts that it was not girlish to be smart or to do any job.

Now, I did not pursue STEM careers because I wanted to make a lot of money and I too like to dress in high heels (well used to, now, being the in-house dog walker, I wear sneakers) and DD loves her clothes (and make-up and nail polish -- when she can get away with it with her friends -- I think this starts a little young) and her Barbie's but she knows that being 2 years ahead in math is expected since she is capable at 7 turning 8. She never thinks of it as a boys' thing. And her science class at the museum is exciting and interesting. But -- she has never had a big building interest, or taking apart electronics. Either have I, but I can and do as necessary as part of my life, like putting shelves together. I don't think of it as gender roles.

I think we teach our kids all of it, and let them do what they find interesting. I took engineering and never worked as an engineer. I chose a career that let me dress up and travel the world. But engineering skills helped get there.

Ren

You can certainly try, I admire any effort to do so, however, you have to decide how much of your life you wish to do so and whether those efforts will yield enough results to justify the time you're putting into it. Good luck with that.

It's worked out great so far. And thanks for the luck-wishing, although I picked up on just a wee bit of dripping sarcasm...

Well, you interpreted it all correctly. I really DO admire it when people make attempts to change what they believe to be an injustice, it's just that there are so many that have been in place for centuries that I think time is better used on things we can have greater effect on and likely make a difference, however, each person chooses their battles and if it's what you're passionate about, who am I to think you can't do just that?

As with changing most injustices in society, I've become more and more convinced the best thing we can do is raise our children to be accepting, loving, kind, helpful, and to serve others as much as or more than they serve themselves. In my mind it's a lot more effective and more likely successful to educate a new generation than it is to try and change 3 or 4 older generations.

Agreed. I'm a terribly pragmatic person underneath all of this shiny idealism. Strange bedfellows, that.

Anyway. I also agree in being the change that you wish to see. As long as the trade-off is worth it for the individual in question, Quixotic has a lot going for it, I've found.

Eventually you let go of that pesky voice inside that tells you that everyone is staring at you, and not in a good way.

I don't always tilt at windmills, but when I do...

I wear fire-proof underthings.

This may explain why I love Gaston, though. It might also explain why dancing around in a lab coat and doing the can-can with a lab tech felt so good. LOL.

Oh, I have no grand inspirations, or more likely mis-inspirations, that I will change society. I just have no plans to allow the status quo to change my own goals or how I approach life. All we have to do is not be afraid of believing in ourselves and role-modeling for those within our own microcosm what we believe is possible. If enough people do that, things change. I have no plans to be the next Susan B Anthony - just a woman who embraces femininity and technology and whatever else inspires my passions.

Well put ABQMom, that's pretty much my mindset as well as my wife's. The best leadership is by example and modeling for children, as you said, enough people do this things change....I think faster than if people raise great shouts of injustice.