For a long time we've known that girls are still behind boys when it comes to math and science -- particularly the physical sciences. Now the AAUW (formerly the American Association of University Women) has released a comprehensive new report that documents this problem, "Why So Few."
TrueChild was invited to be part of the news conference: you can view it here, and also download a copy of the report.
The direction of the findings has been pretty clear for some time. Girls can and do perform as well as boys in math and science early on. But once they hit grades 5-9, right around adolescence, there's a noticeable drop-off in interest in science, technology, engineering and match (so-called "STEM"). They do a lot less outside of school too -- playing with chemistry sets or joining groups that engage with science.
By the time kids can exercise choice over what courses they take -- the last years of high school through the end of college -- there's a marked drop in participation as well.
Women are doing better in "helping sciences" like biology, but even in newer fields like computers, they make up a fraction of the students and often perform noticeably worse.
This phenomenon of fewer and fewer girls left in the field is so common it's even got a name: "the leaky pipeline."
What's interesting is that although we've looked long and hard at external barriers -- unfriendly classroom environments, lack of adult role models, parents who think science isn't or girls -- we haven't looked at all at internalized feminine norms. Which -- given that all this starts just when girls hit puberty -- would seem to be a prime candidate.
That's why TrueChild has just submitted its first grants to study the effects of internalized norms on girls and STEM. We think that as they enter puberty, girls have to make a choice between opting out of femininity and opting out of STEM. In fact, that's just the way Dr. Janet Stemwedel, who blogs about girls and science, put it in her post here.
We think we have a pretty strong case to make, and this is exciting – and pretty untouched – area of inquiry.
The big national coalitions that support equity in STEM, like the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) and the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP), think so too, and they've signed on as partners in this project. So have many of the top researchers in the field.
In the meantime, here are some hints to help you keep your daughter interested in math and science, or help your son realize STEM is also a "girls' thing."
The New York Times ran two interesting articles last week under the rubric "The Female Factor” about women in academia. Both are refreshingly positive, which is not to say uncritical or utopian, regarding the prospects for equity for female students and professors in higher learning.
Tamar Lewin's article on women at Harvard starts by recapitulating the embarrassing, painful episode of 2005, when then-president Larry Summers postulated that women's underrepresentation in the sciences may be due to "the different availability of aptitude at the high end” at the bell curve—that is to say, there aren't as many smart women as smart men, and this is genetically determined.
Summers resigned, and since then there has been a boom in women professors offered tenure. And despite the resistance of some older faculty, by and large they report feeling appreciated for their intellectual contributions, not their sex.
Katrin Bennhold files her story from Paris, where a "quiet revolution that has seen women across the developed world catch up with men in the work force and in education” has left one well regarded lab with 21 women and four men. Across the European Union, women researchers are expanding their ranks twice as quickly as men, and even Barbie has gotten into science and technology.
Both articles hint at elements of backlash: Lewin quotes Ann Pearson, the first women tenured in Harvard's earth and planetary sciences department, recounting being ignored by a male colleague during a panel discussion. And Bennhold points out that in computer science "the percentage of female graduates from American universities peaked in the mid-1980s at more than 40 percent and has since dropped to half that.” But across the STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) landscape, the future looks brighter than it has in a while.
P.S. TrueChild is submitting our first research proposals on the effect of internalized feminine norms (Femininity Ideology) on adolescent girls' interest in science and math, so stay tuned!
According to the New York Times, Axe grooming products -- deodorants, shampoos, hair gel, and that infamous body spray -- are becoming the "in thing" among tween and pre-teen boys. Along with macho-branded Old Spice Swagger, and "Magnetic Attraction Enhancing Body Wash by Dial," they have become staples of many boys' bedrooms, bathrooms, and backpacks. As one 11-year-old said, "I feel confident when I wear Axe."
So just how has Axe managed to reshape tween boyhood in its sci-fi-stylized bottles' image? It's not just the product, obviously. It's a pop culture that unanimously depicts desirable males as muscular, hunky, confident. (See here and here for research on this.) Simple manhood is no longer enough. Products like Axe let boys -- who are increasingly anxious about projecting masculinity in a competitive environment -- feel confident.
It doesn't help that tween boys are stuck in an awkward stage: girls are on their way out of puberty while they're just entering it, leaving them ungainly, awkward, and still trying to master masculinity at a time when girls are into makeup, hair gels and body waxes and wondering why their too-slow boyfriends don't just get with it when it comes to cosmetic products.
So in the arms race to be seen as cool, masculine, older and attractive to girls, boys are looking anxiously for help, and cosmetics marketers are happy to oblige, often with tongue-in-cheek commercials that promise masculinity by also making too-cool fun of it. If the signifiers of pop-culture masculinity -- muscular body, sexual conquests, high-powered job -- aren't readily available to 12-year-olds in the Gender Product Wars, at least they can buy something that puts a little more spring in their step -- while covering up the smell of skipping shower after gym class.
Groundspark (formerly Women's Educational Media) has come out with a powerful new educational documentary, Straightlaced: How Gender's Got Us All Tied Up. (Full disclosure: we had the opportunity to give feedback on parts of the early version of the film.)
As with their other documentaries (It's Elementary and That's a Family), Straightlaced mainly features kids, alone, talking directly to the camera without prompting and telling their stories in their own, sometimes eloquent, sometimes halting, words.
And what stories they are:
There are dozens of these stories. After awhile, you get a real feel for these kids. You start to see beyond who's gay and who's straight, who's of color and who's white, and you start to see how the gender system affects each and every one of them, in their most intimate decisions, every school day. That's probably Groundspark's intent.
Many of us have observed how when kids finish puberty, learning, conforming to and policing pretty rigid gender role expectations for masculinity and femininity can suddenly seem like the most important thing in the world. Researchers have dubbed this common phenomenon "gender intensification," and it's certainly on high display in this firm. More than a few of these teens talk about their fear of harassment, ostracism, ridicule or even attack.
High school is like a pressure cooker when it comes to fulfilling gender roles. Straightlaced may be the first film to document what life is really like for teens who try to live up to masculine and feminine ideals, want to live up to them, or sometimes simply refuse them altogether. Check out the YouTube trailer here, or embedded below.
I can assure you Ralph Lauren is not doing this because it loses them money. They are doing it because they tested it and it works.
Pole-Dancing Doll
Well, at least she's wearing some clothes. Were the marketers missing the resonances here -- or just hedging their bets against the outrage. Either way, it's a very uncomfortable image. Chris Rock says his main job as a father is "keepin' my baby Off The Pole." Well, his job just got a little harder. This is kind of the flip side of the Breastfeeding Doll.
Jeffrey Zaslow of the Wall Street Journal interviewed 4th graders from Illinois in 1986 and again as adults over 20 years later about dieting and eating habits. He found that the diet and thin trend is worse now than it was back then, and how being thin and dieting can lead to negative self esteem issues for young girls. http://tinyurl.com/mun3ct
A new African-American "Cuddly Doll" has been pulled off Costco shelves after people complained that it was wearing a hat named "Lil Monkey." References to apes and monkeys as racist and demeaning epithets for Black people goes back at least two hundred years, so you have to wonder who was sitting in on the marketing meetings and said, "Yeah, this is a great idea. Little girls will love it." My guess is it wasn't a person of color! Here it is with a close-up picture. http://www.inquisitr.com/33078/lil-monkey-doll-pulled-from-costco-shelves-for-obvious-reasons/
Kay Steiger blogs about Technorati's recent study of bloggers based on gender, age, and income among other things. 34% of women blog compared to 66% of men. Both female and male bloggers also tend to be older with only 9% of active female bloggers between the ages of 18 and 24. Which begs the question: are men more opinionated than women? http://tinyurl.com/qpflck
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