Are you there, science? It's me.

[lettered]

I’ve always wanted to know everything about everything, and I’ve always loved the way everything connects to everything else. Except science.



It always bothered me to say I didn’t like science. If I’m interested in everything, how come I can’t be interested in the most fundamental thing? Science is about what things are, what makes everything the way it is. How could I not be interested?

It occurs to me now that science posits, “reality is”, and maybe I had a problem with that. I am in some ways interested in everything because, “maybe reality isn’t”. Also, maybe it could be said science is reality; everything else is meta-reality, and for some reason the more levels removed from reality you get while still making sense, the more interested I become. It’s probably true of me that I like contemplating the universe more than the universe itself.

But it also bothered me to say I didn’t like science, because—well, it sounded to me like saying you like kids, which I’ve also found sort of ridiculous. Some kids are cool; some kids suck. Some science is nifty; some sucks. Maybe chemistry is awesome and biology blows.

But it’s possible to really just like kids, both cool kids and sucky kids. And I really just didn’t like science.

Then I fell in love. So, okay, I like science now. All of science, not just choice parts of biology. But what I’m interested in right now is why I didn’t like it, and why other people may not. Is it just me, or is this a hard subject to get into? Is it just me, or does it seem like kids will more likely be interested in anything else more than science (or possibly math)? And is it just me, or does it seem like the latter are more often girls?

It’s a gross stereotype. There are plenty of women doctors and astronauts and biologists. But I’m always hearing how tech schools are 90% guys. Companies ache for girl engineers to fulfill their quotas. From what I’ve heard labs are still predominantly male, and while female physicists exist, all the famous ones I know are men.

Is it male oppression? Women still can’t get these high paying jobs? These positions of authority? These careers which require higher thinking, since we all know women have tiny brains?

Is it just taking longer for these fields to open up to women?

Does it have to do with stereotypes of women not being technical-minded, of women being “artsy”, women focusing on “feeling more than fact”?

What do you think? Are you interested in science? Why or why not? What do you think about science? Women in science? The history of women in science, and whether it says anything about how far we’ve come as a society or not?

Comments

[tkp.livejournal.com]

I think women fall easier to the myth that everything there must be hard and complicated,

Really? That begs the question of why girls would believe that myth more than guys. It's not as though girls are stupider. Do we think we are? Or is it that so much of our history and culture is built on the myth that girls aren't as smart, so we assume we can't do smart things?

Because I was a star at math and science, and better at it than both my brothers and most people in school, I assumed that my complete and utter lack of interest in math and science had more to do with the myth that girls aren't interested in science, rather than the myth that they're not good at science. But I can't draw conclusions based on just me...

[flake-sake.livejournal.com]

I can also only speak for myself, but from my experience with tutoring kids, in many cases boys tend to overestimate themselves, while girls underestimate themselves (that's of course not true for all, but it is a deffinitive tendency).

With girls often the first thing you have to get out of their noggin is that this is (and has to be hard). You wouldn't believe how often I've heard the sentence "But it can't be that easy" from girls. It's really scary, because I see so many who just see a calculation and dispair.

With boys it's often the other way round. They will go at it, even if they don't have the faintest notion what they are doing.

I tend to think these tendencies come from enforced genderroles, where girls are rewarded more for being nice, modest and quiet, while boys tend to get more attention via bragging. It's also interesting to talk to the parents, sometimes I could hit them over the head, when they tell me things like "well, she's a girl" as if it was an excuse for a girl beign crappy in natural sciences.

I really think this XKCD strip sums it up perfectly what goes wrong:
http://xkcd.com/385/

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Hee, yes, that comic has come up several times in the past week, since I've been talking about this!

My sister in law linked me to this: http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~taylor/WomenAndMathematics.ppt

which I recommend if you can dl/have powerpoint. It's about girls in math.

The problem is, I have trouble understanding the confidence issues, because I'm very self-confident (and downright arrogant, most the time). I used to go around talking about how great I was all the time. I stopped doing it when I hit puberty, and that really may have something to do with being a girl.

Anyway, the slideshow talks about studies in which girls didn't better on tests after being told the tests didn't matter, or that the tests were gender neutral. In general, the less threatening the tests seemed the better girls did on them. It even suggested that something as simple as checking a box stating your sex before a test might influence scores.

It's also interesting to talk to the parents, sometimes I could hit them over the head, when they tell me things like "well, she's a girl" as if it was an excuse for a girl beign crappy in natural sciences.

This shouldn't shock me but it does. Ugh!