Last week, I posted what was meant to be a vent on facebook:
[My daughter] needs to pick a famous person to study for a biography report. Her teacher suggests she pick a female scientist, but requires that each student find a book about their person. The intersection set of female scientists, published biographies in book form, and our library's collection is pretty close to zero. She's not interested in Marie Curie *again*.
What followed was an interesting thread of suggestions of women scientists, most people missing the fact that the problem was not my lack of awareness of female scientists, but the problem of the intersection set I described. The selection was further limited by my daughter’s interests and preferences, in which she rejected obvious (and plentiful) choices of people like Jane Goodall, Marie Curie, and Mary Leaky.
One person (a female scientist herself) questioned why my daughter should be limited to female scientists.
One person (a female scientist herself) questioned why my daughter should be limited to female scientists.
I feel like telling a girl to write a report about a female scientist is, in some ways, propagating the problem.
Another added (also a female scientist)
I would dispense with the gender criteria, at least until we write some more and better bios.
I know the teacher made this recommendation because she's started bending the teacher's ear on the limited number of girls being accelerated in math.
I would also defend the teacher’s suggestion to my daughter that she choose a female scientist for this project. Research shows that female role models in science significantly impact on girls both in their attitudes towards science in adolescence and their likelihood to pursue scientific careers. In my own department, we’ve noted a sharp drop in the proportion of our majors that are women. The drop started at the same time we reorganized our introductory teaching faculty, leaving no women teaching the introductory course. This year, I taught the course, and so far, it looks like it had the desired effect, reversing the trend.
I will keep exposing my kids to as many examples of female scientists as they mature, along with the many examples of men and women following non-traditional roles. I want my kids to see their futures as wide open, without limited themselves. I do wish, however, that we can find ourselves in a future where biographies don’t follow the sadly common theme of “here’s the woman that should have gotten the Nobel Prize along with her male collaborators.”
I would also defend the teacher’s suggestion to my daughter that she choose a female scientist for this project. Research shows that female role models in science significantly impact on girls both in their attitudes towards science in adolescence and their likelihood to pursue scientific careers. In my own department, we’ve noted a sharp drop in the proportion of our majors that are women. The drop started at the same time we reorganized our introductory teaching faculty, leaving no women teaching the introductory course. This year, I taught the course, and so far, it looks like it had the desired effect, reversing the trend.
I will keep exposing my kids to as many examples of female scientists as they mature, along with the many examples of men and women following non-traditional roles. I want my kids to see their futures as wide open, without limited themselves. I do wish, however, that we can find ourselves in a future where biographies don’t follow the sadly common theme of “here’s the woman that should have gotten the Nobel Prize along with her male collaborators.”