Fighting stereotypes with humour--and truth :)

BBC Trending: Female scientists post 'distractingly sexy' photos

Female scientists have been sharing "distractingly sexy" photos of themselves after a feminist website encouraged them to respond to comments by a Nobel laureate. Nobel Prize winner Tim Hunt was roundly criticised when he detailed his thoughts about the "trouble with girls" at a conference of science journalists. "Three things happen when they are in the lab," he said, "you fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticise them they cry."

He said his comments were meant to be "light-hearted, ironic comment", but whatever the intention, it went over like a heavy metallic dirigible in a field with some widely acknowledged gender issues. Hunt has now resigned from his position at University College London.

On Thursday the hashtag #DistractinglySexy began taking off, with more than 10,000 tweets in a matter of hours. The trend was prompted by a shout-out by the feminist online magazine Vagenda which urged female scientists to share pictures of themselves at work.

and then there was this:

The unseen women scientists behind Tim Hunt’s Nobel prize

Hunt calls women scientists “girls”, as though they are immature, and incapable of forwarding academia in any serious way. He suggests they disturb serious, hard-working men in their scientific pursuit. Yet Hunt knows women who have bolstered to his own success. He is obviously aware of the ground-breaking research women are doing in science; he is certainly more aware than any member of the public, and many of those criticising him. Is it that only some women are distractions, or maybe he thinks he would have won several Nobel Prizes if there were no women around?

It is obvious that his comments were sexist, but few people could recognise the names or faces of the women he has so thoughtlessly brushed aside. Even in his inadequate apology, he neglected to mention any women scientists who have impressed him during his career, choosing instead to justify himself with unsolicited details about his love life. Many have railed against Hunt’s casual chauvinism, without questioning why positive remarks about women are still missing. Would such comments be irrelevant? Unless we acknowledge the stories of women he has forgotten, a negative portrayal of women once again takes centre stage.

Indeed!

Teen: Boys want an Easy-Bake Oven, too

Or more precisely, what she said was:

"All they really told me is that boys play with their products. I already know boys do play with your products, so why are you only marketing them to girls?" she said. "I don't want them to make a boys' Easy-Bake Oven and girls' Easy-Bake Oven. I want them to make an Easy-Bake Oven for kids."

Of the three close male friends I have, two love cooking, and although I can't speak to Brandon, because I haven't had anything he's made, YKWIA is an excellent cook. Both tend to make things from scratch. I on the other hand, HAD an Easy-Bake Oven (it was blue, and it had the old-fashioned light bulb) and that, along with three years of home oeconomics and Future Homemakers of America, made me more of a baker than a cook. (I can follow a recipe, but I'm not a 'natural' cook.) But I definitely agree, we should encourage both genders to cook--it's a great life skill, and we should also be less gender-specific in how things are marketed to our children.

Thanks to Vanessa Irvin Morris for sharing the story.

Not surprising, but sad

Math is for boys? Children absorb stereotypes by second grade

By the time she hits second grade, your daughter has picked up plenty of subliminal messages. Just count the number of pink items she owns or how many of her movie and book choices focus on princesses.

A little less obvious are messages that detail what girls can and cannot do. A worrisome new study shows that second grade girls and boys have already absorbed stereotypes about math and reading -- and the girls have come to believe that math is not for them.

“We still don’t know from where the children are getting this,” says Dario Cvencek, the study’s lead author and researcher at the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington. “I don’t think anybody is explicitly telling them that. I think it’s a very subtle message.”

The question is how to adequately counteract those messages. It seems parents can try all they want, and they still get through. I'm not a parent, and I don't deal with children on a regular basis, so I don't even know where to begin. But I wish parents well, because we really do need to counteract this. If the advertising folks and the media would get on board, it would certainly help.