Good News: Girls Outperform Boys On Science Exam Bad News: It’s Not Happening Where You Think It Is 15-year-old girls outscored boys on science exams, but not in Western Europe or the Americas. While in Eastern Europe and the Middle East girls abilities seem to exceed those of their male classmates, that doesn’t hold true in the most traditionally “scientific” nations. And that sucks. We’ve heard this bad news too many times. Girls are underrepresented in the sciences from a young age. Despite their equal interest as youngsters, societal pressures drive a wedge in between them and the performance of their male classmates. When they have to indicate gender on a science exam, they score a full 20% lower than if they don’t. All of this translates to the continued discrimination of of women, overt and incidental, all the way up the ladder of science. Sometimes I feel tired of repeating it. But we can’t grow tired. As frustrating as it is, every time we continue to call out the problem and raise our fists of fury, it helps raise attention and gain support for change. That change will take a long time, because scientific “establishment” moves like molasses, but only a steady push will make it budge.  I know I’m preaching to the choir when I talk to all of you, but remember this: Every time you share science on Tumblr or Facebook or Twitter or Reddit or wherever you hang out on the internet, then that’s one more chance to reach out and grab someone who doesn’t think they’re “into” science. It’s one more chance to give a 14-year-old girl a boost of confidence (or anyone who needs a boost, for that matter). This isn’t something that can be done by a few. We need to spread this like the most contagious virus the world’s ever seen: An infectious curiosity!  Read the full report on this study at NYTimes.com
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Good News: Girls Outperform Boys On Science Exam

Bad News: It’s Not Happening Where You Think It Is

15-year-old girls outscored boys on science exams, but not in Western Europe or the Americas. While in Eastern Europe and the Middle East girls abilities seem to exceed those of their male classmates, that doesn’t hold true in the most traditionally “scientific” nations. And that sucks.

We’ve heard this bad news too many times. Girls are underrepresented in the sciences from a young age. Despite their equal interest as youngsters, societal pressures drive a wedge in between them and the performance of their male classmates. When they have to indicate gender on a science exam, they score a full 20% lower than if they don’t. All of this translates to the continued discrimination of of women, overt and incidental, all the way up the ladder of science.

Sometimes I feel tired of repeating it. But we can’t grow tired. As frustrating as it is, every time we continue to call out the problem and raise our fists of fury, it helps raise attention and gain support for change. That change will take a long time, because scientific “establishment” moves like molasses, but only a steady push will make it budge. 

I know I’m preaching to the choir when I talk to all of you, but remember this: Every time you share science on Tumblr or Facebook or Twitter or Reddit or wherever you hang out on the internet, then that’s one more chance to reach out and grab someone who doesn’t think they’re “into” science. It’s one more chance to give a 14-year-old girl a boost of confidence (or anyone who needs a boost, for that matter). This isn’t something that can be done by a few. We need to spread this like the most contagious virus the world’s ever seen: An infectious curiosity! 

Read the full report on this study at NYTimes.com

We Were All Female

AsapSCIENCE brings us an important lesson on human developmental biology. All men - yes, even the manliest of men *cough* - began as females. Sort of.

See, the default developmental pathway for a zygote is toward female. That’s due to signals that come from genes on the X chromosome. In XY males, however, a special Y-chromosome gene inhibits just a few of those X chromosome genes and tunes the embryo to respond to testosterone. This takes what would become female parts and “adjusts” them slightly to become the second male brain.

Yep … your family jewels used to belong to the princess. This also answers the “why men have nipples” question.

On a weird science side note, when this system malfunctions in development, the results can be pretty interesting. In a condition called androgen insensitivity syndrome, the embryo is XY, but can’t respond to those early testosterone signals. Instead, it follows the “default” pathway and develops all of the outer female anatomy (vagina, etc.) but none of the inner (ovaries, uterus). Male, but female!

Source: youtube.com

Excited to find this new Tumblr: Gender and Science. An important subject, and a great blog to celebrate and inspire. moshimoshineko: “The fascination of any search after truth lies not in the attainment, which at best is found to be very relative, but in the pursuit, where all the powers of the mind and character are brought into play and are absorbed in the task. One feels oneself in contact with something that is infinite and one finds a joy that is beyond expression in ‘sounding the abyss of science’ and the secrets of the infinite mind.”- Florence Bascom
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Excited to find this new Tumblr: Gender and Science. An important subject, and a great blog to celebrate and inspire.

moshimoshineko:

“The fascination of any search after truth lies not in the attainment, which at best is found to be very relative, but in the pursuit, where all the powers of the mind and character are brought into play and are absorbed in the task. One feels oneself in contact with something that is infinite and one finds a joy that is beyond expression in ‘sounding the abyss of science’ and the secrets of the infinite mind.”
- Florence Bascom

(via gender-and-science)

Source: angelfire.com

Girls in STEM It’s not a secret that women (and pretty much any minority group) have uphill battle after uphill battle facing them when it comes to succeeding in math, science and engineering fields. Some of these are explicit (like the tilted playing field of the tenure system, which could take 100 years to level out), and some are more obscured (like the quiet social pressures that push them away from science). But what is clear is that it does not have to be the case. I was really struck by this infographic’s ability to capture how quickly and precipitously women drop out of many fields of science once social pressures begin to take over.  I hope that projects like ScienceCheerleader, IAmScience, DoubleXScience and This Is What A Scientist Looks Like (<- bonus points if you can find me on that one) can continue to make this image a relic of the past and not a picture of the future. (ᔥ EngineeringDegree.net, click here for enlargification)
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Girls in STEM

It’s not a secret that women (and pretty much any minority group) have uphill battle after uphill battle facing them when it comes to succeeding in math, science and engineering fields. Some of these are explicit (like the tilted playing field of the tenure system, which could take 100 years to level out), and some are more obscured (like the quiet social pressures that push them away from science). But what is clear is that it does not have to be the case.

I was really struck by this infographic’s ability to capture how quickly and precipitously women drop out of many fields of science once social pressures begin to take over. 

I hope that projects like ScienceCheerleader, IAmScience, DoubleXScience and This Is What A Scientist Looks Like (<- bonus points if you can find me on that one) can continue to make this image a relic of the past and not a picture of the future.

(ᔥ EngineeringDegree.net, click here for enlargification)

Source: engineeringdegree.net

Get Over It: Men and Women Are from the Same Planet

Agustín Fuentes shreds a recent paper from PLoS ONE that claims a litany of “sex differences” in trying to define “masculinity-femininity” at the SciAm guest blog:

“Sex” and “Gender” are not the same thing.  Sex is a biological state that is measure via chromosomal content and a variety of physiological and developmental measures.  Gender is the roles, expectations and perceptions that a given society has for the sexes.  Most societies have two genders on a masculinity-femininity continuum, some have more.  The two are interconnected, but not the same thing.  We are born with a sex, but acquire gender and there is great inter-individual diversity within societies and sexes in regards to how sex and gender play out in behavior and personality.

Check out the post for more. Plenty of mention on where the body of literature stands on the development of gender vs. sex.