girl thing

Description

The European Commission's video "Science It's a Girl Thing!" was an unfortunate, although well meaning, marketing blunder which takes away from the commission's excellent website to attract women to science. Taken down almost as soon as it was put up, the response to this video shows that topic of women in science is still attracting a high level of interest (good) although in this case for all the wrong reasons. Selling science with sex only feeds into the continuing media focused hyper-sexualization of our society - and especially of our young women - something we really don't need any more of, thank you. What we need to understand is that you can't fight a stereotype with a stereotype. Our society has all kinds of people with all kinds of looks, stories, backgrounds, and passions - Science and engineering is no different - It's open to people of more than one gender, of more than one look, of more than one passion Women in science and engineering take on some of the world's biggest challenges to change and shape our future for the years to come: creating new technology - improving the environment - serving our society - changing our lives. The only stereotype that needs to apply is a shared passion to be awesome. So pass the oscilloscope/gumboots/petrie dish/keyboard/pitot tube/microscope - and lets get on with the awesomeness of science.