|
|
JISHOU, HUNAN — Dr. Isis at Scienceblogs.com has published a few more letters from women scientists, as part of her “Letters to Our Daughters Project.”
The daughters are not necessarily the scientists’ biological daughters, by the way. Isis wants young female scientists-in-training to stay the course, get their degrees and begin science careers. As a former high school science teacher, I’m blogging about these letters because they contain sound advice for teenaged science students, too. Girls can be scientists, without giving up romance, motherhood, or … shopping.
The third letter in the series is by Wendee Holtcamp, a free-lance science journalist who blogs at Animal Planet and has written for Scientific American and other big time publications. She reminisces about the doubts of others around her whether she could or should pursue a doctoral degree.
It seems that the higher I climb up the totem pole of success, the more resistance I encounter. Whatever happened to those feel-good messages from kindergarten: You can be anything you want to be! Girls can do anything boys can! Go make your dreams come true!
What I’m discovering as I journey toward my doctorate is that while women may cheer our abundant opportunities in the 21st century, equal opportunity does not always mean equal treatment. The little voices of doubt rattle around at the back of my mind.
Dr. Janet Stemwedel (aka Dr. Free-Ride), who also blogs at Scienceblogs.com, holds two doctoral degrees in chemistry and philosophy. She is an associate professor of philosophy at San Jose State University. Not surprisingly, her letter is more, well, philosophical.
Possibly related posts:
JISHOU, HUNAN — One of my favorite Internet hangouts is ScienceBlogs.com, which has a veritable pantheon of engaging and intelligent bloggers commenting on everything from creationist malarkey and real science to … shoes.  One of the goddesses there is Dr. Isis (her mortal form is depicted below), who recently started a project to encourage more young women to enter the sciences.
Dr. Isis and I share the same concern. I spent more than two decades teaching physics to sometimes reluctant teenagers, and because our school basically required everyone to take physics to graduate, I managed to teach nearly everyone who passed through those hallowed halls.
Roughly half my students were girls. I don’t have any hard statistics, but I think about as many women as men among my students entered medical, scientific or technical fields. The numbers for both genders are comparatively small, given the arts-and-humanities bent of the school, but it’s the parity of the numbers that I am proud of.
For a student to love math and science is hard enough in the United States — such students are labeled nerds, geeks, and weirdos, because math and science are supposed to be (a) really hard and (b) really boring. To love something simultaneously hard and boring makes you a bit of a social outcast. [Cross-cultural aside: This kind of ostracism does not happen in China, or in Asia as a whole. Here, math and science students are virtually worshiped, which might help explain why Asian students kick American students' asses on international math and science exams.]
This is a preview of Women in science: Dr. Isis and The Letters to Our Daughters Project . Read the full post (1226 words, 2 images, estimated 4:54 mins reading time)Possibly related posts:
This pretty much says it all.
Permanent link to this post (7 words, 2 images, estimated 2 secs reading time) Possibly related posts:
|
Recent Comments