Militant progressives in academia are determined to fix a problem that does not exist - how to get more females in science. Despite there being no gender difference in math scores for the first time in history and more Ph.D.'s for females than men and more hiring for women in faculty positions than men, a subset of people lament it isn't enough.
Women need quotas, they need science outreach, we are told. Good luck telling the three young women who clobbered everyone else at the Google Science Fair that they will never be good at science without spending billions of dollars on self-esteem programs.
Shree Bose, Naomi Shah and Lauren Hodge took first prize in their age groups out of 15 finalists - should that be a big deal? Not if you are impartial and recognize that gender shouldn't matter in excellence and there is no discrimination in academia, much less science, where excellence matters most. But if you need a reminder that children, male and female, are smart unless you tell them they're not, by inventing gender fatigue and a need for the National Science Foundation to fund ridiculous efforts like a game called Gender Bias Bingo to create sexism, even where there is none, well, maybe you need to read the rest of this article.
Young female scientists, your older mentors want you to believe you will emotionally collapse if there are not enough of your gender in each class. Thank you for proving them wrong once again.
It doesn't end at US borders. A new study in the British Journal of Educational Psychology says we may have to invent a whole new language for female scientists. Too many subjects are “embedded in masculine contexts”, the authors claim, and a female professor at UCLA says girl-ing up examples, as in changing “How does a laser read a CD?” - too masculine! - to “how is a laser used in cosmetic surgery?” addresses stereotypical girls’ concerns and motivates them, maybe, to go into science. Female professors at UCLA patronize young females more than the cast of "Mad Men", it seems.
These young women, also educated under the evil No Child Left Behind program progressives also insisted would ruin education, didn't get the memo about how oppressed they are. The three American girls beat out 10,000 students from 90 other countries - kind of a slap in the face to people who insist American education is lousy also.
If progressives want to target bias in academia, forget females. National Science Foundation (NSF) data states that fewer than 300 people with disabilities receive Ph.D.s in science or engineering each year, yet 140,000 freshmen students list a disability. And don't even try to count the number of Republicans who can get tenure at a university today. If people really care about bias, those are the two areas we should be looking.
Still Think Girls Can't Do Science? Females Sweep The Google Science Fair
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