Science: It’s a Girl Thing

By ⋅ June 22, 2012 ⋅ Post a comment
Science: It's A Girl Thing (YouTube video)

'Science: It's A Girl Thing' video (YouTube video)

A European Commission video aimed at making science appealing to young women has backfired.

The video, which shows three women wearing bright lipstick, high heels and short skirts, giggling between beekers, has caused a huge backlash in the science community.

The World’s science correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee discuses the video’s impact with anchor Marco Werman.

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Marco Werman: I’m Marco Werman, this is The World. Our next story is from the one step forward, several steps back department. It’s about an effort in Europe to encourage women to become scientists, but it seems to be backfiring. Listen to this.

[Plays commercial with music]: Science. Science. It’s a girl thing. It’s a girl thing.

Werman: Science. It’s a girl thing. I thought at first this was a recruitment video for the cosmetics industry, but it’s actually a new video spot produced by The European Commission that’s trying to lure young women to the sciences. Problem is, well The World science correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee joins me, Rhitu what is the problem?

Rhitu Chatterjee: Well Marco in short it objectifies women and doesn’t do any justice to portraying science, and the message seems to be that science is girly and full of lipstick and makeup and… pink. You know you see these three skinny, young, very attractive girls walking in high heeled shoes sort of taking this guy peering through a microscope by surprise and he has this expression on his face that goes “What are girls doing here?”, and then you see the women sort of doing science writing formula on a wall, …uhh, handling solutions, blowing kisses and looking quite stunning.

Werman: Yeah I don’t think I’ve ever seen a YouTube video with so many dislikes. It seems to have hit a nerve.

Chatterjee: Yeah and for obvious reasons. A friend of mine wrote on her Facebook page that the video made her want to scream and someone else remarked on Facebook that the video should have been named “Boys Will Like You Science”. Some people thought it was a big joke and really I haven’t seen anything positive said about it and quite justifiably so.

Werman: Really girls, boys will like you if you discover hydrogen. That’s, you know, number one element.

Chatterjee: That’s right. That’s the one discovery they make in the video.

Werman: What age group was the European commission targeting with this spot, and is there any justification at all for casting the sciences to women this way?

Chatterjee: So, this is part of The European Commission’s “Women In Research and Innovation” campaign, and they have good reasons to want more women in science. Women after all are grossly underrepresented in the science all over the world. You know they’re right in trying to encourage girls to be scientists. By the age group they’re targeting, 13 to 17 year olds, because that’s the age group when boys and girls are making important career choices, but had they looked at their research they would have found that boys and girls don’t really differ much in how much they like or dislike science and technology as career options at that age. It’s much later in their careers that women sort of start to drop off. Especially after graduate school.

Werman: So, ironically this could actually repel women from the sciences, this video spot.

Chatterjee: Exactly, and in fact there is at least one study that New Scientist magazine referred to in their review of this video, and the study was done by a group of psychologists at The University of Michigan where they showed this video to 11 to 13 year old girls. The videos had successful women scientists being, …having either feminine or working feminine characteristics or gender neutral characteristics, and the girls actually disliked science more when the scientists in the video were more feminine. So you’re right. This could be repelling girls from choosing a career in science.

Werman: The World science correspondent Rhitu Chatterjee. Thank you.

Chatterjee: Thank you Marco.

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Discussion

9 comments for “Science: It’s a Girl Thing”

  • Starchitect

    its private. you cant watch the movie

  • Abbey Heffner

    A working link to the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g032MPrSjFA

  • DrJoani

    Absurd.

  • DrJoani

    Absurd.

  • DrJoani

    So, if you have long legs and wear extremely short skirts, much makeup and cleavage revealing clothing you too can be a scientist, IF YOU ARE FEMALE?
    Another great message from—>?

  • DrJoani

    So, if you have long legs and wear extremely short skirts, much makeup and cleavage revealing clothing you too can be a scientist, IF YOU ARE FEMALE?
    Another great message from—>?

  • Frank N. Blunt

    That tickles like Bananarama and girl pop where it emphasized fashion, cosmetics, plastics, & else that market to girls & ladies. Whoop-de-doo! There were other “adverts” to push this agenda as well, hopefully it doesn’t get off track. So why not get involved, unless there is some reservation to animal testing & other such experimental methods (although computer simulations are trying to resolve some of those issues). The popular culture does a disservice to the many areas that technology & “science” actually involve; everybody implements some aspect, but reading, watching, listening to certain media can provide erroneous impressions.
    Although I developed my own values that addressed disparity, opportunity, racism, & other injustices, it seems that there is  a great deal of hypocrisy on the part of our nation that I call ScAmerika. The conditions I had the courage to stand up against for the benefit of others had become used against me, still are as prejudice, pigeon-holing, & worse occur. While in the US Navy, they had quotas for advancement dependent upon race/ethnicity/gender but I witnessed & was subject to outright fraternization, cronyism, prejudice, & much worse. It hasn’t improved since honorable retirement, for what it’s worth, since the departments, facilites, & agencies are rife with corruption & I have been unjustly exploited wtihout resource. So far as opportunities are concerned but there are even greater injustices & stigma that exist. There should be no discern, exception, or favoritism of any victims that suffer from any crime where suppposed designations determine the level of attention, action, & resolution provided toward the injustice. Yet that happens but it shouldn’t & shouldn’t be demeaned as reverse or else, injustice is absolute. The matter indicates that those apparently addressing those supposed inequality issues can expose their own faults & malevolence by perpetuating injustice upon individuals that happen to be of a particular outward physical appearance that they want to confront yet they take no consideration for the values, character, personal beliefs, abilities, & actions of that particular individual. Sometimes I consider how the scientific discipline, especially the method, has been misunderstood & those undertaking the endeavours have been generally mischaracterized. There are worse transgressions & insults in a multiplicitous culture where matters can devolve into struggle against dubious character where ethical challenges, moral hazards, corruption, & injustices seemingly abound as well as indulged. As I’ve mentioned or inferred, there is a wanting of witnesses to discern the propaganda, confront the hypocrisy, & resolve injustice.
    So far as a supposed gender gap issue in the pursuit of science, I’m surprised that this is even an issue & where does it occur? Will there be any compromise in standards for admission or quotas? Hopefully not, but this is an unjust nation (moral hallmark … not!) and world where propaganda obscures hypocrisy & the truth in too many things. Anyway, there are numerous people I recognize that happen to be researchers & female, several I admire enough to call inspirations. I could inform you of many people involved with a variety of disciplines that were technical or scientific. Truth to power, power for peace.

  • http://twitter.com/curtrice Curt Rice

     I was on the “gender expert” group that provided recommendations to the EC as background for their work on the “Science: It’s a girl thing!” campaign. Four of us from the group issued a statement today which on the one hand is clearly critical of the teaser video that has received so much attention (clearly, if you speak “diplomat” at least) and on the other hand tries to say that the issue of recruiting more women to science is so crucial and so important that the EC shouldn’t get totally derailed by this snafu. Our statement was published at wp.me/p22Uc1-XC .

  • http://twitter.com/pfhallett pfh

    how about videos of real women in science talking about their work, produced by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics: http://spie.org/x84512.xml