Hmm. To me, the problem with "girl power", etc. is that, as a young female scientist, you're inundated with suggestions that girls are your "team" and boys are your rivals. If you hear enough about "girl power" growing up, you start to feel that you have to represent your gender well: that you have to beat boys on tests (though it doesn't matter if you beat other girls on tests), or that knowing more than a male colleague is something to be proud of. "Girl power" was what I said in elementary school when the girls beat the guys at soccer or something, but when you start to use that sentiment in relation to intellectual abilities, you foster a hostile work environment and you encourage intellectual competition rather than collaboration across gender.<p>On a related note, here's a NYT blog post that I saw recently that highlights the science fair winners' gender and just goes up in flames: <a href="http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/girl-power-wins-at-googles-first-science-fair/" rel="nofollow">http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/girl-power-wins-at-...</a>
It ends by suggesting that Google hired Marissa Mayer and Susan Wojcicki because they would help recruit more women, which made me cringe, even though I know that the author probably didn't intend to make exactly that point.
I didn't read the article in is entirety, but one line popped out at me, where one of the finalists says something like "Yeah! Girl power!"<p>Am I the only one who feels like, although men may 'dominate' the hard sciences, one of the reasons (among many others which I won't discuss) why girls may succeed at stages like this is because of the encouragement from a "girl power!" (perhaps, underdog?) mentality?<p>If boys won and went with "guy power!" they would simply be accused of being sexist or even misogynist rather than fair-minded, or intrinsically motivated.
<i>>>Dr. Cerf said. "This is just a reminder that women are fully capable of doing same or better quality work than men can." </i><p>I hope those those who needed a reminder about the capabilities of girls or women see this news.<p>However, (and I realize this will be controversial) imo this result doesn't contradict the general notion that girls (in mainstream American culture) are discouraged (by societal and cultural pressures) from engaging in science and engineering. Two of the three girls are Indian-American and these girls presumably don't face the same pressures that most other American girls face.<p>For that matter, I think that women in countries like India, China, Russia etc. are much more represented in science and engineering (in their countries) than native-born women in the US.
Dr. Cerf [google's chief Internet Evangelist] said. "This is just a reminder that women are fully capable of doing same or better quality work than men can."<p>I somehow find this quote to be rather unfortunate. I know he meant it in a good way, but it makes it seem as though the general public needs to be reminded that women aren't less intelligent than men. Perhaps for many that reminder may be required, but I guess the fact that we need such a reminder saddens me. I would have preferred something like that not be mentioned. Or perhaps I would prefer that it need not be pointed out at all.
The winning entry was for finding a way to overcome the resistance to a drug by cancer cells. I'm curious, how does a 17 year old get access to labs, chemicals, cell cultures required to conduct the study ? Is it common in US for students of this age to have access to such things ?
>For the winning research Ms. Bose looked at a chemotherapy drug, cisplatin, that is commonly taken by women with ovarian cancer. The problem is that the cancer cells tend to grow resistant to cisplatin over time, and Ms. Bose set out to find a way to counteract that.<p>Original study: <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/ampkandcisplatinresistance/" rel="nofollow">https://sites.google.com/site/ampkandcisplatinresistance/</a><p>Doesn't seem to have been published yet, but presumably it will be.
This reminds of research showing that
"Over 80% of high school leadership positions are now held by girls (Fiscus, 1997.)"
( from <a href="http://cfge.wm.edu/Gifted%20Educ%20Artices/GenderGenius.htm" rel="nofollow">http://cfge.wm.edu/Gifted%20Educ%20Artices/GenderGenius.htm</a> )<p>It still remains to be seen how doing more of something (or being more successful at something) in high school translates to being successful at that endeavor later in life. Time will tell!
I recall when I was on staff at the Naval Academy, there was a persistent finding in various in-house studies that the female midshipmen got more positive attention and feedback from virtually everyone, from staff and faculty to other midshipmen. Thus paradoxically, going from all male to mostly male made it even less likely for any given male student to find a mentor.
This is what you get when you replace boys' toys such as lego blocks and meccanos, and to a lesser extent, hack it-yourself-computers like c64's and dos boxes with xboxes.<p>I got my spark for science and engineering when I was a kid by building legos, making electric circuits from a construction kit and learning the baby steps of programming with qbasic.
Paging Vivek Wadhwa to write an article about Immigrants' children doing well in STEM. (6 out of 20 finalists are Indian-American) [1]<p>[1] <a href="http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/finalists.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/finalists.html</a>
The top three winners were all in the health sciences. Had they been in engineering, physical science, or computer science then it would have been more newsworthy given the gender gap in those fields.
I definitely thought this was going to be an article about the juxtaposition of an all female cast of cleaning professionals with an all male science fair as a broad analogy for the "glass ceiling" effect.<p>Glad to see I was mistaken :)
I don't care if they won specifically because they were female. It's a sausage fest in the bay area. Time to get the women on board guys. They need to be part of the 'future' too.