The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has gathered data comparing countries all over the world on their track record of gender differences in various skills, degrees, work, and wages. It's an interesting cross section of opportunity, gender imbalance, and culture. The OECD even took into…
GoldieBlox has inspired much enthusiasm among adults. The concept—disrupt the pink aisle! provide girls with an alternative to princess-mania!—is the stuff TED talks and viral videos are made of. But are the toys actually any good? Those videos aren't just a P.S.A. campaign—they're advertisements. And there, the jury's …
Late last week, Emily Graslie of Brain Scoop posted a new video in which she explains exactly why it's so difficult to be a woman in a STEM field: While she gets a lot of support and positive feedback, many "fans" simply want to discuss her appearance and how fuckable she is.
I hope you're ready to be blown away, because everything about this video has got it all: a hearty rejection of princess dogma, children scream-singing about female empowerment, a giant Rube Goldberg machine...
All the way back in 1842, when humans still spent all their time huddled around in the dark, gnawing on potatoes and reveling in abject confusion (basically), brilliant genius Ada Lovelace penned the world's first computer program. Nowadays, Ada Lovelace is a women-in-STEM hero; annually, we honor her and celebrate the …
To celebrate the first anniversary of Curiosity's landing on Mars, Mattel has issued a special Barbie doll. And yes, she's wearing pink.
Today's Google Doodle celebrates Maria Mitchell, the first female astronomer in the U.S. who discovered a comet in 1847. (Be sure and read about her fascinating life... dome parties?) Just last week, the Doodle honored molecular biologist Rosalind Franklin. Yay lady scientists!
Last year, Stanford engineering student Debbie Sterling founded GoldieBlox, a construction toy meant to "prove to the world that engineering for girls is a mainstream concept." The company strives to encourage little girls to remain interested in engineering by engaging them in story-oriented building (the way boys are…
High school, what a time! What was your favorite part? Passing notes? Giggling at handsome fellows and dames? Causing a small explosion in science class, being taken into police custody, and getting sent to the slammer? Wait, what the hell?
In the not-so-distant future, when humanities majors (the unskilled laborers of academia) become so commonplace that they make Falstaff’s birthday a national holiday on which people are only allowed to talk to each other in heroic couplets, anyone who studied a hard science (i.e. not sociology) will be treated like a…
I always assume, when strangers ask me extremely basic questions about objectification and entitlement and power differentials, that they're just bozo trolls looking to get a rise out of me for sport and waste the grumpy feminist's time. I mean, it's 2013. Everyone knows by now why we don't have a White History Month,…
Denigrating grandmothers for their supposed lack of technological prowess is bullshit because a) big fucking deal you can use a computer — your grandmother was probably old enough during the moon landing to roll her eyes when Neil Armstrong read his cheesy "one small step" line, and b) grandmothers are really crafty, so…
On Monday, a whopping four members of the Senate Judiciary Committee convened to hear testimony about the H-1B visa program, which helps U.S. employers temporarily employ foreign workers in highly-specialized occupations. These are usually STEM occupations, and, according to yesterday's stark testimony from engineer…
What happens when 80% of your customers are female, but your engineers behind-the-scenes are 87% male? If you're Etsy, you try to fix it.
Wikipedia, the collaborative encyclopedia that's edited by you (if you're a dude), me (if I were a dude), and all the dudes you know, launched in 2001 and quickly became the place to find quick info on pretty much any topic under the sun. Remember writing research papers before Wikipedia? Man, we were all such chumps…
Back in June, the European Commission rightfully came under fire after unleashing their horrible "Science: It's a Girl Thing" campaign, which included a commercial that used makeup and fashion to try to persuade young women into scientific industries. The campaign received an immediate backlash and was quickly pulled.…
In August, Debbie Sterling, an engineer from Stanford, launched a Kickstarter campaign in an attempt to fund GoldieBlox — a construction toy for girls. Sterling explains that she created the toy because:
Of all the various schemes to encourage more young women to pursue careers in STEM fields, a new six-week online mentoring program that aims to connect young women with female mentors already established in STEM fields seems especially promising.
Early this morning, astronaut and physicist Sally Ride passed away after a 61-year-long life of exploration, boundary breaking, and ass kicking. When she blasted into space in 1983, she became the youngest American and the first American woman to leave the earth's atmosphere, thus igniting space camp dreams in a…
One of the challenges in convincing little girls to want to be smart is that they've been indoctrinated by society and princess culture into thinking that being smart is a thing that ugly mustachioed chicks do because no one wanted to marry them and they're too allergic to hoard cats. Enter the Science Cheerleaders —…
