An Ohio man has been charged with a first degree misdemeanor after he allegedly used a law-enforcement computer network to gather information on Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, aka Joe the Plumber. • North Carolina lawmakers have redefined "life sentence" to mean 80 years. According to the new definition, 20 convicted criminals are now set for release, including several men convicted of raping young girls. • According to a report released by the National Science Foundation, only 33% of people working in science are women. The scarcity of women in science is especially noticeable in the "hard sciences," including the study of radioactive elements. • This photograph, cleverly captioned "Career Choices for Girls According to Videogames" provides a single piece of the puzzle as to why many young girls feel their only options are fashion designer, cheerleader, or professional housekeeper. • John McCain has asked Obama to posthumously pardon black boxer Jack Johnson, who was imprisoned in 1913 for his romantic involvement with a white woman. • As part of an attempt to get male students to be "Renaissance men," Morehouse College in Atlanta has forbidden them from wearing baggy pants, sunglasses, do-rags and clothing "normally worn by women." • Politicians often write books to boost their careers, but Sarah Palin may be a simpler soul. Says onetime Republican spokesman Ron Bonjean, "her goal is to make a whole lot of money." •

In an interview with the New York Times, Greider claims that more women gravitate toward her field not because there's anything particularly feminine about it, but because in a field where men tend to help other men, women must try to support other women:

The derogatory term is the "old boys network." It's not that they are biased against women or want to hurt them. They just don't think of them. And they often feel more comfortable promoting their male colleagues.

She goes on to mention the former president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers, who most definitely is biased against women. Despite the gains women have made in science, there is still a clear tendency to think of science - and, it should be noted, economics - as something for boys only. Many have celebrated the recent Nobel record - 5 women won this year, out of 13 - but the so-called "record" isn't actually very impressive. And what's worse is the previous record: In 2004, only 3 women were awarded the prize. Greider is quick to point out that one year does not a trend make:

I certainly hope it's a sign that things are going to be different in the future. But I'm a scientist, right? This is one event. I'm not going to see one event and say it's a trend. I hope it is. One of the things I did with the press conference that Johns Hopkins gave was to have my two kids there. In the newspapers, there's a picture of me and my kids right there. How many men have won the Nobel in the last few years, and they have kids the same age as mine, and their kids aren't in the picture? That's a big difference, right? And that makes a statement.

But another important statement is being made on Twitter, where Elinor Ostrom is a top trend. We're pretty sure this honor is nothing compared to winning the Nobel prize, but when Twitter trending topics usually include stuff like "#liesgirlstell" and "#3wordsaftersex," the inclusion of a female researcher is most definitely a step up.

On Winning A Nobel Prize In Science [New York Times]
Nobel Prizes 2009: A Record Year For Women [AP]
Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Prize Winner, Top Trend On Twitter [Examiner]

Instead of spending the month saving, and giving out, candy and sweets, Jezebel, and our sister blogs in the Gawker Media Network (Deadspin, Gawker, io9, Gizmodo, Fleshbot, Lifehacker, Kotaku, and Jalopnik), will be raising money for education. You can check out the Gawker Media page here. Each blog will be picking 4 or 5 different projects that they want to highlight (although there are literally hundreds of important projects) and asking readers to please set aside a little of their hard earned cash for these kids.

We're doing it all through Donors Choose. Donors Choose is a website that links schools in need directly with charitable individuals like yourselves. It allows you to view the various projects and decide exactly where your money is going to go. Many of these schools lack funding for even the most basic things, including books, notebooks, pencils and paper. Some of them are looking for calculators or other techy gadgets. We have decided to focus on a few worthy projects that aim to promote self-confidence among young women through education. Our choices are:

Inspire Young Women In Science: Ms. C's classroom in NYC is looking for lab stools, so that their young girls can experience what it is like to be in an actual lab. The girls are currently learning science in an overcrowded classroom, and Ms. C hopes that through replicating the conditions of a science lab, her kids could get a better feel for what a career in science would be like. This high poverty school needs a total of $937.

Girls In Love With Books: Ms. W from Florida has started a book club for girls, but unfortunately, they don't have enough books. She's looking for funding to purchase three books for each girl. Her reading list includes awesome titles like Tuck Everlasting and Stargirl. They need a total of $486 to make this happen.

What Is Space Like From A Woman's Perspective?: Many girls are not encouraged to enter careers in science or math. And in inner-city Michigan, an amazing career seems even more out of reach. Ms. A would like to show her students that they can become astronauts, biologists, and pilots by providing them with books that tell the stories of real women who have done so. The total project cost is $546.

Interactive Notebooks For Female Algebra Students: This high-need school in North Carolina is looking for funding to help their female algebra students to pass a difficult end-of-course test to fulfill graduation requirements. Ms. A teaches a small group of girls year round and would like to provide them with colorful notebooks and pens to better organize their notes. She is asking for a total of $320.

Since this is a monthlong event, we're confident that our readers will rise to the occasion and help this batch of classrooms meet their goal. This is why we're asking for our readers to look through the projects on Donors Choose (they helpfully provide a search feature, if you want to narrow down your scope) and suggest any other worthy projects in the comments. We'll update you on the progress of all this as the month goes on.

• An anonymous man, who has been convicted of attempted rape twice, first when he was 11 and again at 14, spoke to the BBC about his own history of abuse and why he continued the cycle of violence. "I didn't see it as committing a sexual offence, I seen it as a normal act," he said. "I'd witnessed it all my life, it was just normal to me, didn't think there was anything wrong with it… playing doctors and nurses, that's how I described it when I was younger." • Time magazine investigates the link between homophobia in Africa and the AIDs epidemic. Sadly, since public health announcements focus exclusively on heterosexual sex, many African men are unaware of the risks associated with unprotected anal sex. • A recent study on the power of media influence on teen behavior shows that kids are more likely to do stupid shit like "car surfing" (i.e. riding on the roof of a moving car) after they have seen it depicted on television or in a film. • Click here to watch a video of a beagle and a raccoon playing together. Cute interspecies friendships are the best! • A survey of female surgeons found that most women doctors are happy with their career choice, although many of them would prefer to have a more flexible work schedule. • According to a study from the University of Montreal, women who have had their ovaries removed and thus experience premature menopause are more likely to be diagnosed with lung cancer than those who enter menopause without intervention. • "Though violence against women can be found in every country, women in societies with entrenched male dominance, patriarchal kinship patterns, and legalised discrimination - the situation in many Arab countries - are acutely vulnerable," reads a recently released UN-sponsored report on "Challenges to Human Security in the Arab Countries." It continues: "The fabled oil wealth of the Arab countries presents a misleading picture of their economic situation to live with the insecurities associated with their status. They are at the mercy of conditions in camps or political and economic events in their host countries, which could suddenly turn against them." • Pro-choice advocate group NARAL has announced that it's endorsing Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. NARAL previously withheld support because it was uncertain of Sotomayor's views on the issue since she has never ruled on abortion. •

• 15 years ago, Thomas Howard Price beat his wife, Heather Thompson, with a broom handle and pliers, leaving her permanently disabled. 10 years later, Price wrote Thompson a letter from prison in which he threatened to kill her and their children as soon as he was free. Price was released last Friday. • An awesome woman from New Hampshire celebrated her 100th birthday this week with a ride on a Harley. Alice King has been a biking enthusiast since 1927, and for her 100th, her family surprised her with a motorcycle ride. • Last summer, professor Anne York published a study that showed the difference in ambitions of high school valedictorians as broken down by gender. She found that girls were less likely to shoot for high paying jobs, and that many were already concerned with the family/work balance. New York Times blog The Choice revisits the findings, and asks for reader input. • A recent study found that semen "quality" (reproductive capacity) is adversely effected by low antioxidant intake. •  Thanks to Obama (and the failing economy), the Peace Corps has seen a serious increase in the number of applicants this year. • The achievement gap between women and men in math and science has narrowed to the vanishing point, according to a recent study. However, women are still underrepresented in Ph.D. applicant pools. • Police in Northumbria are searching for an escaped wallaby named Hopper. They ask that anyone who has spotted the wallaby to contact them asap. • According to a new study, men don't give a shit about women's health. A Florida State University study found that informing men about the potential medical benefits of the HPV vaccine for their sexual partners did not influence their decision about whether or not to receive the shots. • New guidelines to be published in July aim to aid doctors in identifying bleeding disorders in women. •  In a recent report, the Anti-Defamation League says that the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. has declined for the fourth consecutive year. • American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee are set to go on trial for "hostile acts" in North Korea this Thursday. If convicted, they could face up to 10 years in forced labor camps. •  25 years ago, Alexey Pajitnov, who was then working for the Soviet Academy of Sciences in Moscow, created Tetris. Want to celebrate? You can: watch some cheesy ads, learn about the future of Tetris, read about Pajitnov's World of Warcraft habit, or just go play the game. •

• Saberi said she was moved to hear that so many people worked for her release. She added, "I think that if somebody is supposed to speak about my case from now on, nobody knows about it as well as I do, and I will talk about it more in the future." • Tennessee has nullified the 18-month marriage of a transgender woman and a man because the state considers them both men. The woman was born a man and had a sex change operation, but the state does not recognize gender change (or gay marriage) even after sex reassignment surgery. • A Sacramento woman survived a car crash because she was hurled out of the car, over the the highway sound wall, and landed in a plum tree in a backyard. Firefighters say she survived because the tree cushioned her fall. • A Turkish court has ordered that an employer give a woman her job back after she was fired for kissing her boyfriend at work. The kiss was brief, and no customers say it, but her boss caught it on a security camera and fired her. • The banning of four books of French erotic literature in Turkey has caused debate over the qualifications of committee members to determine what is literature and what isn't after they decided to ban a book by the acclaimed French poet Apollinaire. • A new study suggests chemicals and hormones produced from our changing moods can affect eggs and sperm, altering the patterns of genes that are active in them and thus how a child develops. • Scientists have found that by observing the pattern of activity in the brain they can tell whether a person heard words spoken in anger, joy, relief, or sadness. This is the first study to show that emotional information is represented by distinct spatial signatures in the brain. • Scientists in Australia have figured out why there is an obesity epidemic: we eat too much food. They calculated how much people are eating today as opposed to three decades ago by comparing agricultural data. They determined that based on the total amount of food that is grown and imported, humans are actually less fat than we should be based just on changes in consumption, which may be explained by exercise. • A McDonald's in Alabama pulled Kidz Bop CDs from the store's Happy Meals because parents complained they could hear an obscenity in a cover of Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be." McDonald's says there's no obscenity in the song, but a parent says, "In the song the word is supposed to be 'looking,' but they're saying the f-word with the -ing on the end." • A stripper working at a Times Square peep show caught an ex-con who was counterfeiting money. She noticed that the two $10 bills he handed her looked like they were made on an Ink Jet printer and alerted her manager. When confronted, the man panicked and dropped 21 more bills. The man was arrested and is currently out on bail. • A British man was arrested after he drove up to a police officer posing as a prostitute and how much she would charge to have sex with his 14-year-old son, who was sitting in the car. The man won't serve jail time because of his "previous excellent character" and the boy will be allowed to live with his father, but the man will be put on the sex offender registry for five years. • A study found that in many police units in England and Wales female officers have to wear uniforms and stab vests designed for men. Maria Eagle, the justice minister, said, "It does make a very clear point, doesn't it? How welcome would you feel as a woman in a police force like that, if you can't even get clothes that fit you? It's crazy." • Police are investigating whether a Russian gynecologist, Igor Ivanov, purposely sterilized his pregnant ex-fiance, Olga Sokolova, when she was admitted to a hospital with abdominal pains. Sokolova had called off their wedding on the night before they were supposed to get married because she believed he was cheating on her. She started dating someone else and got pregnant. Ivanov was the only doctor on duty when she was admitted to the hospital, and he told her she was miscarrying and performed emergency surgery, causing serious internal damage that will prevent her from having children. • On Saturday Sister Mary Elizabeth Lloyd will run a 100-mile marathon in Florida while wearing her nun's habit to raise money to help orphaned children. ''I'm like Johnny Cash,'' Lloyd said. 'I wear black to draw attention. And when people ask me: 'Why in God's name are you doing this?' I can say, 'For the orphaned children.''' • A video posted by the U.K. National Health Service in Leicester was banned by YouTube after 24 hours for showing what looks like a teenage girl giving birth on a playground while students watch. The NHS was trying to get their anti-teen pregnancy message to young people with a viral video. • Business is booming at Cryos, the world's biggest sperm bank. In 2008 the number of donors tripled, from 30 a day to 100 at its four offices in Denmark. The worldwide demand for sperm surged in the past three or four years and Cryos "can't meet the avalanche of demand from the western world, in particular the United States," said Chief executive Ole Schou, "We help a tsunami of highly-educated single women who are more demanding and who prioritised their careers and who want to have a child before it is too late." • Vietnam is experiencing a boom in male births, which researchers believe can be blamed on the tenfold increase in the availability of ultrasounds in the last decade. They believe women being able to know the sex of their unborn child is increasing the number of sex-specific abortions. • A scientist who writes under the name "Mike The Mad Biologist" blogged that he perceives a double standard in how female scientists are viewed when they party after work. "If a female scientist at a meeting parties hard and flirts, she is viewed as a 'party girl.' In other words, she is no longer viewed as a scientist with an interesting social life, but as 'a good time' (although perhaps not sexually)," he writes, adding, "Mind you, I think this double standard sucks. But... I'm not sure what we (including male scientists) can do about it, other than not be assholes (which would be a good start)." • Here's a letter to the Princeton Alumni Weekly from an alum of 1945: "Gone is the distinct masculine flavor of an all-male college. The maleness of the Nassau Inn's Tap Room has been replaced by a female, dainty, tearoom atmosphere... My fear is that the Princeton University I knew has been taken over by a female majority (for better or worse). I am surprised that other male graduates are not upset by these developments." • English ice cream maker Frank Frederick is reviving his Italian family's 100-year-old gelato brand, along with his grandfather's practice of singing opera to his cows to make them produce endorphin-rich milk. Frederick flew in opera tenor Marcello Bedoni from Italy to serenade his cows. "The cows are such gentle beasts and have a good ear for opera," said Bedoni. •

• New research suggests that it may not only be unnecessary to remove ovaries during a hysterectomy, but it could also be dangerous. Doctors found that women who have their ovaries removed face higher risk of death than those who keep their ovaries. • According to the Onion Hillary Clinton has joined the esteemed ranks of celebrity perfumers. Her new fragrance has been described as "steely, bracing, and curt, with notes of patent leather, sandalwood, and wool serge." • Nicole Marty, 25, was arrested after she crashed her car into a utility pole. Inside the car was her nine-year-old daughter. Click here to see her charming (and kind of classic) mug shot. • A new study has found that the longer women breastfeed, the less likely they are to develop heart attacks or strokes. • In efforts to address the shortage of women in science, scientists have launched the She Is An Astronomer project (SIAA). • Somali women living in Baidoa, Somalia's third largest city, have been instructed to cover up, or face jail time. The order was issued by Al-Shabaab, the radical Islamist militia that controls the city. • Scientists have discovered a key difference between human birthing and Neanderthal birthing: in Neanderthal childbirth, babies did not need to twist their heads to fit easily through the birth canal, unlike modern human babies. • Want to see a nude painting of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi? Well, here you go. • Apparently, what type of movie you watch may affect your decision making. Fear - from watching a scary film - leads people to go along with the group, while lust encourages them to strike out alone, according to U.S. researchers. •  The great debate over sexting rages on, as lawyers struggle to decide whether or not to charge teens with possession of child pornography over the controversial images. • Ophelia's Voice has launched a new letter writing project that asks both girls and women to send in letters about their hopes for the future and their reflections on the past. • Sick of twee movies starring Micheal Cera? Then you might just hate this trailer for Paper Heart a new mockumentary starring comedian Charlyne Yi about the true meaning of love. • Daniel Andreas San Diego has become the first animal rights activist to make the FBI's "Most Wanted Terrorists" list. •  Graffiti tagger Danielle Bremner (aka "Utah") has been sentenced to six months in prison for tagging trains in New York. • A (no shit) study found that breakdancing is a high risk activity. • Tragic: another 11-year-old boy has committed suicide because of homophobic bullying. Jaheem Herrera hanged himself after being relentlessly taunted by boys at school. • Police fear that Melissa Huckaby may have abducted a 7-year-old girl last January, who went missing after being spotted with Huckaby in a park. The girl was later returned to her family, but they found that she had been drugged. • 

• A new study has found that exposure to family violence, even at a young age, can cause poor health among older African-American women. • Brittany Mayes, one of the five teens involved in the video-taped assault of a 16-year-old friend and fellow cheerleader, has been sentenced to a year of probation. • Click here to read an interesting interview with writer/filmmaker/actress/artist/musician Miranda July in which she discusses Gossip Girl, her new movie, New York hotels and internet gossip. • Forgetful? Fan of Memento? Buy a To-Do Tattoo Kit. • Chicago's Cook County sheriff's department is suing Craigslist for the many, many sex ads listed in its "casual encounters" section. • An Australian company is selling paper made out of wombat poop for the extremely environmentally conscious/cute-loving among us. • Baby bottle companies have agreed to stop using BPA, a potentially harmful chemical, in their plastic bottles. • 65-year-old Val Renfro was shopping when a man shoved her, grabbed her purse and ran. She grabbed her phone out of her bra, where she always keeps it, dialed 911, and chased down her thief with her car. • What a nightmare: Jean Driscoll, 72, has been burping uncontrollably for two years, and doctors still do not know what is wrong with her. • 70% of male drug addicts admit to taking drugs in order to increase sexual pleasure, the most popular choice being, somewhat surprisingly, cocaine (58%). Only 37% of drug-addicted women report using for this purpose. • A new study shows that older adults are better at controlling their emotions than young adults. Yet another reason to respect your elders. • Prostitute-rating website, The Erotic Review, has severed its ties with founder David Elms because of recent drug charges. • A Tehran court has ruled in favor of blinding the man who attacked Ameneh Bahrami with acid in 2004. Bahrami was left blind in both eyes, but the court ruled that, since her attacker is male and thus his eyes are worth more, he will only be blinded in one. • Using the model of a "pendulum of pain," counselor Steven Stosny explains to CNN why some women are unable to leave their abusers. • Get ready to get stabby: a defense lawyer in a Bahrain gang rape trial has argued that the three men who committed the crime should be acquitted because they only did it for "fun." • A 40-year-old British woman bit off her boyfriend's tongue during a drunken kiss because she was upset she was not pregnant. • Census data shows that minority children may become the majority by 2023. • A recent study found that watching violent cartoons may cause children to act out aggressively against their peers. • Amnesty International has issued a warning about gender-specific violence against women in Iraq. • Sad news: Anne-Marie Rogers, campaigner for breast cancer drug accessibility, has passed away. • In response to recent claims of mishandling rape cases, the University of Portland has changed its handbook with regards to rape victims and underage drinking. • Bed, Bath, and Beyond is sponsoring a contest for female (and only female) inventors to develop new products that will retail in stores. • Ohio has been named the "manliest" state in the country, based on stereotypical criteria such as the popularity of sports teams, tools, hardware, and the frequency of monster truck rallies. •

Just because "smart is the new cool," reports Natalie Angier in yesterday's Times, doesn't mean the lab is an easy place for the ovary-having set. While they've made strides in many areas, like biology, women remain drastically underrepresented in fields like physics, where they make up only 6 percent of full professors. Science also seems to impact women's personal lives more starkly than men's. 70 percent of male tenured science profs are married with kids, compared to only 44 percent of female ones. Nearly 40 percent of female scientists in one study said they had had fewer kids than they wanted, while only 20 percent of men felt this way. Study author Mary Ann Mason says the message here is, "men can have it all, but women can’t."

Girls do just as well as boys in high school math, and may actually be more likely to use computers at home, so there's no reason to think our fluffy little brains are holding us back. Rather, the culture of science — which often demands that people spend their 20s and 30s in low-paying but high-pressure positions, and then madly chase tenure well into their forties — sucks for women (and men too), especially if they want to have families. Mason says Obama could relieve some of the pain by allocating additional family leave to recipients of federal grants, since many scientists fall into this group.

Women in science are also hoping Obama will appoint a woman to his Council of Advisers on Science and Technology. "People say, oh, we shouldn’t have quotas, but diversity is a form of excellence, and there are plenty of outstanding women out there," says Jo Handelsman, a microbiologist and member of the Rosalind Franklin society, which works to support and recognize women in science (that's Franklin above). "You don’t have to lower your standards in the slightest," she continues, "you just have to pay attention." As someone whose sense that women can be smart, analytical, and do anything they want was shaped by a female scientist (hi Mom!), I have to agree.

In ‘Geek Chic’ and Obama, New Hope for Lifting Women in Science [NY Times]

First there's Lise Meitner, who collaborated with German chemist Otto Hahn from 1907-1938. Meitner guided Hahn through the experiments that led to the discovery of nuclear fission, according to her biographer, Ruth Lewin Sime. Since Meitner was an Austrian Jew, Hahn published the results of their work together without including her as a co-author, due to the political climate of the era. Historians say that Hahn initially indicated that he intended to credit Meitner when it was safe to do so. But when Hahn received the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, he took sole credit for the work.

Then there's Rosalind Franklin, who took X-ray photographs of DNA crystals. She died before her colleagues shared the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Lastly, Jocelyn Bell Burnell detected the first pulsars (rotating balls of neutrons that spin thorugh the universe) and published her results in 1968. She was a graduate student under Antony Hewish at the University of Cambridge, and in 1973, they shared the prestigious Franklin Institute's Michelson Medal. But in 1974, Hewish won the Nodel prize for physics — the first Nobel won by astronomers — and Burnell was not included.

On one hand, you've got to wonder if the work itself is what's important, and not the prize: Isn't having women in the sciences about results, not rewards? On the other hand, what is up with women being refused recognition for their work? (And do you think, despite the struggles female scientists have gone through, that Melissa Rey will get the props she deserves?)

Missouri girl named 'Top Young Scientist' [UPI]
No Nobel for You: Top 10 Nobel Snubs [3 Quarks Daily]
No Nobel for You: Top 10 Nobel Snubs [Scientific American]
Related: Young Scientist Challenge 2008 [Discovery Education]

Earlier: Memo To MTV: Please Make A Reality Show About Chick Scientists

(Girls dreaming of the runway probably have no idea of the psychic toll or bleak economics for many models, just check out some posts written by our anonymous model, Tatiana.) But back to the survey: 29% of the girls picked actress. Only 14% picked scientist; 4% chose engineer. (Only 20% chose doctor.) Why is it that teens today would rather be someone who is gazed upon through a lens than someone who looks more closely at the world through a microscope? Dr. Alice Roberts, an archaeologist, has this theory: "I think that science is still sometimes seen as a dull subject which only a small number of people fully understand. The reality is that scientists are brilliant, creative people, and what could be more interesting than finding out about how the world works?" Ms. McKie agrees: "I love being a scientist. It is as challenging as it is rewarding and we should be showing girls what opportunities are out there for them."

Noise wants to see the media get involved, and prove there's more to life than aspiring to celebrity status. One in four of the teens say that science and engineering fields are not represented in the magazines and websites they read. Sure, sure. Blame the media. Or! Find a way to use the media.

So here's an idea: What if MTV created a reality show about young female scientists? What if these women were smart, interesting people who ended up in the tabloids, on the red carpets, on the pages of glossy magazines? Even though life shouldn't always be lived seeking the spotlight, wouldn't you feel better about those women making money than, say, Audrina Patridge? How else can we reverse this trend of teens aspiring to be objects upon which to gaze?

Girls Choosing Camera Lenses Over Microscopes [Guardian]
Earlier: Today's Teens Believe It's Better To Be Sexy Than Clever

Pinker adds that perhaps if science departments helped women combine family responsibility with hard science careers, they might be more likely to choose those careers. Other opponents of this application of Title IX think "[female scientists] would be marginalized if a quota system revived the old stereotype that women couldn’t compete on even terms in science," Tierney notes.

It's clear that Tierney is against using Title IX to create parity in labs. "Whether or not quotas are ever imposed, some of the most productive science and engineering departments in America are busy filling out new federal paperwork," he said. "The agencies that have been cutting financing for Fermilab and the Spirit rover on Mars are paying for investigations of a problem that may not even exist. How is this good for scientists of either sex?"

On one hand, he has a point — who cares if a man or a woman cures cancer as long as it's being cured? But Tierney's argument also has a smugness about it, since it dismisses gender concerns by belittling them.

A New Frontier for Title IX: Science [NYT]
Male Bias or Female Choice? [NYT]

Earlier: Why Women Are Opting Out Of The Hard Sciences

While feminist blog The F Word wonders if the study is a bit simplistic, Catherine Price writes on Salon: "Many U.S. science, engineering or technology companies are complaining about an overall lack of American talent — a situation that will only get worse if the Bureau of Labor Statistics is correct in its prediction that from 2006 to 2016 jobs in these fields will grow 'five times faster than other sectors.'" Are we regressing to a time where science and technology are fields solely for men? Do we need more women like award-winning neuroscientist Susan Greenfield, whose delightful profile in the Independent is worth taking a moment to read. ("Many people like downhill skiing, or dancing, or wine, or sex, or food," says Greenfield. "Up until now, [pleasure seeking] has always been part of our lives but a polar opposite to seeking meaning. I fear we are shifting too much in favour of the literal, the hedonistic, the here and now, and losing meaning, context and content in favor of process... There's no point of living life if it's not fun.")

But part of the problem could be the image that scientists have in our collective unconscious. Researchers have found that the stereotype of mathematicians as geeks discourages students from studying math. A study by the Institute for Policy Studies in Education at the London Metropolitan University discovered:

Nearly all participants, both math-friendly students and those who steer clear of equations, think of a mathematician as a white male with white hair, who is obsessed with the number-laden subject to the exclusion of any social life. For instance, participants labeled Albert Einstein and John Nash (portrayed in the movie "A Beautiful Mind") as lacking social skills and as weird or not normal.

Focus On The Female Talent In The Backyard [Financial Times]
Sexist culture drives Women Out Of Science [Times Of London]
Sexist culture drives Women Out Of Science [The F Word]
Where Are All The Women Going? [Salon]
Susan Greenfield: The Girl With All The Brains [Independent]
Mathematicians Still Seen as Einsteins [Live Science]

[That picture is not of Sylvia Ann Hewlett or Susan Greenfield. It's a Russian post doctoral student working with DNA samples. Finding an image of a female scientist was difficult. Google image "doctor" and you get tons of images of men in white coats and a few images of female porn stars dressed as nurses to "play" doctor. Go figure.]