Christina Dragon
I loved how Christina Dragon’s presentation “She Discovered It! Bringing Women Scientists to Life in the Classroom” turned into a lively interactive discussion about how to reach girls in science. Christina, a hospital research technician, gave an overview of notable women scientists and how they and their work were largely ignored in the past. “You don’t even have to do the whole class about them,” she advised teachers. “Just drop a name” to inspire girls in your classroom.
Listeners turned into contributors, as various audience members shared resources and strategies for getting girls psyched. One teacher said both girls and boys appreciate hands-on activities, while another described how she focuses on textiles and makeup to help girls learn science is a part of their everyday lives. Christina’s mother, who is also a scientist, said she and her students at a teen parent academy explored the science of cooking, the absorbency of diapers, and the physics of toys.
Other attendees referred us to AAUW’s new report Why So Few? Women in STEM and a website called STEM Equities Pipeline, which contains research about gender and science.
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Just saw this comment from AEI’s Veronique Rodman:
“In fact there is a serious, robust scientific literature on why men predominate in some academic fields and women in others. The idea that women are being blocked from advancing in science, engineering, and mathematics by bias and stereotypes is only one of several explanations–and is the weakest explanation. For balanced presentations of the issues, see Christina Hoff Sommers, ed., The Science on Women in Science (AEI Press 2009), and Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams, The Mathematics of Sex (Oxford University Press 2009), or a Congressionally mandated 2010 study “Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering and Math Faculty.”