Science Lite
The systematic beliefs behind “Girl Science”
“Thank you for calling, this is Kathryn, how may I help you?”
“Hi, I’m looking for one of your summer science camp thingies that’s good for girls. I don’t want anything too tough just something to keep her busy during the summer.”
I always know how they want me to answer them. Saying “Well, I think they’re all good for girls” just never seems to satisfy the parents that call up the summer science camp where I work. They want someone to tell them that our “rock and roll” science camp is what’s best for their daughters — that a glorified rock star boot camp, teaching little girls about the science of sound will somehow prepare them as much to one day earn a competitive salary as their little boy counterparts that are participating in our robotics or astronaut training camps. Nevertheless, in a camp that charges upwards of $300 per week of camp, science education is being left to the few and far between parents that have the money to get their children ahead at a young age. Though it’s hard for us 20 somethings to imagine, even our parents’ generation grew up in a time in which women were still expected to take more of an interest in domesticity than DNA. Though some major changes in expectations of women occurred during their developmental years, most of them still never knew what it was like to have a serious female political candidate even be remotely considered for office. If parents were our only problem, this generation of women would have already found a way around such boundaries; let’s face it, most of us have rebelled in a big way at least once in our lives. No, the reason that parents can call up asking for a girly science program without raising an eyebrow from the majority of my coworkers goes far deeper.
In the 7th grade, I was tagged by my science teachers and the AAUW (American Association of University Women) as a “promising scientific mind.” This meant that if I approved their selection, I would be sent to a camp designed to cultivate little girls’ interest in science. I had never felt drawn to science in particular, but rather academia as a whole. I saw science class the same way I saw any other class: a chance to prove myself amidst the sea of apathy I knew as classmates. I craved recognition for something other than what clothes I was wearing or how I decorated my locker; when I got it however, I instantly felt thrust into the spotlight against my own choosing. Talking it over with my parents that night, I found myself downplaying the honor of being 1 of 4 girls (in a school of 2,000) that was chosen to attend this summer camp. My parents however could not think of anything else until I finally decided that I would go.
For that week that I went to camp, I thought for a moment that at 13, I already had my life figured out. A week surrounded by girls like me, passionate about being someone. As someone who had always felt on the outskirts of Newport Beach society, it was incredible to meet girls from all over California that were just as nerdy, if not more so than myself. We learned about Sally Ride, Madame Curie and the like: all women that hadn’t listened when society told them not to engage in “boy science.” It wasn’t until my sisters in science and I all went our separate ways after camp that I was forced to remember that the rest of the world wasn’t like us.
I wasn’t sure whether or not to mention my stint as a scientist in a piece that aims to point out the way society’s academic expectations of little girls are letting them down. It wasn’t until I remembered the exclusivity of the camp that I felt there was something worth arguing here. The fact of the matter was, I was chosen to attend this science enrichment camp because I was already interested in science. As someone who now works for a science summer camp, I can’t help but wonder how the rest of the world’s children are supposed to get engaged in science, when they don’t have a natural interest in it and simply cannot afford to cultivate one.
The exclusion of girls from the realm of science was drilled home yet again when I tried to search for stock photos for this piece. When writing a piece on a topic most people try to ignore, coming across stock images that truly emphasize what you’re trying to write about can be challenging.
The picture above is a rather bleak and yet honest portrayal of my findings when trying to find some sort of photographic proof of girls being involved in science. From this angle, it looks like girls have 3 options when it comes to science: smile widely while vaguely touching a microscope, don a pleather body suit and command a sci-fi universe OR be reduced to the anatomical system that makes someone biologically female. In other words, you can either be uninterested, over-sexualized or over-simplified by science.
We often think that because more and more women are joining the sciences that somehow gender-based science designations will disappear. However, much like Tech Trek did not account for the science education of the general population in junior high, those that are either far too intimidated or uninterested by science in college outnumber those that wiggle their way in to a field that does not quite know what to do with them yet. In today’s world, it takes courage and a little luck to attempt to undo this history of gender-based expectations. As a graduating English major with a job that pays just over minimum wage, I often wonder how my life could have been different had I taught the world that I wanted full-fat, whole science, none of the diet crap they fed me my whole life.
