WOW2013 - Caught in the Net

After seeing Maggie Aderin-Pocock present 'The Thinking Woman's Guide to the Universe' I changed what I was planning to see and instead headed over to Caught in the Net. I'm glad that I did.

Maggie was joined by Cate Bellingham, Dr Emily Grossman and Marieme Jamme.

I think the fact that so few people turned up to this session, already scheduled for a small side room, was indicative of the subject of the discussion. Why are there so few women in science and technology.

Initially, I would have assumed that there was simply a lack of interest but after listening to what was discussed I can see that a lack of female interest in these subjects might be learned behaviour.

Emily revealed that for every man asked to be on visual media as a science/technology expert the BBC is compelled to ask six women before they greceive an acceptance. I was actually quite shocked at this statistic. Why would a woman turn down the chance to share knowledge she is fully qualified to speak about?

Making science, maths and technology relavent to the lives of women is key to gaining their interest. Marieme doesn't understand this culture of scientific disinterest in many women. She revealed that in Africa, science is considered a sexy subject regardless of gender. They can see the link between technological development and the development of their nations. who wouldn't want to be involved in making life better for their community?

Despite this, women in Europe seems to have a pre-loaded perception that science and technology is boring. While in the US males appear wary of women who show expertise in these e subjects.

If the endless enthusiasm of Maggie Aderin-Pocock is anything to go by, these subjects are anything but boring. She says that girls should have an unprejudiced right to choose to study these subjects at school. I remember going to a school open day with my parents and them asking the techology teacher about my options for taking his subject. He wasn't exactly encouraging and I wonder how much this had to do with my being a small, shy girl. I don't want to tar all men with the same brush though. This man was in the minority and there were other male teachers who were more than happy to share their knowledge with me and were extremely passionate about their subjects.

Emily, who has worked in both science and as a performer, believes that scientific discovery is one of the most creative things you can do. There are so many scientific and mathematical methods relavent to the creative arts. I am totally with her in this opinion. I think that science and art are very closely linked in the way that you have to perceive and interact with the subjects.

Referring to the argument that female disinterest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects is a learned behaviour, the ladies point out that gender specific toys could have a lot to answer for. Non gender specific toys is something that is close to the hearts of @Lettoysbetoys and @pinkstinks who are at a loss over why girls must be presented with a pink version of everything.

As a pink disliked myself, I have long been baffled by this trend. It'sIt's like the toy companies believe that girls can only see in pink and will fail to interact with things in other colours. Sadly, there must be significant past sales data to lead them to believe this. Strange seeing as pink used to be the colour for boy babies.

There has been recent data to suggest that there are 693,000 scientists in the UK. A mere 13% of these are women. Huge thanks goes to this 13% for sticking to their interests and hopefully inspiring new generations of females to do the same. something Science Grrl (@science_grrl) is keen to promote. If you have a daughter or young female relative/friend why not point them towards Science Grrl? They might just find their next best thing ever!

The twitter hashtag created for this session was #WOWSTEM2013