Spring Cleaning

Now that May is over, I decided it was time to clean out some of the links I've been accumulating, but never got around to blogging. I hope you find some of them interesting!

Achievements and Awards

Jenn at Fairer Science reveals her Confessions of a Former Girl Scout Cookie Seller ...

[...] I started thinking about my cookie-selling days after I read an article about two 12 year-old Girl Scouts who recently stopped participating in the cookie sales (they sold magazines instead). Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen did a research project on orangutans that was part of their Bronze Award project and “discovered the habitat of orangutans is being threatened by conversion of the land to the production of palm oil, an ingredient in Girl Scout Cookies.”

On April 30 Google awarded their Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships, in honor of the work of Dr. Anita Borg, "a computer scientist who dedicated her professional career to increasing the participation of women and other under-represented minorities in the field of technology". In the US, 23 "outstanding female leaders in technology" received $10,000 scholarships, and 32 finalists were awarded $1,000 scholarships. In Canada, four women were awarded $5,000 scholarships and 13 finalists were awarded $1,000 scholarships. Most of the winners have PhDs in computer science.

Meanwhile, the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology honored their "Women of Vision" awardees: Justine Cassell, professor, Northwestern University; Helen Greiner, co-founder and chairman, iRobot; and Susan Landau, distinguished engineer, Sun Microsystems.

Women's Voices for Change reports on a story about NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, first female commander of the international space station. How can I not like a story about high achievement being called "The Peggy Factor"?

Education

In February (yes, some of my links are dusty), Inside Higher Education wrote about a study that looked at "The Mentoring Gap for Women in Science" - particularly doctoral students in chemistry.

Julianne at Cosmic Variance writes about how Women's Lib is "killing the public school system" (not that she really thinks that):

Back in the day, women of brains, talent, and ambition had two acceptable career options: nursing, and teaching. If I had been born 50 years earlier, I would not have a PhD in astrophysics. Instead, I would probably have grown up to be a school teacher, just like my grandmother. It didn’t have to pay that well, since really, what would have my other options have been?

Ms.PhD takes on the article by Christina Hoff Sommers charmingly titled "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"

A study at Tel Aviv University found that both boys and girls (especially boys) do better in mixed sex classrooms.

Prof. Schlosser found that primary-school classrooms with a female majority showed increased academic success for both boys and girls, along with a notable improvement in subjects like science and math. In the middle schools, girls were found to have better academic achievement in English, languages and math. And in high school, the classrooms which had the best academic achievements overall were consistently those that had a higher proportion of girls enrolled.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, a congressional panel has drafted a bill that would "promote the use of workshops “to increase awareness of implicit gender bias in grant review, hiring, tenure, promotion, and selection for other honors based on merit” in order to help increase the number of female science professors.

Sociological Images has a graph that shows the "education gap" in college graduation rates between men and women favored men until the cohort that was born in the mid- to late 1960s. And Stefanie Zvan looks at college enrollment rates from the 1940s to the present and finds that both women and men are entering college today at record levels - the rate of increase has just leveled off more for men than women.

Various and Sundry

At LabLit Stella Hill writes about "The next stage: What do you do when your funding dries up?"

Mackenzie at Ubuntu Linux Tips & Tricks ponders "The Girly and the Geeky: Mutually Exclusive?" Zuska has her own take with "Explaining (Away) Women Geeks"

drdrA at Blue Lab Coats writes about women and self-promotion - women lose when they are too modest about their achievements, and lose when they are seen as too boastful. So how do we win?

Petulant at Shakesville wrote about Woman Doing A "Man's Work". I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that a commenter claims that the trouble is women don't want to "dirty work" because of their high heels and manicures. Of course Shakesville commenters take her/him to task.

The New Scientist Short Sharp Science blog looked at a recent study that suggests that "people tend to think it is acceptable for men to get angry in the office, but not women".

Pamela Ronald of Tomorrow's Table talks about Housework and the Nobel Prize (via Hsien Lei)

April 24 was Girl's Day (Mädchen-Zukunftstag) in Germany, an event meant to introduce girls to "technical and technically oriented occupations". Google.de celebrated Girl's Day by changing their logo to show a girl doing mathematics. (via Google Blogoscoped).

Stephanie Gower writes for Inkling Magazine about earning science badges in Canadian Girl Guides.

Dr. Jekyll & Mrs. Hyde and Female Science Professor have some depressing stories about male faculty who aren't at all subtle about their sexism.

Scientific American writes about "How stereotyping yourself contributes to your succes (or failure)" and Pat at Fairer Science writes about how we can reduce stereotype threat.

drdrA wrote about a presentation by Stanford neurobiology professor Ben Barres at Harvard on "Some Reflections on the Dearth of Women and Science", with an accompanying webcast. Barres underwent a sex change from female to male 14 years ago, so he has a rare perspective on what it's like for both women and men in academic science.

Finally, in April there was a seminar at Harvard where Rosalind Chait Barnett of Brandeis and Steven Rhoads of the University of Virgina talked about "What Larry Summers and nancy Hopkins Didn't Say: Women in Science".

Tags: women in science, education, women in engineering