science

Coco Chanel has often been quoted as saying, “A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future.” If perfume staves off doom, then perhaps that’s what inspired this otherwise-inexplicable new ad by GlaxoSmithKline for its HPV vaccine:

As you can see, it leads with a blue-eyed, fair-skinned, made-up (and apparently affluent) young woman lounging on an antique sofa on the first floor of a mansion. But softly shimmering lights and fairy-like chimes distract the waif from her book. She dreamily follows the golden twinkling lights up an impressive staircase, where she gazes with a beatific smile upon a champagne-colored perfume bottle magically floating in mid-air. As the bottle rotates to reveal the words “CERVICAL CANCER“, the young woman’s expression switches from bliss to frowning concern. Enter the narrator’s voice:

Maybe it’s unfair to get your attention this way, but nothing’s fair about cervical cancer. Every 47 minutes, another woman in the U.S. is diagnosed. But, there are ways to prevent it. Talk to your doctor.

Unfair? I would have said “insulting.” As in, maybe it’s insulting to assume that the best way to attract a young woman’s attention to a serious health issue is to dupe her into thinking she’s watching a perfume commercial? But, if you want to talk ‘unfair’…Maybe it’s unfair that there hasn’t been a public health campaign to educate teens, women and men about sexually-transmitted HPV (human papillomavirus), which can cause not only cervical cancer but also other serious cancers in men and women? Maybe it’s unfair that the only public “education” about the HPV epidemic has come in the form of pharmaceutical ads that continue to narrowly brand and market HPV vaccines as “cervical cancer” vaccines?

The ad finishes by presenting a GlaxoSmithKline website — which troubles me, as a sexual health researcher, because it does not offer visitors a comprehensive HPV education. But that may have been too much to hope for, given that their HPV vaccine (Cervarix) received FDA approval for use in girls and women (ages 9 to 26) just this past October.

So, skip this ad and website if you’re looking for a more neutral source of information about HPV vaccine options, and visit the CDC instead. And those who’d like a more thorough STD/STI education should check out the American Social Health Association and other website resources which are not funding by pharmaceutical companies.

Note: while GSK has disabled adding comments to their series of new ads, you may rate not only this ‘perfume’ ad but also their ‘front porch‘ and ‘night out‘ ads with the start-ratings you feel they deserve. And, for more on the mis-marketing of HPV vaccines, read my article, “Why Men’s Health is a Feminist Issue,” in the Winter issue of Ms., on newsstands now.

(Originally posted on Ms. blog, cross-posted at Sociological Images and AdinaNack.com)

Happy Women’s History Month Girl w/Pen Family!!

The best and worst part of being a science grrl is that most people in my life know that I’m all “Women can do math and science!” I’m such a big cheerleader for math and science that some people are fearful to admit to me that they think science is boring or they hate math. When I go into mini-lectures diagnosing why someone thinks they are bad at math or is in fact bad at math, I usually discover that there was a bad teacher who specifically told my friend that they couldn’t do math, sometimes because my friend was a girl. There are times when we chat and realize that science and engineering was never fully explained or explored.

That’s why I love science documentaries! How else is a kid in the middle of Kansas going to know the amazement of marine biology? How else was math going to reel me in if it weren’t for Donald Duck and his magic billiard shots in Mathmagic Land? We, grown-ups/parents/mentors/awesome aunties, need to find ways to show how awesome science, math, technology and engineering can be for the young people in our lives.

In that spirit, the Smithsonian Channel launched a new series of shows on Sunday focused on women in science with “A Woman Among Wolves.” The show is exciting, highlights women and did I mention exciting? Toss out the old image of scientists stuck inside with shiny white lab coats! They are outside with wolves and bats.

So what if these shows don’t spark an interest in science? Use it as a springboard to talk about other fields. Are the bats too gross? What other animals would the kid in your life want to follow around and watch? Maybe animals aren’t their thing? Plants? Stars? Their MP3 player?

Science is everywhere and with the proper prompt a great conversation can help you introduce a kid to science or engineering. Need some help? Catch the 6th Annual 24 hour Global Marathon For, By and About Women in Engineering. Find a website like SciGirls.

Most of us were raised to think of math and science as intimidating. Something for the chosen few. As a chemistry professor I work with likes to say, “If I can do it, so can you.”

And to start you off in the wonderful world of science and fun, I am giving away a gift pack from the Smithsonian! Leave a comment with your email address and that’s your entry. That’s it.

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Do you live in the Cleveland area? Come meet me at the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women at Case Western Reserve University on Thursday, March 18th at 7 pm for “Translating the F-Word: Defining Feminism in a Multicultural Society” with Siobhan Brooks and Courtney Martin.

Last week, the NYT reported “Merck: Studies Boost Gardasil for New Uses“; this week the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) met to discuss these new results. It will be interesting to see what, if any, changes result from new clinical evidence that (1) the vaccine is effective in preventing anal precancers in males and (2) the vaccine is effective in women 27-45 years old.

Those who’ve followed HPV research for the past decade were not surprised by the findings of either study. What has surprised me is how little attention ‘male’ Gardasil has attracted since receiving FDA approval last October. Writing a feature article for the Winter 2010 Ms. magazine gave me the opportunity to more deeply explore this topic and hopefully raise awareness — not only about Gardasil, a.k.a. the “cervical cancer” vaccine, but also about the full range of male HPV-related cancers that it might also prevent. 

So, this month’s column is inspired by my desire to respond to some of the interesting questions, comments and accusations that I’ve received via the blogosphere (like WashingtonCityPaper and HugoSchwyzer) in these first days following the publication of my article. I’ll start by acknowledging that my article’s title seems to have pushed more than a few buttons: apparently not everyone wants to know “Why Men’s Health is a Feminist Issue.” One comment asked “Why does the burden for sexual health need to fall, yet again, to women?” My response: It’s a burden for only girls/women to be responsible for sexual health, so prioritizing equal access to STI/STD vaccines results in a more fair sharing of this ‘burden.’ From the opposite side, a comment criticized this angle as being self-interested: “…when feminists speak of male health issues, it is usually in the context of the way they affect women.” To that, I reply: if you read the full article, you’ll see that boys/men have plenty of reasons to care about having access to this vaccine that have to do with protecting their own health, regardless of whether or not they ever have a female sexual partner.

This leads to another trend in responses: What’s in it for men?  Or, as one comment put it, “The only reason for males to get the vaccine would be to prevent HPV in women.” Really? How about the variety of serious HPV-related male cancers (oral, penile, anal, and others) that are (1) on the rise, (2) often fatal due to lack of accurate testing/screening, and (3) in the U.S. likely result in more combined deaths in men than cervical cancers in women? (See my Ms. article for an overview of these stat’s or, if you love charts check out p. 4 of the American Cancer Society’s 2009 report).

And, media coverage of Gardasil would not be complete without questions/concerns focused on whether or not Gardasil does more harm than good. For the record: I have not taken a pro-vaccine or anti-vaccine stance on Gardasil or any other vaccine. But, I speak in favor of equal access to vaccines, support the conducting and media coverage of medical studies that reveal the full range of potential health costs and health benefits of any vaccine,  and argue for funding public health campaigns about HPV and other sexually transmitted epidemics. And, though some blog comments reveal confusion over the possibility of being “required” to get the Gardasil vaccine, I’m not aware of any current U.S. vaccination policy that does not allow for ‘opting out.’ (Note: as of December 14, 2009 Gardasil was no longer required for female green card applicants.)

A less popular theme, though one that intrigues me, came from those who took the angle of “What’s in it for big pharma?” One comment hypothesized, “…you can’t help but suspect Merck’s money motive is playing a role in the push for expansion to men.”  And, I reply, what PUSH? If money was their motive, then wouldn’t they have updated the Gardasil.com website to encourage male consumers? Visit that site prior to March 1, and you’d think that it was still only approved for girls/women.

I’ll end this post by expressing my thanks to all of the journalists and blog authors who are raising awareness about this topic, including Ms.‘s own Executive Editor Katherine Spillar on the Huffington Post. I also send out my gratitude to blog readers who add insightful, thoughtful, sociological, and truly feminist comments like Annie‘s. In my opinion, to be feminist is not to be pro-women, it is to be pro-equality and pro-justice (not to mention anti-sexism, anti-racism, anti-homophobia, anti-ageism…you get my drift). I don’t know if the pro- and anti-vaccine folks will ever see eye to eye, but there’s absolutely nothing to lose and everything to gain by being pro-HPV-education.

This month BODY LANGUAGE welcomes Suzanne Kelly, writing her first guest post for Girl w/Pen!, as she takes to heart the literal matter of body language.

Suzanne teaches in the Women’s Studies Program at SUNY New Paltz.

A few weeks ago, scanning The New York Times for something weighty, I fell upon feminist science writer Natalie Angier’s thoughtful retelling of a new study in the burgeoning field of embodied cognition. The study revealed how our ability to process information is not a function of the brain alone, but of language’s perpetual play with and through our bodies as a whole. Angier explained how when study participants were asked to think of a past event, for example, they consistently “leaned slightly backward,” and when they were asked to envision what was to come, “they listed to the fore… ”subliminally act[ing] out metaphors in how we commonly conceptualized the flow of time.”

That “the body embodies abstractions the best way it knows how: physically,” as Angier put it, that it literally “takes language to heart,” comes as no surprise to me. When I’m writing and it seems as if the words won’t budge, I’m also often crumpled up at my desk – legs tucked under, torso rounded. If I stretch, realign, and maybe go for a run, the flow usually returns. When my ideas are at their stickiest so too, it seems, is my body.

That our thoughts, however intangible, are more than the sum of what goes on inside our skulls is also hardly a revelation to those of us who have long positioned the body’s knowledge at the heart of feminist theory and practice. Still, studies like this (and brilliant writers like Angier who are skilled at bringing their importance to light) always give me hope, especially when they’re given voice by the mainstream media. Might this be a sign of a new legitimacy of the body, one from which feminism could no doubt benefit?

I have written elsewhere about the value of “the sensuous classroom,” of education that takes seriously the presence of the body. If our “bodies embody abstractions…physically,” as this study suggests, what do we learn, not only from our own bodies, but from being in and around the bodies of others? In thinking about the transmission of ideas and the potential for changing consciousness, what is lost, for instance, in teaching Women’s Studies classes on-line, engaged in conversations about bodies, while removed from each other’s? How do we significantly combat unattainable body images, or think seriously about questions of disability, when our bodies are not part of the venue?

These same questions hold for our activism, as well. Would consciousness raising groups have proved as powerful had they happened on cell phones? What did those women’s bodies communicate to one another that gave them the courage to leave unhappy marriages, end the cycle of violence, and love other women? That enabled them to fight for legal abortion, childcare, and better wages?

Because body centered issues remain central, if not heightened, feminist concerns today – from the image of the female body, to eating disorders and the foods around which they revolve, to abortion and contraception, to health and its care, to intimate partner violence, rape and sexual assault, and, of course, to sex itself – it seems more vital now than ever for us to place our bodies front and center, to give them substance in our conversations as well as in our collective actions.

Of course, as we speed toward a near-virtual future and as our physical distance from each other exponentially grows, it becomes more of a challenge to find ways to speak, to share, to formulate conversation, to engage thought and transform it into action – in the flesh. But we can do better.

No doubt, our bodies know it.

Last month a research paper hit the education wires with a vengeance. Apparently girls can learn to be anxious about math from their teachers. Holy crow!

Considering that the vast majority of teachers in elementary schools are women, can we pin the dearth of women in science & engineering on Mrs. Hart (my second grade teacher’s real name!)? Ashley doesn’t think so:

But could the girls’ math anxiety be passed on from their male teachers as well?  We won’t know from this article, because no male teachers were part of the study. I also believe that this study does show us some interesting data about female teachers and their female students.  But I also believe we cannot blame female teachers for this whole problem, and in order to figure out what really changes girls’ attitudes toward math and science, we need to conduct a study that is fair to the teachers and the students, and that requires a study that includes teachers and students of all genders.

She has some good points, but after reading the study, I have to disagree. The lack of men teachers in the study is the lack of men teachers period. I also believe that at this moment, we need to focus on why girls learn to be anxious about math. Because despite girls being well represented in higher math classes in high school, they still don’t believe they have what it takes to go into science & engineering. Women who drop out of science and engineering have the same GPA to women who stay [PDF]. And women who leave science & engineering do so with higher grades than the men who stay [PDF]. Anxiety is a real issue with women and girls and we must address it. I also think we need to reexamine how we teach “success” to girls and women.

Tracy Ormsbee confesses that as a mom she has said math anxious things to her daughter, but studies have shown that parents and teachers are two of the top influences in how children choose career paths. If Mom is always avoiding math and Mrs. Gerry (hey to my 1st grade teacher!) is too, what message does that send to a young girl? A girl in the midst of puberty trying to figure out if it’s true that boys don’t like smart girls?

Mrs. Gerry & Mrs. Hart never sent a whiff of math anxiety my way. In fact they never let me slack when it came to math. They set a standard that other teachers carried on until I was in high school.

While I don’t blame women teachers for their math anxiety or for the lack of women going into science & engineering, I do think it is something to examine and address.

I just had the honor to listen to President Shirley Ann Jackson and one of her points about increasing our production of American-born scientists & engineers (men and women) is to increase the scientific literacy of every teacher out there. How can they steer a girl with mad math skills towards computer science if they don’t know what computer scientists do?

Instead let’s take this study and look at how much math and science our elementary teachers do need to know. Let’s look at what their continuing education is teaching them about science & engineering (another point from Pres. Jackson). There isn’t time for blame. There’s only time for action. Let’s get to it.

January is Cervical Health Awareness Month, making it the perfect time to post a follow-up to Part I which featured my concerns about potential unintended consequences of new Pap test guidelines (from ACOG, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists). To recap, it is vital that we do not confuse a recommendation of less frequent Pap tests with the unchanged recommendation of annual pelvic/sexual health exams (see the National Cancer Institute for explanations of both).

So, let’s look back at a letter dated November 20, 2009, in which the President of ACOG clarified:

Cervical cancer screening should begin at age 21 years (regardless of sexual history). Screening before age 21 should be avoided because women less than 21 years old are at very low risk of cancer. Screening these women may lead to unnecessary and harmful evaluation and treatment.

Medically speaking, why should this recommendation disregard an individual woman’s sexual history? His letter continues on to state:

Cervical cytology screening is recommended every 2 years for women between the ages of 21 years and 29 years. Evidence shows that screening women every year has little benefit over screening every other year.

Doesn’t this depend on how many new sexual partners a woman has in a given year? Are the revised guidelines assuming monogamy (or at least long-term, serial monogamous relationships) which decrease odds of a woman contracting a new cancer-causing strain of HPV in less than a 2-year period? Where are the conclusive findings of large-scale sexual-behavior surveys to support this assumption?

ACOG’s November 2009 press release featured these quotes from Alan Waxman, M.D.:

Adolescents have most of their childbearing years ahead of them, so it’s important to avoid unnecessary procedures that negatively affect the cervix. Screening for cervical cancer in adolescents only serves to increase their anxiety and has led to overuse of follow-up procedures for something that usually resolves on its own.

I agree with GWP reader anniegirl1138 who commented on my previous post that over-treatment is no joke. However, we have not been presented with data that a Pap test — the test, itself, not over-treatment based on test findings — is directly linked to significant increases of any negative health outcome.

Cervical HPV infections can be detected by Pap tests: ACOG acknowledges that, “the rate of HPV infection is high among sexually active adolescents, but counters with, “the large majority of cervical dysplasias in adolescents resolve on their own without treatment.”

Why should that smaller group of girls and young women (whose pre-cancerous lesions do not resolve without treatment) miss the annual opportunity to receive an early diagnosis? Early-stages of cervical HPV infection can often be resolved with less-invasive treatment options.

More-invasive treatment options, such as the “excisional procedures for dysplasia” that have been linked to increased risk of premature births, are one of several medical treatments for cervical HPV.

And, what about the possibility that an increased risk of premature births may not be the paramount concern for every female patient? Not all women want to or can biologically become mothers. What if an individual female patient would rather seek medical treatment for a HPV infection that has resulted in cervical dysplasia so that she has greater peace of mind in knowing that she has reduced her risk of cervical cancer and reduced the likelihood of transmitting HPV to her sexual partner(s) and/or future babies?

Call me a feminist, but I still believe that knowledge is power and that every sexually-active girl and woman should be encouraged to consider the benefits of annual Pap tests. When Pap smear results show “abnormal” cellular changs, then healthcare practitioners should explain the potential for false-positives and discuss the pro’s and con’s of moving forward with different diagnostic and treatment options.  

ACOG acknowledges that, “HPV also causes genital and anal warts, as well as oral and anal cancer.” A Pap test may be a girl/woman’s first chance to learn of a cervical HPV infection, which can result in her having a colposcopy exam. This procedure helps a practitioner find HPV-infected cells not only on the cervix but also in other anogenital areas (the vaginal canal, the labia, the perineum). Beyond the cervix, a Pap test that is positive for HPV may be a wake-up call to get a thorough oral screening for serious oral cancers which have been linked to sexually transmitted HPV.

In addition, my research and others’ studies have found that STI diagnoses can lead to attitudinal and behavioral changes which can decrease risks of contracting other STIs, including HIV. For all of these reasons, a Pap test that leads to a diagnosis of a sexually transmitted cervical HPV infection can bring unintended positive consequences.

In light of the new Pap smear guidelines, I hope that U.S. girls and women who get less frequent Pap tests will more frequently ask their healthcare practitioners to educate them about cervical cancer, about the full range of STIs, and about FDA-approved vaccines against viruses that can be sexually transmitted (HPV and Hepatitis B).

For the medical facts about HPV and HPV vaccines, check out the book The HPV Vaccine Controversy by Shobha Krishnan, M.D., a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the National Cervical Cancer Coalition. 

The Bottom Line: a recommendation for less frequent Pap tests does not mean you should forgo your annual pelvic exam. In our busy lives, e-reminders can make the difference:  PromiseToMe.com allows you to schedule an annual email reminder. [Note for boys/men: make sure to get an annual sexual health exam, too!]

Do you ever think, “Duh!?” when you read a news story about how fattening movie popcorn or fast food is for us? I get that same feeling when I read that yet another research study has been published proving that girls and boys are equally good at math. How much more proof do we need?

Professor Marcia Linn’s paper focuses in on why there are differences in girls confidence around the world. The answer? Social expectations. [PDF link]

A society’s gendered division of labor fosters the development of gender differences in behavior by affording different restrictions and opportunities to males and females on the basis of their social roles….if the cultural roles that women fulfill do not include math, girls may face both structural obstacles (e.g., formal access to education is limited to boys) and social obstacles (e.g., stereotypes that math is a male domain) that impede their mathematical development.

Many people like to believe that we live in a post-feminist society. The evidence includes Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and women making up half of the workforce. But girls and boys still receive messages on a daily basis that they have roles to play and only those roles. As recently as this past holiday toy buying season, Toys R Us advertised three different magnification power microscopes and  telescopes, guess which one had the lowest power? Yup, the pink one.

Some will argue that we need to pinkify science things to attract girls, but do they also need weaker microscopes too?

And that brings us to another Duh moment…Pink often does stink.

The uproar over the change in mammogram and pap smear recommendations have been volatile to the say the least. We’re talking about women’s lives, plain and simple…right? If we take out the absurdity that came with attaching the recommendations to the current health care/insurance reform debate (like say the GOP crying about the government interfering with a woman’s health decision), we might see the recommendations a bit differently.

With possible reductions in screening, many women have pondered whether their BFF or even they would be here to write about. Jill Zimon writes about how the guidelines might cause women to be more passive about breast cancer. Ironically after we have spent years getting women to actually do mammograms. I say the same with pap smears, but when we are dealing with science, especially health science, we have to weigh many other factors.

Feminist health scientists have won many battles in the last 20 years, but is it worth it to fight for maintaining the status quo in relation to screenings?

If we start at the very beginning of the debate, we must first start with lives lost or endangered by the screenings themselves. The Breast Cancer Fund asks, “Why are we still relying on this method of screening when we have long understood that radiation is a known breast carcinogen?” Mammograms involve putting our lives at risk, but presumably the risk is much smaller than the risk of doing nothing. Where is that tipping point? Is it determined on the individual basis or the population basis? If saving your daughter’s life might cost one other woman’s life is it justified? Do we justify use of mammography if we save 100 women and lose 1? Because honestly that is what I believe we need to talk about. Not cost-saving in dollars, but in lives impacted.

Luckily I have feminist women’s health professionals in my circle and for the most part, they agree with the guidelines BUT they wish that the panel had worked with communications professionals to get the message out in a better way. I agree, but I also wish the Obama administration hadn’t sold out the panel so quickly. Bottom line: For low risk women, it might be better for you to skip a mammogram now and then or wait until you are 50. BUT…BUT…you can only decide this with your physician. So while the GOP jumped on this as a sign that the government really was creating death panels, it was actually an affirmation of women working with their medical teams to provide individualized health plans.

During the HPV vaccination debates of 2007, I heard a lot of concern over whether the vaccine was worth the risk for the benefits. I also heard from women (at the 2007 NOW Conference) who talked about how scary and invasive they felt the follow-up screenings for cervical cancer were to them. They weren’t talking about cervical cancer treatment, but the steps between a bad pap smear and cancer treatment itself. How much are their lives worth compared to vaccination injuries and deaths? Again, the feminist health professionals I know say that the new guidelines, which didn’t cause as much uproar as the mammogram guidelines, are essentially what they have known all along. The risk isn’t worth the unnecessary pap smears and the follow-up treatments. Or is it?

And this is why I advocate for scientific literacy for all, especially women. The next time you hear a woman, no matter her age, wave their hands while saying that they aren’t into science, ask them if they are into their health because that’s what we are talking about. Science is not out there in our gadgets, but it’s right here in our bodies. We also need to ensure that our medical science professionals, from the MDs to the PhDs, have a grasp of ethics as well. They need to be in the community not just to serve, but to learn. Drawing up medical recommendations is a balancing act between the science and the ethics of being a human being, having to weigh all the outcomes to find the best solution.

As a science grrl, I don’t know where that line actually is, but I do know it can’t be drawn by unemotional scientists nor by the scientifically under-literate public. There’s a partnership in there, but each side needs to learn more about the others skills too.

On this national day of gratitude, I find myself giving thanks for many things — including my family, my friends, and my health. I owe my sexual health to the now outdated norm of getting annual gynecological exams, with Pap smears, from the time I became sexually active. As a 20-year-old, in the mid-1990’s, I benefited from U.S. medical guidelines that supported my gynecologist in recommending cryosurgery (application of liquid nitrogen) to kill/remove the HPV-infected cells on my cervix. Early detection and early treatment afforded me a quick recovery from a potentially cancer-causing and highly contagious sexually transmitted infection. Following that treatment, I never had another abnormal Pap test result, got pregnant the first time I tried, and gave birth to a healthy baby. For all of those outcomes, I give thanks.

Today, many teen girls and women may not benefit from the level of medical care that I received. Last week, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued new guidelines for pap smear and cervical cancer screening, and this may prove to have unintended, negative consequences for sexually-active Americans.

Until 2008, ACOG had recommended annual screening for women under 30. This month, ACOG summed up their revised recommendations:

…women should have their first cancer screening at age 21 and can be rescreened less frequently than previously recommended. 

Media coverage of this latest revision has not done as good a job distinguishing that a Pap test is just one aspect of a pelvic/sexual health exam. How many girls and women will interpret the new guideline of “No need for an annual pap tes,” as, “No need to get an annual pelvic exam”?

ACOG admits that the Pap test has been the reason for falling rates of cervical cancer in the U.S.

Cervical cancer rates have fallen more than 50% in the past 30 years in the US due to the widespread use of the Pap test. The incidence of cervical cancer fell from 14.8 per 100,000 women in 1975 to 6.5 per 100,000 women in 2006. The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be 11,270 new cases of cervical cancer and 4,070 deaths from it in the US in 2009. The majority of deaths from cervical cancer in the US are among women who are screened infrequently or not at all.

So, why revise the guidelines such that we are likely to see an increase in the number of U.S. women “who are screened infrequently or not at all”?

And, it’s not just teen girls and young women that are the focus of these revisions. ACOG also recommends that older women stop being screened for cervical cancer:

It is reasonable to stop cervical cancer screening at age 65 or 70 among women who have three or more negative cytology results in a row and no abnormal test results in the past 10 years.

How much of this rationale depends upon women over 65 years old being sexually inactive or monogamous? This argument seems predicated upon ageist assumptions about older women’s sex drives and sexual behaviors (or lack thereof).

As the tryptophan from my Thanksgiving feast begins to dampen my ire, I’ll bring this post to a close. These are just a few of the problematic aspects of this new policy recommendation — stay tuned for “Part II” of this post in the near future.

Out of sheer luck of the calendar, this month’s Science Grrl falls on Veterans Day so I had to dedicate this month’s column to the Goddess of Science Grrl Veterans…Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper who has an entire conference named after her. Hopper entered the Navy under the WAVES program.

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Fellow GWPenner Lori mentioned Lise Eliot’s recent book Pink Brain, Blue Brain last month. In my reading of the book, I found Eliot’s balance between nature versus nurture commendable. Despite being a science grrl, I do find myself wanting nurture to win out since then it would be just darn easier to toss out the pink and blue crap.

I hate seeing toys that have no gender to them, like laptop computers, painted pink for girls and not-pink for boys. This country has a problem with the low number of students who want to study computer science, especially girls. I don’t think that having pink laptops will get girls to want to study computer science. But in my conversation with Eliot, she suggests that we hijack this pinkification of our girls world and give it to them, but be subversive too.

But how far do we allow it to go? The Discovery Channel is a great place to find science toys online, but even they separate out girls and boys toys. If you look at the toys offered, a very small number are stereotypical. I assume that they are buying into parents who will come to an online store and immediately look for the boys tab. But I think that the Discovery Channel would do a world of difference for girls in science if they simply had age segregation for their toys. Send a message to parents and gift-buyers that science is gender neutral.

We are shortchanging our girls by making all their things pink. It tells them that their things are different. Luckily the Discovery Channel gender-segregated toy store doesn’t house a pink microscope. So perhaps they are being subversive when a parent goes on and sees “Oh, a girl microscope!” and really it’s just a plain old microscope. I can’t only hope.

Pink Girl, Blue Girl is an excellent read and I believe if we followed Dr. Eliot’s recommendations as we raise our kids, we will see more girls in science.