Science: It's a Girl Thing

From EPSA blog: Science: It’s a Girl Thing!

Women represent 32 % of total researchers in the EU

Women represent 39 % of researchers in Higher Education in the EU

Women represent 39 % of researchers in Government in the EU

In an era when women are increasingly prominent in medicine, law and business, why are there so few women scientists and engineers? 

Factors that block women’s participation and progress in science, technology, engineering, and math include stereotypes, gender bias and the climate of science and engineering departments in colleges and universities.

Women continue to be under-represented in research at a time when Europe needs more researchers to foster innovation and bolster its economy. The European Commission launched a campaign to attract young women to research careers in order to increase the total number of researchers in Europe. The European Union has set itself the goal of increasing R&D spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2020, compared with around 2 per cent now.

As part of this campaign, the EC prepared an ad, Science: It’s a Girl Thing! The ad combines Euro-pop with lots of pink, lots of lipstick, a petri-dish or two and a male model in a lab-coat for good measure giving it a kind of reverse ‘Weird Science’ feel. It even replaces the ‘I’ in ‘science’ with a lipstick.

The ad was a teaser for the EC’s campaign that aims to get young women to seriously consider a career in science. Predictably, the ad took a battering from the general public – science enthusiasts or otherwise. It has already racked up almost 4,000 dislikes compared to only 550 likes.