The video advertises looking like a model and running about with test tubes.
I do know a few very good-looking females who do work in science, and I don’t mind at all if someone shows that this exists, but that’s not what the video does.
I bet the advertisement people were all like “women are into cosmetics and shoes, so that’s what we’ll show them”. They’re enforcing a cliché when they should be encouraging the contrary.

In advertising, you’ve won if you persuade someone to buy a product. But with science, if you’ve persuaded all those would-be models to go study theoretical physics, they _will_ sooner or later realize it’s not about getting the attention of that good-looking guy behind the microscope and … whatever those girls are supposed to be doing in that video.
And if they don’t like _that_, they’re out again, so there you go…

I think what’s needed is depicting science much more realistically rather than sexing it up. That may or may not include really good-looking people, but that’s entirely beside the point. Science is about people trying to figure out facts, and I’ve no idea how this ad should interest people in facts …

The International Year of Astronomy
Catherine Cesarsky – International Astronomical Union

“I think astronomy in general, and the big discoveries we are doing now in particular can do a lot to change the lives of a lot of people because we are studying the universe and it’s not just our universe, it’s everybody’s universe. My own experience is that once you start talking to people, everybody wants to know where do we come from, where are we going, what are our dreams, what is our destiny as a race, everything.

“And we are really trying to understand some of this. This is why, for instance, in 2009, we will declare that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy, four hundred years after the first observations with the Galileo telescope. And the aim of this, our motto is, “The universe – yours to discover.” What we are doing is not to please a handful of astronomers, I think that what we discovered interests everybody and we want everybody to know.”

http://www.pbs.org/soptv/400years/en/video/video.php?page=3&per=25&e&q

You have to scroll about 7/8 down the page to see this particular excerpt…

I went to school for Chemical Engineering, which has a shockingly high number of women in it.  Our class was split almost 50/50 m/f.  All of those women would have been pissed if they had seen this.  They went into STEMs because they valued something a little higher than looking pretty for boys.  That isn’t to imply that they were ugly kids running away from the mean bullies.  On the contrary, most of them were quite fit, but that wasn’t the source of their personal power.  Their power came from being intelligent and curious. 

The stuff that dragged the girls into STEMs was more or less exactly the same stuff that dragged the boys in.  All chemical engineers, pretty much without exception, like to blow things up.  The girls were no exception.  Read a transcript of what got them in, and you would find it impossible to split them into boy and girl piles.

The real problem is that this kind of targeting girls with stupid girly shit advertising fails because it perpetuates the stereotypes that cause girls to be too socially dysfunctional to want to enter science, much less survive there.

If you want a real PSA announcement targeting girls, have some girls sitting around blowing shit up and having a merry old time, then flash forward to them blowing up shit that is bigger in a professional capacity and having a merry old time.  That will convince far more women to join STEMs in a far healthier way than this utterly stupid video that is actively damaging to women in STEMs.

One of the many serious problems is that the safety-paranoia culture that’s gotten rid of see-saws on playgrounds and diving boards in swimming pools has also gotten rid of chemistry sets for kids that let you make explosives. Instead, they’d be better off pushing “girls can blow stuff up too!”

(And yes, those examples may risk labelling me as being old enough that “computer games” involved paper teletypes.)

Does Feminism 101 not exist anymore?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBCmt_pJTRA

Basically, the video was generally taken positively and apparently changed their mindset/acceptability of science careers.

http://reenapau.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/science-what-the-girls-think/
via http://scientopia.org/blogs/scicurious/2012/06/27/science-its-a-people-thing/

Good discussion in the comments.

At least the playing pieces weren’t pink.  Small mercies.

In all fairness, the gender experts are saying that all of their points were ignored in favor of the opinions of the ad agency people. The very ad people who thought that science was too “dry” and “factual” and needed to be glammed up. Which is hilarious when, if nothing else, there are entire television networks attesting to the sheer entertainment value of science.

You may also note that STEM is marketed to boys using things that stereotypically appeal to boys (`splosions and phallic rockets and computer games).

Is it?  Where?  Also, do you think this works?  I guarantee anyone who went into physics for the explosions got REALLY bored when they realized they’d just be doing calculus for the next three years.

I recieve the ACS (American Chemical Society) Diversity emails, as a practicing chemist.  About a year ago, they sent out an article encouraging high school experiments involving cosmetics and perfumes, because the current curriculum is too masculine.  For the ACS Diversity division to think that girls can only be interested in make-up is astonishing to me.  I always hoped whoever wrote that editorial got fired.

http://knittingboys.eu/#

Ah Ah, you almost clicked on the link, didn’t ya?

Which is just wrong on so many levels.

It did the rounds last week in the UK and even some of the more right leaning media outlets picked up on its hugely patronising ridiculousness. If conservatives can recognise that something is wrong, it must be really wrong.