Is it this? http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/13/7213819/your-bowling-shirt-is-holding-back-progress Skip to 1:39 As many of you will know I often have a word or two (ahem) to say about casual and not so casual misogyny, and also have family connections with ESA and the scientific space industry. The scientist in question Matt Taylor has been getting a lot of attention in the media for this choice of attire, notably a shirt covered in scantily clad women brandishing guns. Do I think the shirt is misogynistic? No, because while under one definition it could be considered 'sexist' I don't think it shows any hatred of women. It's just a crazy ass shirt showing some sexualised images that wouldn't be out of place in a Sin City comic. Sexist? Maybe... but in a nasty way? I can't see it like that. Your thoughts? Disclaimer: My gf has known Matt for years, he's a colleague and friend. I know Matt, he's had us as house guests in the US, cooked awesome BBQs, crashed in my spare room over here, read my kids bed time stories and kicked my butt on some ancient Call of Duty Xbox game. He's not misogynistic, he's just a bloke. A bloke who's incredibly driven, highly intelligent and respected and loved by those he works with. Does my opinion that Matt is not sexist or misogynistic but just does crazy arsed stuff for LOLs mean I'm not seeing blatant sexism when it's staring me in the face? Nah, it's just Matt being Matt.
I saw some of the reaction to this on social media. The SJW's were in full song - apparently that shirt is the reason why women don't do science.
Plot twist, the shirt was made by a woman: https://twitter.com/ellypriZeMaN/status/532927131098300416
TBH I didn't even notice what was on his shirt until I read the rest of your post. I think the Verge is overreacting a bit here. It's just a silly, exaggerated... shirt.
Except its a bit different in this particular case, because it is a one off shirt made for him as a b-day gift by a female friend of his. which: 1: potentially explains why he was wearing it on such a special occasion 2: means he did not go out and search for a potentially controversial shirt 3: In this particular case it was made by a woman doesn't mean by one who is being exploited in some third world factory.
In fairness, I do think it's possible a lot of women are put off of entering fields such as engineering by the male cliqueishness of it. Personally I'm skeptical that a 50/50 split would be realistic or even a good idea because that's just how the differences in psychology seems to manifest itself (even after you strip away all the cultural stereotypes). However, you still want to be very careful to avoid alienating anyone. Crying out "misogyny" every time something like this happens just seems counterproductive though, not that anyone sensible needed to be told that. I think this is one of those cases where a very vocal minority has managed to obfuscate a potentially valid criticism and basically make life a little bit shittier for everyone.
Actually, psychological research shows that mixed teams (about 50% male, 50% female) perform better than all-male or all-female teams. Turns out those psychological differences make for a balanced team.
As someone who works in the aerospace industry, I can attest to the fact that we're all sexist - every last one of us, male and female, each in the very same way. We're also pretty aswesome at working in mixed teams with no apparent problems. Yeah, he wore a bowling shirt with a bunch of sexualized women on it, and that may not have been the best choice of attire during a highly-publicized appearance. On the other hand, I've walked into an office to deliver some documents, only to find one of the women shaving her legs out in the open, right there for everyone to see. I think it's safe to say that in this industry we're all perfectly human, with all that entails. We can either spend time and energy getting offended at everything, or we can learn to not sweat the small stuff and get on building and operating space systems.
Can we not just be offended by the stupidity of the article discussing the attire of a scientist instead of discussing what they're trying to/have achieved and as such have said article removed/and or they apologise for it. Failing that, someone send them a box set of anime and wait for their minds to implode.
I'm talking about the fact that more men want to be engineers, nothing to do with how effective that particular gender mix is.
Ultimately there are just not enough girls studying science at least in England. I pulled some figures https://www.gov.uk/government/stati...nd-equivalent-results-in-england-2013-to-2014 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/a-level-and-other-level-3-results-2013-to-2014-provisional and while at GCSE (Age 16) for physics the candidate share is 50.6% male in 2014 (improved from 56.6% male in 2008) which isn't too bad, at A-level (Age 18) the candidate share is 79.9% male, worse than the 78.6% in 2008. If girls don't take Physics A-level we won't have women physicists. Now to what degree that is nature or nurture is a fair question, but it isn't good. Aside from the importance of science in itself, going on to a Physics degree will tend to mean a significant increase in your likely salary later on in life as it's one of the best paid subjects for graduates afaik.
Slightly off track but due to some unfortunate circumstances I've been part of several intakes in the engineering school at my university. When I first started there were only two girls out of 200 students in the year and they were both aero cohorts. Forward four years and it's up to ~20 out of 200 spread over Aero, Mech, Auto engineering. The Engineering and STEM councils are doing something right.
On the other hand Astronomy has loads of girls and women in it. Women with brains: the greatest turn-on for me.
