The Internet blew up Friday over a seemingly outrageous image—a list of the different science and technology programs the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh offers to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts:
https://twitter.com/nanea/status/518051393718865921
This photo, which shows a 9-to-1 discrepancy in the number of courses the museum offers for Boy Scouts and for Girl Scouts, was shared more than 3,000 times on Facebook and Twitter, and not happily. It wasn’t just the numbers; the fact that the single offering for Girl Scouts had the word “sparkle” in the title seemed like a calculated insult. We already know that fewer girls than boys grow up to have careers in science, and this wasn’t helping.
But the story is a little more complicated than it looks at first glance. It turns out that the viral photo is only a small part of that particular page in the program, which goes on to list multiple events just for girls arranged by a separate museum program:
In a lengthy statement on its Facebook page, Carnegie Science Center also clarified that it offers the programming it does because, well, that’s what girls want. The organization also noted that Girl Scouts are welcome to attend Boy Scout programs if they choose (although of course the program itself doesn’t mention that).
The museum wrote:
Regarding Girl Scout-specific programming, we have struggled when it comes to enrollments. In the past, we have offered engineering, chemistry, and robotics programming for Girl Scouts. We created programming to go along with the new Journeys that Girl Scouts use. Unfortunately, no troops signed up for these. The programs that consistently get enrollments are ‘Science with a Sparkle’—which teaches girls about chemistry—and our sleepovers at the museum.
As for calling it “Science with a Sparkle,” it’s been shown that names do matter when getting girls interested in science. The University of California at Berkeley changed the name of an entry course from “Introduction to Symbolic Programming” to “The Beauty and the Joy of Computing.” The result was 40% female enrollment for the first time ever.
Lead photo by Todd Kulesza
