Can Twilight Sparkle get more girls into physics and other sciences? · 10:21pm Oct 25th, 2014
One of the frequent topics of discussion in laboratories around the world is “How can we improve the gender balance of physics?”
Women are a minority in physics—around 20-25% in English speaking countries, but as a cultural phenomenon, it varies across the world, with even fewer in Germany and Japan. Latin and former communist countries do better, in some cases approaching 50%. There is a similar problem in other sciences, with engineering and computer science doing worse. Mathematics and chemistry are better but still have fewer women than men. On the other hand biology has the opposite problem with a male minority.
Does it matter? Yes. Firstly, it's bad for physics. It's hard enough to recruit suitably qualified students and researchers as it is—we can't afford to exclude 50% of humanity. Secondly it suggests many women are missing out on an awesome career for which they could be ideally suited.
This has been the subject of a large amount of research, and this blog post is too short to discuss all the factors which lead to gender bias. But one significant reason is that in their final years of school, girls simply choose to study other subjects. Despite the fact that young girls enjoy science games just as much as boys, and despite the fact that they do just as well (or better) at school, when they reach that point when as teenagers they decide what to study in the later years of school, and at university, they opt for other subjects.
Why? Because they grow up in a world that bombards them with subtle, and not-so-subtle messages that science is not for girls. If they get good advice from parents and teachers, then they will learn to ignore this crap and do what they want to. Unfortunately not all girls get good advice, as far too many parents and teachers actually discourage them from taking physics courses.
Young boys are given science kits and action figures. Young girls get make-up sets and dolls. Including Barbies which say 'Math class is tough'. Toys are colour coded (pink for girls) to make it very clear what they should be playing with. In 'boys' cartoons the characters do rocket science and computing, in 'girls' cartoons they get their hair and nails done.
But fortunately not all girls cartoons. My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic does not push girls into any particular role. In this world, everypony has her own unique special talent, which could be science or engineering, just as much as cake baking or fashion design. There are scenes showing Twilight investigating chemistry, neuroscience, astronomy, the mathematics of special relativity, teaching Apple Bloom some sort of biotechnology. All this helps to promote a normality that science is just as much a 'girl thing' as a 'boy thing'.
It's not perfect. Unfortunately the Hasbro toy department did not really get Lauren Faust's vision of a diverse range of strong female characters. The commercials have a disappointing focus on prettiness over awesomeness. But we can hope the kids who see the show will quickly pick up that Twilight does a lot more than comb her mane.
Ponies have an key advantage: they're everywhere. Hasbro has sold hundreds of millions of them worldwide. And they are bought by all sorts of parents for little girls. This is important. If we are to change the world, it's not enough to have a select group of liberal feminist parents raising smart, confident girls. Cool though that is. We need to make sure every little girl gets good toys, and hears the message that science is not just for boys. Most parents just buy their daughters whatever 'girl's toy' is on the shelf, not because they have a particular agenda on how to raise their little darling. But just because they don't think about it, and pink is 'what you buy for girls'.
It may be a small thing, but Twilight has a role to play as an ambassador for science.
Well, marketing is so incredibly backwards, it's no wonder the toy industry is falling so far behind these days. It's bad enough most stores won't carry toys that don't conform to what they believe a girl or boy toy should be (Pinklestia, for instance), but I have noticed a rather bad tendency for most stores to stock very few of anything anymore. At least in my area.
Online stores I think do a bit better, at least. At the very least, there is no pink aisle. Just search the toy you want.
As the saying goes, what Hasbro cannot do may be done through fanfiction.
John Stuart Mill, the author of a long-lived economics textbook and one of the last great classical economists, wrote a radical essay supporting equality of the sexes. Economists have tended to be the intellectual leaders of freedom and equality. The abolition movement owed much to the support leadership of economists. In fact, it is through opposing slavery that economists earned the title "The Dismal Science." Adam Smith suggested that not only were the enslaved and oppressed of his era not the moral inferiors of their European captors, but also that they may have even been their moral superiors. Economists fought the Corn Laws that raised food prices at the expense of the poor. Alas, it took the Irish potato famine to convince the British lawmakers of the errors of their ways (and thank goodness many of their lawmakers were economists!). Economists are the intellectual leaders of the modern day open borders movement. As an exception that proves the rule, we may consider the case of Irving Fisher, certainly an odd character, albeit a great and very important economist.
Examples abound. In general economics teaches the virtues of cooperation. The strong benefit by working with the weak, not by crushing them. The rich benefit by hiring the poor and mass-producing goods for them, not by enclosing them in ghettos and starving them. It was obvious to Tocqueville that slavery was a detriment to the economy of the American South. The Germans have found all the lebensraum they could want as a result of trade and markets. War impoverished them. It has long been observed that diversity, tolerance, and the mingling of cultures, religions, and peoples is widely practiced in the marketplace even in times and places where such a marvel would otherwise be unthinkable. It is simply good business sense to care only for the color of money.
Janet Yellen is our new princess. Joan Robinson won the Nobel prize in an alternate universe, and Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel prize in ours. Esther Duflo may do so as well.
There is such a thing as feminist economics. It is economists who have shown that "stay-at-home" mothers who clean and cook are in fact engaged in vital economic production that deserves as much respect and reward as what men do in the office or out in the field. It is economists who provided the intellectual firepower behind the relaxation of the stringent restrictions around divorce law.
When women flow into the sciences in greater numbers, it will be because economists have shown how to effect such a change and why it is desirable. Undoubtedly ponies will play their part in this.
I recognize Pinkie Sense, but could someone please tell me what episodes the other images are from? What episodes feature Twilight doing science?
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From top to bottom
1. Don't know yet
2. Feeling pinkie Keen
3. Owls Well that ends well
4. Its about time
5. Twilight Time
The new movie introduced the HuMane Twilight Sparkle. She could go either way:
She could be a scientist or an crazy ConspiracyTheorist. I hope that she turns out to be a scientist. I have an idea about how the HuMane Twilight Sparkle could be a scientist and advance the plot of the next movie:
Twilight Sparkle, being a genius, skipped grades and is now an undergraduate. Like the Mane Twilight Sparkle, she is not interested in friendship. She has logically deduced that CanterLot High must interact with another universe and that the physics of the other universe bleed into her universe. She tries to disprove this hypothesis but cannot. She cannot tell anyhuman because other would believe that she is crazy.
Not knowing friendship, she is very suspicious and tries to stop the insidious invaders from another universe. This makes her an antagonist. The HuMane 5 plus SunSetShimmer, despite the accusations against their character (although, to be faire, the accusations of the HuMane Twilight Sparkle were true for SunSetShimmer until she tasted the RainBow), offer friendship to the HuMane Twilight Sparkle. Despite her suspicions, she is very lonely, so accepts. provisionally. They eventually prove that they are not evil and all become friends.
Since the above is the My Little Pony: Equestrian Girls # Ⅲ I would like to see, it will certainly be different.
On another note, I got bored a few days ago and worked out the SystemClock for a computer using Balanced Ternary. It has nothing to do with ponies (except maybe, the OptimalVerse), but it is ComputerScience and does use PlanckTime:
243-Trit SystemClock in Balanced Ternary For An 81-Trit Ternary Computer Using Balanced Ternary As Its Base
You probably do not want to read this new blog. My best ScienceBlog is still the Physics of UnicornTeleportation, but I believe that you already read that old 1:
The Physics Of UnicornTeleportation
¡I mention τ (Tau) in the Physics of UnicornTeleportion because the volume of a sphere of space to displace is important as is Relativity!
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The one you cannot place is S01E05 Griffon The BrushOff.
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Should have known that is one of my favorite episodes.
I'm female, and I have to say I love biology :/ I don't think that's a bad thing, but it's by far my favorite of the sciences to go in extreme depth with. Psychology as well. I want to be an animal trainer when I finish college and possibly a training program. Interesting fact--when animal training was primarily done using dominance training techniques, the number of men in the field far outweighed the number of women. Now that positive reinforcement is the training method of choice (based on very solid science) women FAR outnumber men. A man in the field who co-taught a workshop on animal training said it was his hypothesis that the reason is that women are more genetically programmed for empathy--which again is logical, as children need to be cared for, particularly when they're youngest, and females are....let's say physically equipped....to provide, um, food. Ya know.
I'm all for more women in the sciences, though. If you're interested, you should explore! Sciences are amazing and I love to know at least some details of how things work from all ranges of topics. I hope Twi helps get girls interested. I don't think doing anything because you think that's what's expected of you--whether it's boys studying science or girls avoiding science--is going to be successful. You only REALLY make an impact if you care about what you're doing.