<story><title>Girls sweep at Google Science Fair</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19google.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>emily37</author><text>Hmm. To me, the problem with &quot;girl power&quot;, etc. is that, as a young female scientist, you&apos;re inundated with suggestions that girls are your &quot;team&quot; and boys are your rivals. If you hear enough about &quot;girl power&quot; growing up, you start to feel that you have to represent your gender well: that you have to beat boys on tests (though it doesn&apos;t matter if you beat other girls on tests), or that knowing more than a male colleague is something to be proud of. &quot;Girl power&quot; was what I said in elementary school when the girls beat the guys at soccer or something, but when you start to use that sentiment in relation to intellectual abilities, you foster a hostile work environment and you encourage intellectual competition rather than collaboration across gender.&lt;p&gt;On a related note, here&apos;s a NYT blog post that I saw recently that highlights the science fair winners&apos; gender and just goes up in flames: &lt;a href=&quot;http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/girl-power-wins-at-googles-first-science-fair/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/girl-power-wins-at-...&lt;/a&gt;
It ends by suggesting that Google hired Marissa Mayer and Susan Wojcicki because they would help recruit more women, which made me cringe, even though I know that the author probably didn&apos;t intend to make exactly that point.</text></comment>
<story><title>Girls sweep at Google Science Fair</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/science/19google.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>ricefield</author><text>I didn&apos;t read the article in is entirety, but one line popped out at me, where one of the finalists says something like &quot;Yeah! Girl power!&quot;&lt;p&gt;Am I the only one who feels like, although men may &apos;dominate&apos; the hard sciences, one of the reasons (among many others which I won&apos;t discuss) why girls may succeed at stages like this is because of the encouragement from a &quot;girl power!&quot; (perhaps, underdog?) mentality?&lt;p&gt;If boys won and went with &quot;guy power!&quot; they would simply be accused of being sexist or even misogynist rather than fair-minded, or intrinsically motivated.</text></comment>