sparkly labcoats

[No1blueengine]

I work for a major international financial institution. HR sponsor various special interest alliances within the company which lobby for their causes. One of the special interest alliances is "Women and Allies". It concerns itself with promoting equality in the workplace, etc etc.

They have managed to obtain some funding to host a STEM event. Women are hugely underrepresented in our actuarial and data analysis dept and the alliance would like to encourage girls and young women to consider careers in these fields. They have invited a boatload of girls from local secondary schools to attend one of our sites for an day long STEM event in September.

I received an invitation yesterday for my daughter(s). Apparently the girls will spend the morning decorating lab coats before hearing from a range of speakers about STEM careers.

Decorating lab coats. I shit you not.

My jaw hit the floor. i thought it must be joke but apparently it is not. I keep trying to draft an email to the organizers but i cant get past spluttering outrage. A (female) colleague cant see what i am getting upset about, though thinks the money could have been better spent on pay rises.

I think it is insulting to girls intelligence that the organizers felt they needed to offer this activity (and dedicate such a substantial amount of time to it) to get the girls to attend and reflects the influence of underlying stereotypes on their thinking.

My 14 y/o step daughter built a functional robot in school last term and my 7 y/o daughter is very excited to be going to learn to code in September. Somehow they were both excited by their projects without sparkly lab coat inducements.

Above-mentioned colleague thinks i am getting worked up over nothing. AIBU?

I agree actually, I was just making the point that if we assume that it means sparkly and pink because they are girls then we are also falling for stereotyping, as it might not be. It was a vain hope though, clearly!

Sparkly pink or just sharpies, makes no difference. It is ridiculous.

Would they get a group of boys decorating lab coats? Doubt it.

I've looked at the pics on fb and it seems to be mostly writing their names on them in coloured pen.

1. Not all stem workers wear lab coats (lazy stereotyping ffs)
2. Any stem worker knows lab coats must be clean and safe (lack of knowledge about the stem careers they are trying to promote ffs)

Total fail

I'm a full-time STEM Ambassador, doing science sessions in local primary schools and careers advice in secondaries, funded by a large company. I show up with crates of different sized lab coats. Everyone is very excited about wearing them, including the staff, and they sure as heck do not need to be decorated!

OP - if your firm is serious about getting children interested in science careers, then they should be enabling the staff to become STEM Ambassadors. It costs nothing other than time. My colleagues are allowed 5 days a year to join me or attend school events independently.
www.stem.org.uk/stem-ambassadors/employers

My dd would see your sparkly labcoat and raise you a face full of glitter while telling you where to shove your sparkles.

My DD is in science camp this week at a university. She is 6. She has built a catapult, seen Jupiter (through a telescope), taught me about molecubes (I corrected her pronunciation) and is making a parachute today.

Her tiny, fluffy female brain is fine with all this and she didn't need to get glittery to do it.

Science is fucking cool and I still remember my frankly very irresponsible science teacher making thermite when I was in school in another country and him saying, "they wouldn't let me do this for you in the UK" with a big grin. That science will interest kids.

FFS even Scientist Barbie doesn't wear a sparkly decorated lab coat

I'm not convinced her heels and mini skirt would meet health and safety requirements.

BringOnTheScience do you ever do outreach to groups of home ed children? That'd go down very well here (SE)

Oh dear, I got really excited by the thread title thinking it was going to be about functional but decorative lab coats. I have a male scientist in my family who sometimes wears lab coats at work and likes somewhat flamboyant clothing, so it would've made a good Christmas present. :(

It's really depressing that they couldn't come up with a fun activity that involved actual experiments and science stuff rather than just arts and crafts. There are enough hack spaces around these days that they could have even just paid an outside organisation to run something!

The science sessions I mean, mostly primary age

For MrsTPs DD, a 'molecube'. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubane#/media/File%3ACubanemoleculee_ball.png

I could make a prettier one, but won't.

Butthole mostly health and safety wouldn't mind, unless she was in an area which required steel toe-capping or if there were specialist sole grip requirements i.e. oil rig.

MrsTP I am jealous, can I please go on camp with your daughter?

@cagliostro I do, but I'm not in the SE. If you register via the community grouo option you can request free STEM Ambassadors in your area. They send out regular emails to all the Ambs with lists of requests.

www.stem.org.uk/stem-ambassadors/youth-and-community-groups

Haha @ErrolTheDragon I will show her.

@soupforbrains I know right? I was really jealous about seeing Jupiter! I'm going to kidnap her from childcare next week and go back because they are having an eclipse viewing thing there. Without discernible amounts of pink glitter.

sigh I was hoping not to be 'outed' but I don't have anything on here I wouldn't want people to know me for SO...

My name is Rachel, I posted the comment on the FB page of G4G. I am only stating this because they have now, privately messaged me to respond. I will post screenshots of the response as soon as I can figure out how....

p.s. don't get too excited the response is a bit 'blah' IMO.

OP, YANBU.

Thanks so much Bring I'll do that! :)

This is obviously bad stupid and wrong......
.....but I totally crave a sparkly lab coat now .

My DM patched up all the scorched holes in my school lab coat with a colourful array of fabrics. There were a lot of them...I was a very bad chemist. Still my favourite garment I've ever possessed, beating out my biker jacket and wedding dress by a short head.

Sorry not read the whole thread... so sorry if My comment is not relevant...

I think it's a pointless exercise but harmless. The lab coats in the photos on twitter just look like lab coats which the girls have drawn on with sharpies ..so no glitter or sparkly nonsense 🤷🏻‍♀️. It depend how it was presented to the girls. Perhaps if they are asked to draw things that they think of when they think about stem subjects then it's ok . I know one of the photos shows a girl drawing flowers but maybe she is thinking of biology 😂. Other photos show the words 'STEM' drawn on the lab coats
I'm not feeling too outraged.

Both my DDS do maths at Uni and attended various 'Girls in STEM' type events, HeadStart etc and both commented that they found them a bit patronizing in the way they were repeatedly told 'Girls can do science etc' as though they was any reason they couldn't. IYSWIM (BTW - they both found the courses very useful in other aspects)

YANBU. I'm a science teacher and I'm all for trying to get more girls into Science and making it fun and engaging - I do think there are probably better approaches than decorating a lab coat.

... Though I admit I too quite fancy a sparkly lab coat now!!

Please send them the link to this thread so they can see it's not just you!

Here is a photo of some of the coats in a recent demonstration. I can't see anything wrong with them. The girls have obviously been asked to think of things with relate to STEM. One girl has drawn a heart but that could easily be science inspired rather than love inspired ❤️❤️❤️😆