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?

As someone who attended an awful lot of these things in high school I would be down right pissed off if my time had been wasted on utter shit like that.

Ha I share the safety boots issue. Never ones small enough in a decent style I want. Some with all sorts of stuff if you work in a male dominated industry.
I do think this event is designed to convert / engage girls who are not into STEM currently and need to relate to it.
Thats very different to engaging girls that are already going to be a rocket scientist who will attend with zest.
This is the same debate as to how you enagage 'non sporty' girls in sport. They see themselves as non sporty and lack confidence.
Thats very different from persuading a very sporty girl to try another new sport; which they will throw themselves into.
As I say, the issues are complex and deep rooted.

That's shit. They could have used a bit of thought and come up with some activities that actually relate to STEM in a meaningful way.

As a woman who works in STEM, who is vastly outnumbered by male colleagues, this makes me so cross. Surely it completely misses the point of the event? Sounds more like something you would do at a fashion / design open day!

We have had STEM days for local schools (boys and girls) where I work, and there were various RELATED activities planned. I don't understand why you would have a STEM event and have the main "activity" only have a very tenuous link to the subject (whether it was planned for boys, girls, or a mix).

The nice thing about science festivals and open days is that the stalls are normally "manned" more or less 50% by charming chatty clever attractive (that last shouldn't make a difference but it does alas help in the role model stakes) young women talking about their PhD research into neurobiology or astronomy or materials or whatever. No need to make a point of it, no need to cherry pick figures from history, they're just there in their lab coats or team T shirts doing their thing.

Well I've got a well paid sciencey job but I would have loved to decorate a lab coat at your daughter's age.
Or now.
So I personally love the idea.

What a brilliant idea!

NOT. WTAF?? I'm raging too, what a fucking crock.

Apparently the girls will spend the morning decorating lab coats

I have jumped 7 pages of much the same - but no where in your OP can I find a reference to spangles or sequins blah blah - how did posters make that massive jump?

FYI although not as prestigious , clearly, as your event, at DSs secondary school, DT aprons & lab coats were encouraged to be personalised. It's a massive jump to assume 'decoration' is glitter.

This reminds me of the L'oreal grant you can apply for where they give you a makeover.
Can see them doing that for men .

Me too... but then my dad was a chemist and always had a decorated lab coat with name on etc. This is a company specialising in engaging girls so they won't offer the same to boys IYSWIM.
I suspect that they have tried loads of things over the years and ended up getting loads of +ve things said about personalising lab coats.
Ultimately its the girls ( who 'don't like science' before the event) who should tell us whether it was a waste of time or not.
Having said that, I cant see why it would take more than 30mins or so at the start of a day and be used just to get the girls settled in and talking to each other if they come from all different schools.

TheMasterNotMargarita
This reminds me of the L'oreal grant you can apply for where they give you a makeover.

What the actual fuck.

Thanks stealth stupid French autocorrect on my phone.

I couldn't see where it said anything about glitter and sparkles either.
Just girls jazzing up lab coats with names and pictures in marker pens

Do they describe the activity as 'decorating' or 'personalising'? If the latter, then while it shouldn't be more than a short ice-breaker, it wouldn't be bad (though lab coats are quite expensive and at that age likely to be outgrown, not something they can take on to uni/work) - it really is the word 'decorating' that is antagonising us, I think.

It's sadly true @LockedOutOfMN.
Research grant and part of it is you give a seminar after they've made you over. Haven't checked it out recently but it was certainly the case a couple of years ago.
Because we're worth it.
Dont even start me on our institutes idea of promoting women in science.

To make it realistic what they could do is get the kids to design company logos and then draw them onto iron-on labels and iron them onto the lab coats. Then 20 minutes later they can announce a takeover and do it all over again with a new logo, except that they also have to throw away 10% of the labcoats each time and close the final salary pension scheme to new entrants.

Haha, well, that'd rather discourage the children, wouldn't it?
Perhaps not quite so realistic.

"Personalising" would sound a LOT better.

A "this is your very own labcoat because you are a young scientist and need one" message would be good.

But certainly, no glitter should be used. That's just impractical.

I told DD about this thread, when I started with describing the event as being about science she got all excited and asked if she could go! Until I described the labcoat activity at which point she gave an exasperated sigh rolled her eyes in the way only preteens can :o

If I was a daughter attending the event I'd just write "I was hoping to learn but all I got was to decorate a bloody lab coat"

But then my mother raised me to be a sarky madam

Without knowing how long this activity is I don't see how anyone can get worked up about it. The pictures of the 'decorated' lab coats in the photos on the Facebook account don't indicate that it's something they spend much time on.

TheMasterNotMargarita Good grief. Doesn't L'ORÉAL have a female CEO?

I don't know. But the ideas that come out of our place are instigated by women and I wouldn't even know where to start with some of those.
You just can't argue with stupid but I keep trying. I put my head in my hands in despair to stop from banging it off the wall...!

soup I would also query if decorating labcoats is something it would even occur to them to get boys to do.

I wonder the same. They can't really answer it though as they wouldn't do any outreach for boys. But I'd love to know if similar activities would ever be thought of at STEM events that happen to be at an all boys school for example.

It does sound like it's only a very small part of the day but it is just unnecessary really

I think sort of the problem with the event is that as a PP alluded to, it is all about STEM for girls. This is immediately othering, and gives the impression that females in STEM is something special that is really unusual because it is a career for boys.

Which of course it is.

I'm rambling a bit here, bit it seems to me that the sex inequalities in STEM are not going to be solved by having a workshop with teenagers - this just emphasises how difficult it is going to be for them, that they need special treatment at this age to make them even think about a career.

When in fact the inequalities are deep rooted and structural, beginning at birth. Girls get nurse outfits, boys get doctors, girls get pissing dolls, boys get chemistry sets. Then of course the bias that most males have where society has taught them them that STEM things are males things, and females, bless them, just aren't as good at it (which after a lifetime of being told this in small insidious ways, and a lifetime of being groomed in girl things may well be true).

Events like this have their heart in the right place, but I'm not really sure they address the real issues.

Daily Mail please pick up in this!