Girls Don't Like Hard Science

John Tierney had an op-ed piece in the NY Times on Tuesday about the recent National Academy of Sciences report on bias toward women in science. He dismisses their findings of bias, and pins the reason for the underrepresentation of women in research universities on "they don't want to". Most girls, he opines, like the soft sciences, because they are concrete and people oriented, while boys prefer the abstract and "things". Perhaps, but you can be movivated by the concrete, be people oriented and still do "hard science". Check out the letters in response to his piece (full disclosure, one of the letters is mine). Martha Pollack's response regarding engineering was wonderful - people oriented hard science exists.