Women and Science

I've been reading a blog post about the difficulties of attracting women to the field of science. There's some vaguely interesting comments about women not being able to have a marriage and kids if they want to reach the upper echelons of the scientific community, and what's being done to counteract this. Well, here's the thing, it doesn't matter how many policies you put in place, they won't work if attitudes don't change.

This whole thing got me thinking about professional women in the IT field (mainly because I belong in this group myself). Personally, I think the reason women aren't attracted to science is because they suffer the same sort of outdated, chauvinistic attitudes that exist towards women in IT. (Yes, they do still exist - check this out if you don't believe me!)

But the point that really annoys me is this unfathomable idea that the woman should be the primary caregiver in her family. The author of the piece asks why women should sacrifice reproductive fitness for the sake of career advancement. Whilst she's clearly making a philosophical point in the article, still we know attitudes of this sort do exist. What I say is, why would a woman have to sacrifice having a child? A baby takes 9 months to be born, for most of that time a woman can continue to work. After the birth, she can return to work as quickly as she wants and then, here's a novel idea, why not leave her partner to be the primary caregiver, taking on that role which has traditionally been called the 'mothering' role?

Just because I'm a woman, does that mean I have a natural 'mothering' instinct? Anyone who knows me will tell you, that really doesn't apply to me! I just don't believe in the innate sanctity of 'motherhood'. I think stories such as that of Baby P tell us something about that.