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My response to the Guardian pseudoscience on girls and science

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American



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Just wanted to give a quick heads up to those of you who follow on the blog but not on Twitter or Facebook (personal, blog) that Chris Chambers and I have a piece in the Guardian today responding to the recent pseudoscience on why more girls don't pursue science in places like the US and UK:

"Pseudoscience and stereotyping won't solve gender inequality in science."

Many thanks to Ed Yong for hooking up Chris and me, and to Chris for graciously inviting me to write with him. Check it out!

I am Dr. Kate Clancy, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. On top of being an academic, I am a mother, a wife, an athlete, a labor activist, a sister, and a daughter. My beautiful blog banner was made by Jacqueline Dillard. Context and variation together help us understand humans (and any other species) as complicated. But they also help to show us that biology is not immutable, that it does not define us from the moment of our birth. Rather, our environment pushes and pulls our genes into different reaction norms that help us predict behavior and physiology. But, as humans make our environments, we have the ability to change the very things that change us. We often have more control over our biology than we may think.

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