Friday, February 9, 2018

Feminista scienceista media where are you?

One of the first media outlets to pick up my #openscience effort on climate change was Mens Health according to Google. This was April of 2017. At the time I thought it was funny. Now, I see the really cool stuff I want to do is in Mens Health: blow up carbon dioxide, rip apart ions, use lasers, etc. I'm not a guy. I'm not a lesbian. I'm not even bi. (And it shouldn't matter if I were, either.) I'm a scientist, who also happens to be a woman. I don't picture myself like the glowing smiling women below. I like to picture myself in a lab or in a helmet. So when I saw that pic pop up on twitter, I said mentally to myself, pass.
(It's from Women 2.0, and they were discussing the female safe and sanctioned way for women  to get ahead by networking.)

Then I saw this come up on my twitter feed. It was Mens Health on NASA astronauts training. And well, facepalm! Would this turn away women, of any age? Does NASA not promote  females? No, in fact NASA does promote women, and advertise to girls, often! So what's the problem, this is a mens outlet? It's a larger problem not specifically with NASA or Mens Health. In fact it's so large I don't even know of all the pieces.

One of the pieces is that women don't get marketed cool STEM tech or jobs. It's perfectly ok for Mens Health to run a story on how to get jobs NASA. But what about the equivalent female magazine or outlet? Should there be? Marie Claire ran a story on Gwynne Shotwell, and so did Elle and Vanity Fair. You can be in STEM so long as it's to rise to the top? And for anything else see a STEM outlet? Is there a women's gendered media channel that would show how to get cool #STEM jobs, and cool tech, say something that would show Anna-Katrina Shedletsky's detailed teardown of the galaxy note?

Would there always be a mens channel that's has all the latest cool tech, but no females anywhere to be seen? When reality the sciences and other STEM channels are busy trying to be gender balanced or neutral, but the men still get the cool tech. Is this just me?

I did check Womens Health Mag for similar STEM articles like the mens one, but I only found articles about how the a lone determined woman is able to transcend boundaries and make it in #STEM and mostly around International Womens Day and the like.

Maybe the problem is we (#STEM women) weren't large enough as a media channel to have some really cool hardware/maker/STEM media outlet that shows off the really cool jobs, tools, toys, tech for women. So, we need more Wired, Recode, Ars Technica, Salon, Axios, NPR, Economist, Scientific American, IEEE-Spectrum, Nature, Science, Popular Mechanics, Nuts and Volts, Make, etc... dressed up like Elle or Vanity Fair to show women (and men) we do cool #STEM too. Actually this is like the facebook, g+ feed or twitter feed of any woman STEM expert or STEM lover, minus the glossy Elle UI.

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