Joe’s Big Idea on NPR. hosted by Joe Palca, had an interview with Caltech astrophysicist Shrinivas Kulkarni who, at one point, said “Many scientists are I think, secretly, are what I call ‘boys with toys.’”
Palca repeated that for him, “Boys with toys.”
“And I think there’s nothing wrong with that, except...," Kulkarni went on.
“Boys with toys,” Palca said again.
“...you’re not supposed to say that”, Kulkarni finished.
And so a Twitter counterpoint meme, #girlswithtoys, was born, including lots of fine examples of women who have done outstanding work. Was there anything malicious in that interview? No, but a great deal of academia is hyper-militant because they see instead things like this as casual sexism - not overtly harmful, no one is being denied a job or a promotion, but subtle stereotyping which might deter young women from science.
Anthropologist Dr. Kate Clancy details the concern at Slate.
