Women can’t understand scientific facts.

Last week I highlighted Averil Macdonald’s comments that women ‘don’t understand’ the science behind fracking and only oppose it based on ‘gut feeling’. Published in the Telegraph on 23rd October, Claire Cohen begs to differ from these views:

………. ‘It’s exactly this sort of talk that puts young women in Britain off careers in STEM. It’s especially maddening when you consider she actually went on to acknowledge the problem in the same interview. She pointed out there were too few women at senior levels in the shale industry and added she was disappointed when all ten of the executives who interviewed her were men.  “Frequently the women haven’t had very much in the way of a science education because they may well have dropped science at 16. That is just a fact,” she added. Presumably not a fact we women, with our snap judgments and ‘gut feelings’ can understand. Rather than blame women’s lack of science education for their opposition to fracking, shouldn’t Britain’s leading scientists be asking why we’re so excluded from the conversation in the first place?’

What do you think about Averil Macdonald’s comments?

hydraulic-fracking-diagram

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