Gender Differences: A Comparison Between Barbara And Gavin

For this activity I talked to my friend Barbara and my neighbor Gavin. Barbara is a 23-year-old white woman who attends Western Michigan University and Gavin is a 26-year-old white male who has never been to a University. I asked them both if they could name any scientist of color or any female scientist. If they could not think of any (or very few) I then asked them how they felt about it. When I asked Barbara if she could name any scientist of color or women scientist. She named Ernest Everett Just, and Marie Maynard Daly. I asked her if she could explain to me what they are known for and how she knew of them. She explained to me that Ernest Everett Just was a biologist and a scientist (he is also an educator) who made developments in fertilization, cell division, and worked on many different studies with cells. She told me she learned about him in high school when she needed to do a project on him in her advance biology class. Barbara explained to me that Daly was the first African American woman to get a Ph.D in chemistry. When I asked how she was familiar with Daly, she just answered, she learned about her sometime in high school. I asked Barbara how she felt that she could not name more than two people of color in science and only one woman. She said that she feels if you asked her about scientist in general she would not be able to
I asked him how he felt about that. Gavin said that he felt really embarrassed and that he could not think of anyone. He mentioned that he is very surprised that in his 12 years of education that he did not have any information on scientist in history especially no knowledge of people of color or women in science careers. He posed the question asking if children in school now in 2016 are being taught more about historical figures in science, or if they are still bypassing that