Why bother with girls in science?

Karin Klein of Northbrook, IL wrote a letter to The Scientist regarding a recent article (Women, Science and Academia: A Three-Point Plan) describing a plan to solve the problem that so few women go into science.

"The counterargument—stated quite clearly to me by a male colleague as I struggled through the last month of a difficult pregnancy and made plans to take a three-month leave of absence from my postdoc position to be with my newborn—is persuasive in a production-oriented profession such as the life sciences. Men can do the job better because they can be there, working, while women are busy with the biological necessities of raising children. Why bother paying for daycare (or for time of for prenatal care) to allow women to contribute to the life sciences, when there are capable men to do the job? What does science, in fact, gain by the participation of women, specifically?"

Ok ladies, kick of your shoes, cancel your AWIS membership, and prepare to make babies! While we are at it, lets quit bothering with those pesky minorities too. I mean, there are obviously plenty of white men who are perfectly capable of doing science and don’t need all that remedial help.

My first thought was, maybe it was her pregnancy that made this statement seem persuasive. Persuasive? Are you kidding me? Why bother. Wow. You expect some men to say things like that, but women who eat that shit as if it were fed to them with a spoon are the real problem.

Now let me state the obvious: Different life experiences bring different perspectives to any work place. This is particularly critical in science that advances only when someone observes something that was there all along.