Why Women Don't Get Ahead in Science Careers

A blog post on Sciencecareers.org, a project of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS,) recently reported a study that found that "many women participate more actively at the beginning of their scientific career, with their work ambitions reduced after having children."

Why does the media relentlessly report claims of a glass ceiling yet rarely report research findings such as that?

Censored data on race and gender

The oddly titled site, La Griffe Du Lion, presents the sort of data on race and gender that is usually omitted from discussions.

I believe an even-handed examination of these data is crucial if, as Barack Obama urges, we are to have an honest, full-dimension discussion of race.

Such a clear-eyed examination is especially important if we hope to develop approaches to race and gender problems that will be more helpful than the past 50 years of massive, well-intentioned, but ultimately minimally cost-beneficial efforts.

We owe ourselves, the taxpayers, as well as women and minorities the willingness to examine all the data, even when it makes us feel uncomfortable.

The Latest Example of Liberal Hypocrisy

Liberals and the media have vigorously advocated for laws against age discrimination. Yet, to help ensure that McCain loses, they say he's too old.

Of course, I shouldn't be surprised. Liberal hypocrisy is so common. A few examples:

-- Mainstream (read liberal) newspapers and magazines devote endless ink to the importance of being green yet kill countless trees to produce paper versions of their publications rather than posting them online. Meanwhile, landfills grow ever larger to accommodate all the newsprint. And the delivery trucks release into the atmosphere the hydrocarbons the newspapers insist they're worried about.

-- Hillary has long advocated for public education, yet she sent her daughter to private schools and private college. (Update: Obama, another big supporter of public education, is sending his kid to the same tony private school the Clintons sent Chelsea to.)

-- Hillary has long proclaimed herself a celebrant of diversity, yet when she became senator, she bought her house in one of New York City's only lily-white suburbs.

-- Congress has passed endless affirmative-action laws, yet specifically exempted itself from those laws.

-- John Kerry, while running as the "Environmental President," owned gas-guzzling SUVs. (Yes, that's plural.)

--Limousine Liberals, ubiquitous in Hollywood and the San Francisco Bay Area, advocate for the poor, for example, railing against CEO salaries, making movies that bash the rich. (I just saw Michael Clayton, a typical example.) They urge everyone to walk the talk, yet they don't. If they chose to live mere upper-middle class lifestyles, each keeping an extra million bucks for a rainy day and gave the rest to the poor, limousine liberals could save countless poor people's lives. But instead they prefer to just sing a song at a benefit concert or sound sanctimonious in a CNN interview and then escape in their limo through their mansion's electronic gate and then press "Close."