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Science, It's a Girl Thing: Or, How the European Union Spends Taxpayer Money

This article is more than 10 years old.

Something that you might have been able to gather from recent news pieces is that the economy of the continent of Europe is falling apart. Unemployment rates in both Greece and Spain are as bad or worse than anything that the United States had in the Great Depression for example. At least three EU governments are bankrupt and at least one more is thought to be heading that way.

So it's interesting to see what the European Commission the head, and coordinating, body of the whole enterprise thinks it is worth spending the taxpayers money upon. "Science, It's a Girl Thing". Now the idea that there is a gender imbalance in those who go into scientific studies and employment might be true, the thought that we might do something about this could also be reasonable. But this really isn't quite the way to do it:

But, you know, when the continent is falling apart there's still money and time in which to be patronising, smug and sexist, right?

And people wonder why there are curmudgeons like me who are opposed to the whole project.

Please note: this is not a spoof, this is not some cruel creation of anti-Europeans. This really is an official video aimed at persuading young women that science is a career that they might want to consider.