During an interview on WNPR’s “Where We Live” last week, prominent scientist Dr. Robert Ballard, who discovered the ruins of the Titanic in 1985, was asked how we should go about saving the planet.
His answer was simple: “Empower women.”
“That’s it,” he said. That’s number one.”
I wanted to stand up and cheer. He went on to say that he is a feminist, that he has a daughter (and a son), that he believes in women and he plans to hand over the reins of his latest expedition to his # 2, who is a woman. He then said that women will save the world because they are more nurturing, and less likely to lead us into war or blow up things. This made me pause a moment, because I would like to think that if women are going to save the world it’s because we are smart enough and capable enough to do it, not because we like to cuddle kittens and make nice meals. (Not to mention the fact that not all women conform to this stereotype of femininity.) But whatever. I liked his message enough to keep listening.
The show’s host asked Dr. Ballard about the prevailing wisdom that girls don’t excel in the sciences, and he again gave a succinct answer. “Bull.” Girls can excel in the sciences, and they do. What do readers think? Is the key to saving our planet this simple? If women do indeed end up coming up with important solutions to our most pressing environmental problems, will it be because we are nurturing, or is it more complicated than that?
http://www.yourpublicmedia.org/content/wnpr/where-we-live-robert-ballard-back-it
How about the girls who swept the Google Science Fair competition, rock on!
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Here's the NY Times article on it:
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I think it will be a return of valuing feminine values by BOTH men and women that is going to save the world...of which nurturance is an important and lacking feminine value. I think what has happened in the feminist movement is that we have sought to gain power by also rejecting feminine values and adopting the more valued masculine ones. So, we see nurturance and our first reaction is "Ug, what a petty little value." I probably would have had the same reaction as the person who wrote this acticle ten years ago when I first got into feminism, offended by women's nurturance as a solution rather than intelligence. But, you know, just because Dr. Ballard calls on the nurturance of women to heal the world does not mean we are not smart enough or capable enough to do so. Plus, the problems of the world will not be solved by left brain thinking (often associated with masculine, rational thinking) by men or women, since it is overreliance on this kind of thinking that has caused the problems of the world. So, I do vote for nurturance like Dr. Ballard suggests. Cuddling kittens is a beautiful thing and if both men and women did it, we would be living in a better place :)
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