A) Girls can't do well in math and science subjects.

B) Science and Tech Fields are misogynistic Good Old Boys Clubs.

C) All men hate women.

D) Women just don't care about math and science - they care about fashion and babies.

E) Teachers, professors and employers don't understand how they shut girls out and they need some education.

A recent National Academies report, Beyond Bias and Barriers: Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering, found that women repeatedly face biases in academia in the science fields, and that these barriers to success discourage them from careers in these areas. In response to this report, Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) recently introduced the Gender Bias Elimination Act (H.R. 3514).

Women are capable of contributing more to the nation's science and engineering research enterprise, but bias and outmoded practices governing academic success impede their progress almost every step of the way, said Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami, former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and chair of the committee that wrote the report. Fundamental changes in the culture and opportunities at America's research universities are urgently needed. The United States should enhance its talent pool by making the most of its entire population.

This important piece of legislation directly addresses concerns raised in the National Academies report by authorizing workshops that educate university department chairs, agency program officers, and others on reducing and eliminating gender bias for women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Under this act, agencies that fund scientific research-like the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation-will also be directed to better enforce existing federal anti-discrimination laws (including Title IX), assess the workplace climate, publish demographic and funding data for grant applications, and extend grant support for researchers on leave for caregiving duties.

Declining interest in science and a shortage of American scientists is a threat to American competitiveness on a national scale, problems that are exacerbated by the low numbers of women and girls from STEM fields. The Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology's report Professional Women and Minorities states that women now comprise 25 percent of the labor force in STEM fields. If women and members of other traditionally underrepresented groups joined the STEM workforce in proportion to their representation in the overall labor force, the shortage of STEM professionals would disappear.

Join the American Association of University Women in supporting, promoting and strengthening STEM education, especially for women and other underrepresented populations in the fields. AAUW believes this legislation remove barriers to success and encourage more women to choose careers in STEM fields.

Be a Two-Minute Activist by following this link to write your legislatures to support this bill.

Our daughters deserve to have all choices open and available to them.

by Tracee Sioux

Mommy, Kinsey called me a bad word!

Oh no. What did she call you?

Tracee!

So this is what bad mother Karma feels like. I so wish I had been nicer to my mother. Where once my main goal in life was to not become my mother, I now realize there are WAY worse people to be. I'd be lucky to be as kind, generous and loving and together as my mother.

The other day someone said, That must have been hard for you.

We were discussing how my mother actually taught me real homemaking skills like sewing, cooking and cleaning that I thought were passe. I believed feminism would save me from that fate.

I guess, as a kid I didn't appreciate that some mothers leave. Some mothers beat their kids. Some mothers work three jobs and are never home. Some mothers involve a litany of different father-figures in their kids' lives. Some mothers don't care if you do your homework or graduate. Some mothers give you their cigarettes instead of punishing you for smoking.

I actually do sew. Sometimes for fun. My friends are jealous that I have this antiquated and exotic feminine skill. They bring me their favorite clothes and beg me to fix them. They ask me to teach them these nearly-dead feminine arts. They ask for my recipes.

My parents were right - I just didn't know how good I had it. I really thought every kid got it as good as me.

Now if only I could convince Ainsley - There are way worse names to be called than Tracee.

by Tracee Sioux

Am I the only mother who actually cried when I realized my daughter would have to experience the trauma of junior high school?

I now realize that was silly of me - girl drama starts much earlier now.

In preschool I got my first taste of it when her BFF Maddy didn't want to play with Caitlin with a C and Kaytlin with a K on the playground. I never could understand why, but I think it came down to Maddy wanting to play with only Ainsley all the time.

Finally, one day Ainsley told Maddy, I've played with you all the time for the whole year. I've had enough. I'm playing with them now.

Which, of course, devastated poor Maddy.

In Kindergarten there are more girls involved.

The reports I get from her teacher are glowing, Ainsley's popular and has a close group of friends. She gets along well with the other children. She's is not bullied and does not bully others. She's a perfect student. Very helpful.

Which is inconsistent with what Ainsley tells me about her day.

It seems every single day she fights with Taylor or Aaron about who is going to play "The Mom" or swing on the swings. And everyday it ends with these words,

Fine. I'm not your friend anymore. I'm never playing with you again.

Every time she seems to resolve her issues with her classmates Taylor and Aaron, BFF Maddy's class comes out for recess. They get upset when Ainsley abandons them to play with her BFF. Maddy apparently has no interest, once again, in being friends with Taylor and Aaron and Taylor and Aaron don't really like Maddy, says Ainsley.

Pre-Kindergarten it was my easily-held belief that ALL bullying and mean girl behavior should be punished harshly in the early years to prevent such nastiness from culminating in junior high.

Obviously, there is some mean girl behavior going on on the playground. But, the stories are so involved that I'm not sure exactly who should be punished or even if punishment would accomplish anything.

I'm thrilled that Ainsley is coming to me for advice, but frankly I haven't much.

I never really did learn to win with girls in school.

by Tracee Sioux

I found myself facing a modern-day dilemma when my 6-year-old daughter, Ainsley, started surfing the net.

I suppose in my mind it I thought it would go something like this:

My 10-year-old daughter would come to me and say, Mom, I need to do a report in school. Is it okay if I learn to Google now?

Of course, Darling, but you know the Internet has a lot of issues with inappropriate content, so we need to go over a list of rules about opening email and files and what pages are off-limits.

Yeah okay. Here's how that went in real life.

Mom. Log me on to Disney.com.

I obeyed.

How do you spell Zac Efron?

Z-A-C - space - E-F-R-O-N

After 15 minutes of watching Oprah and folding laundry, I look over at the computer screen and realize my 6-year-old daughter has been randomly clicking entertainment gossip blogs and tabloid websites (read: soft porn). It's only a matter of time before Zac Efron's girlfriend, Vanessa Hudgens, appears naked on our computer screen. Not to mention all those nasty text ads advertising the actual sale of girls, she might randomly click.

Ainsley, I think you should go read a book or something.

After the kids are in bed,Honey, I think it's time to install the Internet Safety software, immediately. Ainsley learned to Google today.

Hop on over to the Internet Safety Advisor for Parental Safety Tips for guidelines on how to allow children to safely navigate their first movie-star crush.

And please, leave all the advice you've got on good software and effective rules.

Have you been over to the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood? It's a non-profit activist organization on the side of NOT selling our kids out.

Which, until recently I thought was a given, but apparently that was naive. Now, I pretty much think that unless people get LOUD in the face of advertisers they'll sell every girl or boy child as long as they can pay their amortized mortgage and their fancy limited-edition, financed Tahoe.

I would love to attend the upcoming conference in Boston, Consuming Kids, The Sexualization of Children and other Commercial Calamities.

I'll invite any attendee of the conference to guest-post what they learned on So Sioux Me.

I love a site that lets me take real action in less than 5 minutes. While I was over there I got to write a letter to Scholastic to tell them to stop marketing The Bratz in my daughter's school.

You can also send a letter to McDonalds demanding they stop selling sex with a side of fries with their sexualized My Scene Barbies as a Happy Meal prize. More on these toys at Queen of Violets.

I understand that, as a parent, one of my jobs is to teach my children to decipher advertising and teach them to resist it.

Really, I don't think it would be reasonable to stop marketing to kids completely. But, do they have to be so deranged and disgusting about it? Could they perhaps apply an ethical boundary here and there? At a marketing meeting deciding to market toys that look more like hookers than business women is it insane to think the marketing professionals, presumably also parents, might ask "What kind of long-term effect might this have on kids?"

Is that really too much to ask?

Keeping Up With the Kardashians is another E! television series which makes me want to . . . what? It's so depraved, I'm at a loss.

Lets start with worst mother on the planet (at least on television) - Kris Kardashian. This woman has phone conversations with the Girls Gone Wild President, who happens to be in jail for violating and exploiting little girls, both to get off and to sell a lot of child porn. "I can't believe you're in jail, we really should drive up there and get you out somehow," she whimpers at him.

This guy is pretty much the superhero for pedophiles, but whatever. Kris feels it would be a good career move to sell her model/actress teenage daughters to him. She doesn't understand why anyone would let a little "stigma" of sexual exploitation of children bother them when this is obviously a "classy" swim wear collection.

So she takes the girls, lying to her husband, and poses for Girls Gone Wild. Brilliant motherhood/management move.

Father finds out and goes off to find Kris. He leaves their pre-pubescent daughters with adult brother Brody. This is where the show takes a Nambla tone - and I'm sure all members of Nambla recorded the episode and will watch it over and over with their pants down.

Kendal, 11, and Kylie, 9, start taunting their brother Brody about Girls Gone Wild and lifting up their shirts. He invites his adult male friend over to join in the fun. Even joking that he's invited "girls" over to play with. The tween girls dance around a stripper pole - why do these people have a stripper pole in their home? Lifting their tops singing Girls Gone Wild! Girls Gone Wild! Girls Gone Wild! These Elementary School students grab a belt and play a game of whipping and chasing these men who are babysitting them screaming their sexual taunt.

A video camera is gotten out and the babysitting adult male friend tapes the girls dancing around the stripper pole singing Girls Gone Wild and flashing their bare stomachs joking about putting it on You Tube. Finally, brother Brody walks in the room and puts a stop to it. But instead of punching his friend in the face, he thinks it's all really funny.

At the end of the episode the 3 older girls joke about being Charlies Angels with the imprisoned pornographer who jokes about wanting to screw them and which of them is hottest.

Their father "accidentally" finds the video of his youngest daughters flashing and screaming Girls Gone Wild around a stripper pole and it's obvious who's in trouble - the pre-teen girls. How dare they act like that?

We see Mother, feigning shock that this kind of porno-fun is going on.

What, Mrs. Kardashian? Did you think maybe they should wait until they are 12 or 13 before selling them to the highest-bidding child pornographer? (Which, in this case, happens to be E!)

Previews for next week involve Hugh Hefner and Mrs. Kardashian trying to convince her daughter to take her bra off. E!'s website is featuring Kardashian parental advice about how to raise responsible children and get girls to dress age-appropriately.

This is the new normal.