Green equalities spokesperson calls for Science Museum to remove ‘sexist’ brain exhibit.
The Green Party’s equalities spokesperson for women, Sarah Cope has called on the Science Museum in London to remove an interactive exhibit called What sex is your brain which represents male and female brains in blue and pink respectively, accusing the Science Museum of “reinforcing outdated gender stereotypes.”
Her call comes after an image of the test was circulated on social media, prompting outrage from Twitter users.
Cope said: “It’s really disappointing to see the Science Museum reinforcing outdated gender stereotypes in this way.
“The idea of gendered brains is dubious science at best, and this kind of sexism – telling girls at a young age that they have feminine brains – is part of the reason why boys still dominate STEM subjects and less than 10% of engineers in the UK are women.
“The Science Museum can and must do better – and should take down this exhibit immediately.”
The exhibit was originally created in 2000.
On September 14 Alex Tyrrell responded to critics on the Science Museum Blog: “As a Museum we always attempt to present ideas in different ways – labels and objects but also games, animations and ‘interactives’ – and in this case the artistic licence taken in the year 2000 to create a provocative exhibit appears outdated. Certainly from preliminary work looking at the latest scientific evidence, the ideas presented are now in question.
“Social attitudes also change. We have received responses from visitors who are concerned about how we feature transgender issues, which are now very much more in the public consciousness than they were back in 2010, let alone the year 2000.
“The idea of Who am I? was always to raise questions. We present issues in ways that provoke debate, however we would never want to compromise the accuracy of the content on display.
“Of course we would like to keep all of our galleries and exhibitions up-to-date, but with many thousands of objects on show and finite resources and time this is not always possible.
“However, with an issue of such scientific and cultural importance as this we have decided it is essential that we look again at the exhibit. We are now talking to leading experts in neuroscience and clinical psychology to consider whether the latest scientific evidence warrants making changes to our exhibit.
“Science moves fast, and while it isn’t always possible for us to keep up, on some issues it is essential that we quicken our pace to make sure we haven’t been left behind.”
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