I just received an end-of-the-year letter from the Society for Science & the Public (SSP), and it is a nonprofit for science and education. The letter is asking for donations to help recruit and mentor children into STEM. For example, it offers this reason for giving:

"As you know, thousands of kids want to succeed in science but can't. We have heard the facts: STEM education in this country is in crisis. In 2012, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked the student performance of its 34 member countries in reading, science, and math. The U.S. came in 20th in science and 27th in math."

Other than suggesting a crisis in STEM (which is mainly focused on females when reported in the news these days), the writing never names either gender. So I assume the organization is helping both. However, two of the four photos on the letter show students - one has a girl and a boy, the other four or five girls and one guy. Given everything I hear about the lack of females in STEM, I am suspicious that this outnumbering of females to males in the two photos may be a subliminal message about what the organization really desires to do. That is, could it be that SSP is really about finding ways to promote females in STEM? If so, that may be a worthy cause, but it is not explicit if it is.

So I went to the website for SSP and found that the two winners for scholarships last year were females. There are other photos here and there of both genders, but most are females, especially the photo of the Broadcom MASTERS delegates (almost all female).

Understand this, I am not concerned that a gender-specific enterprise exists for recruiting students into STEM, just annoyed that it could be under the guise of co-ed goals. And if co-ed, shouldn't there be a lot more males in the pictures (given the gender ratios I have see for STEM)?