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Women in Science, via the Smithsonian. |
“We must believe that we are gifted for something.” Marie
Curie
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Image of a real Rosie the Riveter from the Women's History Month site. |
It’s tempting to cast the role of women in STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Math) as one of struggles and battles because of
their sex, rather than as one of contributions because of their minds. But for Women’s
History Month and this Diversity in
Science Carnival #14, our focus is the role of women in the enterprise
of STEM. There’s more to a woman than her sex and her struggles in
science--there is, after all, the enormous body of work women have contributed
to science.
Our history is ongoing, but we can start with a look back.
Thanks to the efforts of the Smithsonian Institution Archives, we can put
faces to the names of some of the female STEMmers of history. In a
presentation of photographs in an 8 by 9 space, we can see the images of 72
women who contributed to the enterprise of STEM, many of them involved with the
Smithsonian in some capacity. As their clothes and the dates on the photos tell
us, these women were doing their work in a time when most women didn’t even
wear pants.
Some are Big Names--you’ve probably heard of Marie
Curie. But others are like many of us, women working in the trenches of
science, contributing to the enterprise of STEM in ways big and small. Women
like Arlene
Frances Fung, whose bio tells us she was born in Trinidad, went to
medical school in Ireland, and by 1968 was engaged in chromosome research at a
cancer institute in Philadelphia. From Trinidad to cancer research, her story
is one of the millions we could tell about women’s historical contributions to
science, if only we could find them all. But here there are 72, and we
encourage you to click on each image, look at their direct gazes, ponder how
their interest in science and knowledge trumped the heavy pressures of social
mores, and discover the contributions these 72 women made, each on her own “little two inches
wide of ivory.”
For more on historical and current women in science, you can
also see Double X Science’s “Notable
Women in Science” series, curated by Adrienne Roehrich.
And then there are the women STEMmers of today, who likely
are, according to blogger Emma Leedham writing at her blog Pipettes and
Paintbrushes, still
underpaid. Leedham also mulls
here what constitutes a role model for women--does it require being
both a woman and a scientist, or one or the other?
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Laurel L. James |
Laurel L. James, writing at the University of Washington
blog for the school’s SACNAS student chapter, answers with her
post, “To
identify my role as a woman in science: I must first honor my mother, my family
and my past.” Her mother was the first “Miss Indian America,” and
Laurel is a self-described non-traditional student at the school, where she is
a graduate student in forest resources. She traces her journey to science, one
that involved role models who were not scientists but who, as she writes, showed
her “how to hang onto the things that are important with the expectation of
getting something in return all the while, persevering and knowing who you are;
while walking with grace and dignity.” I’d hazard that these words describe
many a woman who has moved against the currents of her society to contribute
something to the sciences.
A great site, Steminist.com, which features the “voices of
women in science, tech, engineering, and math,” runs a series of interviews
with modern-day STEMmers, including Double X Science’s own Jeanne
Garbarino, and Naadiya
Moosajee, an engineer and cofounder of South African Women in
Engineering. You can follow Naadiya on Twitter here. Steminist
is also running their version of March Madness, except that in honor of Women’s
History Month, we can choose “Which
historical women in STEM rock (our) world.” The 64 historical
STEMinists in the tourney are listed
here and include Emily Warren Robling (left), who took over completion of the Brooklyn Bridge when her husband's health prevented his doing so; she is known as the first woman field engineer. Double X Science also has a series about today’s women in
science, Double Xpression, which you can find
here.
Today, you can find a woman--or many women--in STEM just
about anywhere you look, whether it is as a government scientist at NOAA like Melanie
Harrison, PhD, or at NASA. It hasn’t always been that way, and
it can still be
better. But women have always been a presence in STEM. In the 18th
and 19th centuries, astronomer Caroline Herschel
labored away through the dark hours of just about every night of her adult
life, tracking the night sky. Today, women continue these labors, and STEM
wouldn’t be what it is today without women like Herschel willing to stay up all
night with the skies or spend days on end in the field or lean over a microscope
for hours just to add a tiny bit more to what we know about our world and our
universe.
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Caroline Herschel |
For women in science, we’re there--at night, in the lab, in
the field--because we love science. But as the non-science role models seem to
tell us, we stick to it--and can stick with it--because we had role models in
and out of science who showed us that regardless of our goals, our attitudes
and willingness to move forward in spite of obstacles are really what drive us
to success in STEM careers. Among the links I received for this carnival was
one to Science Club for Girls, which is sponsoring a “Letter to My Young Self”
roundup for Women’s History Month. The letters I’ve read invariably have that “stick
with it” message, but one stood out for me, and I close with a quote from it.
It’s a letter by Chitra Thakur-Mahadik, who earned her PhD
in biochemistry and hemoglobinopathy from the University of Mumbai and served
as staff scientist a Mumbai children’s hospital for 25 years. She wrote to her
younger, “partially sighted” self that, “The future is ahead and it is not bad!”
She goes on to say, “Be fearless but be compassionate to yourself and others… be
brave, keep your eyes and ears open and face the world happily. What if there
are limitations? Work through them with awareness. --Yours, Chitra”
Links and resources
for women in STEM, courtesy of D.N.
Lee
AWIS: http://www.awis.org/
Women of Color STEM Conference: http://intouch.ccgmag.com/ page/woc_conference
Under the Microscope: http://www.underthemicroscope. com/
AAUW STEM: http://www.aauw.org/connect/ ngcp/index.cfm
STEMinist: http://www.steminist.com/
Women of Color STEM Conference: http://intouch.ccgmag.com/
Under the Microscope: http://www.underthemicroscope.
AAUW STEM: http://www.aauw.org/connect/
STEMinist: http://www.steminist.com/
Stay tuned for the April
Diversity in Science Carnival #15: Confronting the Imposter Syndrome. This
topic promises to resonate for many groups in science. I’m pretty sure we’ve
all felt at least of twinge of imposter syndrome at
some point in our education and careers. Your editor for this carnival will be the
inimitable Scicurious, who blogs at Scientific
American and Scientopia.
UPDATE: Carnival #15 is now available! Go read about imposter syndrome, why it happens, who has it, and what you can do about it.
UPDATE: Carnival #15 is now available! Go read about imposter syndrome, why it happens, who has it, and what you can do about it.
By Emily Willingham, DXS managing editor