WE NEED MORE STEM HEROINES

Today is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. In many countries, the days of boys doing science experiments in one classroom while girls learn to cook and sew in another are long gone, but inequality in STEM (science, technology, maths, engineering) continues in other ways, as women in science receive less funding, are underrepresented in some of the most cutting edge fields, and have shorter careers.

Women have always been involved in science, but have always been left behind

History has no shortage of pioneering women who broke through social and scientific barriers. Rosalind Franklin contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA. Katherine Johnson’s calculations were essential to NASA launching its first crewed space flights. Alice Augusta Ball developed a treatment for leprosy when she was just 23 years old, and was the first African American and first woman to be a professor at the University of Hawaii.

While these women – and the many who didn’t make it to the history books – show us that women can and should fully participate in science, the data shows us that we still have a long way to go. In the most groundbreaking fields – like artificial intelligence – only 1 in 5 professionals are women, and despite the urgent need for skilled STEM workers as the world enters the fourth industrial revolution, women make up only 28% of engineering graduates, and 40% of computer science graduates. When women do make it into STEM professions, they are still likely to be paid less, published less, and have shorter careers.

Caroline Waterlow, NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson and Ezra Edelman at the 89th Annual Academy Awards, Los Angeles | Featureflash Photo Agency

The problem isn’t just limited to the underrepresentation of women in the professional scientific world; at the user end of STEM (everything from medicines and seatbelts to endlessly long toilet queues) women and girls’ experiences and needs are often missed: side effects more commonly attributed to women aren’t picked up by clinical trials, crash test dummies are designed with male bodies as the archetype, and plumbing regulations designed primarily by men have resulted in public buildings where women have to queue for toilets much longer than their male counterparts. While the latter may seem like a frivolous problem, women are twice as likely to experience adverse reactions to drugs that aren’t designed with them in mind, and more likely to be killed in car accidents as seatbelts that fail to protect them.

STEM Heroines

So how do we solve this glaring inequality? Governments, academic institutions, tech companies, pharmaceutical companies, every industry, must ensure that women and girls are both the beneficiaries and agents of change.

We need more women on the forefront of research, like Professor Dame Sarah Gilbert and Dr Catherine Green, the leading researchers behind the Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid vaccine. We need to fund amazing innovators like Judit Giró Benet, who designed a home testing kit for breast cancer. Like Alice Augusta Ball, Judith was just 23 years old when she decided to take on the challenge of a major disease. We need brilliant women with a love of all things maths and science, like Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon, to be elevated to the public eye so that girls at school know there is a place for them in STEM subjects.

Women in Science are the key to unlocking the Global Goals

Only with full access and equal participation in science can we ensure that women and girls are able to both benefit from and create the change that this field needs to go through in order to be fully inclusive and representative of everyone: science touches all our lives, from the food we eat, to the medicines we take and the transport we use. To achieve all the Global Goals – from eliminating hunger and disease and ensuring everyone has fresh drinking water, to connecting people everywhere to clean electricity while halting the climate crisis – we need the best scientific minds we can find, and we need them now: both men and women.

About the Author

This blog was written by Lydia Paynter, Comms and Campaigns Officer at Project Everyone.