FEMSCI stands for FEMales in SCIence — we’ll get to this in a little later, but first lets talk about a little history.
History is full of trailblazers, particularly in the Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) fields. Galileo Galilei, Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, Julius Robert Oppenheimer, Neil Armstrong, John Nash, Steven Hawking. Most people on planet earth would likely know who some or all of these people are, or, at the very least be familiar in hearing some of the names. Notice anything? These are all men. Great men yes, who have contributed amazing things to their respective fields and to the benefit of humanity. But was our history in STEM molded from only men? No, far from it.
Hypatia (350–414), a universal genius of ancient Alexandria was a philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician, and spent her life educating and constructing astrological inventions. She edited the Almagest Book III, an ancient Greek-language mathematical and astronomical text on the stars and planetary, originally written by Claudius Ptolemy (100–170). A geocentric model of the Universe, it was one of the most influential scientific texts of all time, and remained in teaching for more than 1200 years.
Emilie du Châtelet (1706–1749), a French natural philosopher and mathematician achieved the translation and commentary of Sir Isaac Newton’s 1687 book Principia containing basic laws of physics. Successfully spreading Newtons ground breaking ideas into continental Europe, when the book itself was viewed as controversial at this time in parts such as France. It is still considered the standard French translation version today. Emilie also wrote significant philosophical essays, letters and books discussed in the most important scholarly journals of the era throughout Europe (Fara 2016).
Eunice Newton Foote (1819–1888), was an American scientist, inventor, and women’s rights campaigner. She was the first scientist known to have experimented on the warming effect of sunlight on different gases, and went on to theorize that changing the proportion of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would change its temperature, in her 1856 paper Circumstances affecting the heat of the sun’s rays. at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in 1856. Foote was the first to make the connection between carbon dioxide and climate change and her work had gone unrecognized until it was stubbled upon again in 2010.
Maria Mitchell (1818–1889) was an American astronomer, librarian, naturalist, and educator. She discovered a comet in 1847 that was later known as “Miss Mitchell’s Comet” in her honor. She won a gold medal prize for her discovery, which was presented to her by King Christian VIII of Denmark in 1848. Mitchell was the first internationally known woman to work as both a professional astronomer and a professor of astronomy after accepting a position at Vassar College in 1865. She was also the first woman elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1825–1921) published several works in the fields of theology, science and philosophy. Most notably she published The Sexes Throughout Nature challenging Charles Darwin’s view of men having evolved superior to women in his book The Descent of Man. Antoinette noted Darwin did not take into account the unique characteristics of females throughout the species and further examined these. She concluded male and female as true equivalents, maintaining that males and females in all species had different strengths, but ultimately, their strengths existed in equilibrium. In early correspondence between Blackwell and Darwin, Darwin incorrectly addressed Blackwell as Sir (Rubin 2017).
Mária Telkes (1900–1995), a Hungarian-American biophysicist, scientist and a prolific inventor of practical solar energy technologies. Telkes is considered one of the founders of solar thermal storage systems, earning her the nickname “the Sun Queen”.
Hedy Lamarr (1914–2000) was an Austrian-American actress appearing in 30 films over a 28 year career, and co-invented an early version of frequency-hopping spread spectrum communication. The US Navy adopted the invention in 1957, and variations are incorporated into Bluetooth and Wifi technology. Recognition of the value of their work resulted in being inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
Valentina Tereshkova (1937 — current) was the first woman in space in 1963. 3 whole years before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, and 21 years before America sent Astronaut Sally K. Ride, their first woman into space. Tereshkova has orbited the Earth 48 times, spent almost three days in space, and remains the only woman to have been on a solo space mission. She currently serves in the Russian Lower House of Parliament.
There’s hundreds, thousands, millions more examples of women leaders in STEM fields. History is full of these amazing women who’ve accomplished amazing things. Yet up until researching this topic of women in STEM for a university project, I personally had no idea who these people were and how their contributions have contributed to the world as we know it today. And perhaps many other people, like me with similar education and life experience, wouldn’t recognize them either.
So does such under exposure effect women in STEM now? Unfortunately Yes.
The Issue
Bergman (2020) notes that Darwin’s views on women had a significant influence on the negative views of women held by society, especially those of the more educated members, during the last century and, to some extent, even still today. In 2019 British cognitive researcher Professor Gina Rippon observed the widespread idea of female inferiority existing today “goes all the way back to Charles Darwin, who said that women are inferior because they have inferior brains” (Kluger 2019, 68). Perhaps a remnant of this seen in schools is ‘girls are often expected to have interests that are fundamentally different from those of boys, and that this can create a gender imbalance in work like computer science’ (Caspani 2015). Also a peculiar perhaps related social behavior has manifested into the modern era classrooms, a girls cultural stigma of being perceived as ‘nerdy’ or ‘smart’, and so not cool or popular, leading to be less inclined to peruse STEM subjects (Caspani 2015). Generally many issues for women in STEM stem from deeply culture attitudes (Barrow-Green 2018).
It’s no wonder then we find in modern day world STEM industries are struggling to attract and keep women in roles. There are core Cultural, Educational, Social issues need to be addressed here. But is our future bound for the one gender. No. History proves there is not reason for it.
We need to work to disband any remaining social stigma of women in STEM
We need to foster a culture of encouragement, excellence and celebration of women in STEM.
What we need is beacons for education, and beacons for change.
FEMSCI
FEMSCI stands for FEMales in SCIence. The idea for this small university assignment, named FEMSCI, was to create an auction-information-events hybrid website as a central online space to help connect, promote women in STEM. The idea was to create a central online location for parents, teachers and professionals for engaging material for improving women in STEM.
Education : Educate on the history, call out the suppression of women in the STEM fields, from times of the past, so we can understand the present and plan new ways for our future.
We are inspired by people we admire, and more importantly can relate to, even at the most basic level of gender. Such positivity creates a loop fueling more of a particular gender to enter STEM.
Final Thoughts
Untold stories are unlearned lessons. It is important when to talk about great scientific breakthroughs both genders are accurately and consistently conveyed. When a parent thinks of things like birthday presents to help learn new things, to try to ignore gender biases and be open and facilitating to a wider variety of possibility to spark a child's interest. When a teacher looks out to their classroom as senses different students being uncomfortable with STEM topics because of their culture or gender, try to build an open and accepting classroom mindset. Women, men, everyone, must become FEMSCI conscious.
As people like Elon Musk is inspiring entire nations into the next space race, so to could the trail blazing women in STEM, of our time and time past, to inspire entire gender to also reach for their stars.
We owe this recognition to our sisters, mothers, aunts and grandmothers. We owe the next generation, our daughters, our nieces, open and equal opportunity, as they are the future. Our future should not be men there, women here. It is only us, so lets us make this change together.
Resources
Fara, P. (2016). The bold, brilliant woman who championed Newton’s physics. New Scientist. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23030751-000-emilie-du-chatelet-the-woman-who-popularised-newtonian-physics/
Barrow-Green, J. (2018). Women in mathematics: The history behind the gender gap?. OpenLearn. https://www.open.edu/openlearn/science-maths-technology/mathematics-statistics/women-mathematics-the-history-behind-the-gender-gap
Caspani, M. (2015). U.S. tech industry needs women, must interest them at schoolomen https://www.reuters.com/article/technology-women-gendergap/u-s-tech-industry-needs-women-must-interest-them-at-school-idINKBN0NQ21720150506
Weston, S. (2018). Why aren’t more women in computer science?. CIO. https://www.cio.com/article/3278274/why-aren-t-more-women-in-computer-science.html
Rubin, R. (2017). The Woman Who Challenged Darwin’s Sexism. Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/woman-who-tried-take-down-darwin-180967146/
Bergman, J. (2020). Darwin’s Views of Women Had a Considerable Effect on Society. Answers In Genesis https://answersingenesis.org/charles-darwin/darwins-view-of-women/