Women, though they have been hindered, were instrumental in creating some of the greatest breakthroughs in the STEM world.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of Marie Curie, the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, and the first person to win a second Nobel Prize. Unsurprisingly, she was an exception to the norm of women being undermined.
Rosalind Franklin is essential to modern-day science. While working at King’s College, she researched and discovered the ‘wet’ forms of DNA. However, due to her personal conflicts with colleague Maurice Wilkins, her findings were disclosed without her permission to James Watson. James Watson and Francis Crick had been working on a model of their own. With the information from what Franklin had found, they created their famous model of DNA. This won them the Nobel Prize in 1962. The only reason that Franklin didn’t receive credit for her findings was because of gender discrimination. Sadly, this is a very clear example of the sexism that women faced in the STEM world, and continue to face today, in many different ways.
Nevertheless, many women of color have and continue to make their mark on the STEM world. Katherine Johnson, was the one of the first African American women in NASA. Her breakthroughs have led the US to great lengths in terms of space exploration. Tu Youyou is a pharmaceutical chemist from China, her use of ancient Chinese medicine techniques have saved millions infected with malaria.
Shakuntala Devi was an Indian Mathematician otherwise known as ‘the human calculator.’ In 1980, she multiplied two 13-digit numbers correctly in just 28 seconds.
Maryam Mirzakhani is an Iranian woman also with immense talent in mathematics. In 2014, became the first woman to win the Fields Medal, the most prestigious award in the mathematical world.
These are just a few women that have made their mark on the STEM world, and there are so many more. But have their backgrounds influenced their success?
East vs West, Where is STEM the Best?
In the West, the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century led to the rise of academic pursuit in women through entering convents. The earliest intellectuals were nuns, who studied a variety of subjects including geometry, astronomy, arithmetic, etc. This pursuit widened when women of wealthy and noble backgrounds were allowed to pursue higher education in subjects ranging from literature to physics.
The 19th and 20th centuries brought numerous campaigns for equal educational opportunities. And with the World Wars, shortages in medical professionals provided gateway opportunities for women to pursue careers in those fields. Women began attending colleges and proved equal to their male counterparts.
So this is the story of the Western part of the world, but what about the other side?
Well, many people believe that the East is a place of extreme patriarchy and gender discrimination. But countries such as Jordan, Qatar, and the UAE are proving these stereotypes wrong. In these countries, women on average feel more comfortable with math and science than men. A study conducted by UNESCO claims that “34-57 percent of STEM graduates in Arab countries are women – a figure much higher than that seen in universities across the US or Europe”.
Rana Dajani is a molecular biologist and author of the book Five Scarves, in which she addresses the stereotypes of Arab women. She says that in Western countries, it’s harder to get girls to go into STEM in the first place. Unlike the West, Eastern countries encourage the pursuit of a STEM career.
I guess the answer to this question is, by encouraging pursuit of STEM careers and acknowledging the rewards that come out of them, the involvement of women can be increased around the world. But what about other lifestyle issues?
COVID-19 Setbacks
Women in science, who have already had the struggle of making their mark on a male-dominated field, are facing problems that can damage many of their career goals. A recent article in the Scientific American highlights that as childcare services become scarce due to health precautions, household responsibilities are standing in the way of getting work published. Even before COVID-19, women researchers were publishing significantly less than their male counterparts.
According to a study conducted by researchers at Northeastern University, over the past 60 years, only 27% of STEM research publications were written by women. While placing childcare and household duties as the primary cause of this statistic seem logical, it may not be the entire explanation. Northeastern professor Albert-László Barabási and his colleagues conclude that women may be publishing less due to their shorter career span.
A related study that analyzed 1.5 million science publications internationally between 1955 and 2010 found that women were actually equally as productive as men and on average spent “9.3 years publishing papers, whereas men spend 11 years publishing”. Barabási explains that this discovery unlocks the root “of the increasing gender inequality,” showing how women, despite working as hard, are given fewer opportunities as men due to uncontrollable circumstances.
Besides the unfairness behind working as hard as their peers and not receiving the same amount of credit, the lack of female representation in research could pose health problems in the future. There is a clear correlation between representation and research that targets topics that are relevant to women.
Looking Forward…
As women interested in science, bracing ourselves for a future of being seen as lesser than our peers is an apprehension that shouldn’t exist. Only if current generations respond to problems in research and STEM will growth occur within these fields. As time progresses improvements are being made, no longer are women labelled as “witches” like they had been during the 5th century Roman Empire, no longer are women neglected recognition like Rosalind Franklin had been, but the STEM field is far from perfect.
Despite the setbacks women face in research, over time there has been a marked increase in women in STEM. For example between 2009 and 2016, the number of women graduating with STEM degrees rose by about 60,000 —a 43% increase—from 140,000 to 200,000. Currently, there are nearly 3 times more males than females working in STEM fields, but as society begins to ameliorate stigma and encourage more women to pursue STEM careers, we should see a more equal work field in the future.