Women in Science Archives

It’s 2019 and We Still Don’t Have Gender Equality. These 8 Groups Are Fighting to Change That

Posted on August 26, 2019 by robbie

Our world is led by men, whether it’s within the government, environmental sector, STEM fields or as the head of the household. NationSwell rounded up eight groups fighting for women’s equality.

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She Should Run

It’s 2019, yet only a third of elected officials at the local, state and federal level are women. Twenty-two states have never had a woman for governor. The nonprofit She Should Run was founded in 2011 by Erin Loos Cutraro after she noticed a lack of support for women interested in running for government roles. To date, the group has empowered tens of thousands of women to consider running for office, and it has the ambitious goal of raising that number to 250,000 by 2030. The organization hosts an incubator program, which is an online set of courses and mentors. It also has an astonishingly high success rate: Eighty percent of women reported feeling more confident about their path to run for office after completing the training.

UN Women

Many organizations have a variety of ways of tackling gender inequity. However, UN Women takes a more focused approach by working directly with governments to tackle the issue. The United Nations formed UN Women in 2010 after leaders realized there wasn’t a centralized way to tackle gender equality and women’s empowerment. The group works with government officials worldwide to create laws and legislation that support equal rights for women and girls.

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PERIOD

In many countries, the conversation around women’s health still isn’t happening … period. Enter PERIOD. The Menstrual Movement, a nonprofit working to provide education and menstrual supplies to women in the U.S. while breaking down taboos that still exist around monthly cycles. The founder, Nadya Okamoto, drew from her own experience as a homeless teen to start the company after finding there was an unmet need for feminine hygiene products in the homeless community. Though its primary focus is low-income women, her group supplies menstrual products to all women who need them, regardless of economic status.

Girls Who Code

In the battle to close the technology gender gap, Girls Who Code is one of its leaders. Through after-school programs and summer training camps, the nonprofit empowers middle, high school and college girls to pursue degrees in computer science. Since its founding in 2012, Girls Who Code has taught basic coding to 185,000 budding computer scientists. And its impact is making a difference. The enrollment rate for Girls Who Code alumnae who choose to major in a computer-related field is 15 times the national average.

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Women’s Environment and Development Organization

The world is entering a climate crisis, and women are going to be some of the populations hardest hit — particularly rural and indigenous women. The Women’s Environment and Development Organization exists to empower women in the fight against climate change through a variety of training sessions and workshops. While specific topics range from fighting climate change to achieving sustainable development, the organization also advocates for gender equality in climate change policies and planning.

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Girls Not Brides

Every year, over 8 million girls marry before they turn 18, robbing many of the opportunity to choose their own path to womanhood while perpetuating a system where women are inferior to men. Girls Not Brides is a worldwide partnership of over 1,200 organizations working to end this harmful tradition. “It’s happening everywhere,” Lakshmi Sundaram, the global coordinator of Girls Not Brides, told Voices of America. “It may look a bit different in different places, but it is a universal issue.” Using data and personal accounts of girls who have experienced it, the organization works with government and communities in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia and Europe to ensure gender equality gets the attention it deserves.

International Planned Parenthood Federation

International Planned Parenthood Federation has volunteers and workers in over 145 countries helping to ensure that everyone is free to make their own decisions about sexual and reproductive healthcare. While they target marginalized populations and locations around the world, 84 percent of services were specifically aimed at helping women and girls. In 2018, the federation delivered 223.2 million sexual and health services in support of reproductive rights.

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National Organization for Women

Started by a grassroots group of feminists in 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) has hundreds of affiliate offices in all 50 states and is comprised of over 500,000 members. The group works with policymakers via conferences and seminars to ensure women receive equal treatment in every aspect of their lives. Reproductive rights and family law are priorities, as well as civil rights and voter empowerment.
This list provides only a glimpse of the hard work happening around the world to level the playing field for women and girls. Click on any of the organizations above and find out how you can get involved.
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Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that 10 groups were included. This list features eight organizations. NationSwell apologizes for the errors.

Dads, Let Your Daughters See You Wash the Dishes

Posted on June 3, 2014 by robbie

Who would’ve guessed that men doing housework could help determine your child’s success?
Alyssa Croft, a Ph.D. candidate in the University of British Columbia’s Department of Psychology, conducted a study whose results will soon be published in the journal Psychological Science. The findings? Girls who see their fathers pitching in on house chores — i.e. washing the dishes — are more likely to aspire to non-traditional careers like scientists or business leaders.
The researchers interviewed parents asking about their beliefs in gender roles and how they divided chores around the house. They also spoke with daughters about gender roles and what careers they could see themselves having in the future.
Croft found that the mothers’ and fathers’ ideas about gender roles did influence their daughters’ beliefs, but that a stronger predictor of what the girls wanted to be as adults was the division of domestic labor at home.
The daughters responded according to the dads’ actions, not their words. Girls with fathers who didn’t help with household chores were more likely to want traditional female careers such as stay-at-home-moms, teachers, nurses, or librarians. Those who saw their fathers helping clean, cook, and watch the kids dreamed of a broader set of jobs that were often higher-paying than those in woman-dominated fields.
“It’s very important for fathers to not only talk the talk about gender roles, but also to walk the walk, because their daughters seem to be watching.” Croft says in a YouTube video explaining the study.
“Despite our best efforts to try to create workplace equality, women remain severely under-represented in leadership and management positions,” Croft told the Association for Psychological Science. “This study is important because it suggests that achieving gender equality at home may be one way to inspire young women to set their sights on careers from which they have traditionally been excluded.”
So moms, let the dads clear the table tonight. Your daughter will thank you for it in the future.
MORE: If You Want Your Daughter To Dream Big, Have Her Play With This Classic Toy

This Program Shares Its Wisdom About Producing Minority Ph.D. Science Students

Posted on May 29, 2014 by robbie

It goes without saying that the folks at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) know a thing or two about supporting and encouraging minority and low-income undergraduate students in continuing their studies and earning science Ph.D.s.
Impressively, over the past two decades, the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC has produced 900 graduates who have gone on to rack up 423 advanced science degrees and 107 medical degrees.
Compare that to Penn State, which was recently named one of the top 40 schools for educating black students who eventually earned advanced science degrees. Despite the recognition, the public university earned that status by producing just four (!) degrees earned by black science students out of about 3,000 STEM students total.
“The data is shocking,” Penn State Chemistry professor Mary Beth Williams told Jeffrey Mervis of Science Insider. “Clearly we have to do a better job.”
So the people behind UMBC’s successful Meyerhoff Scholars Program will mentor faculty and staff at Penn State and the University of North Carolina in an attempt to increase the number of minority students enrolled in science Ph.D. programs. Over five years, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute will dedicate $7.75 million to the effort.
Clearly, UMBC has figured out a formula that keeps minority and low-income students on track to become scientists: Close monitoring of academic progress, a summer program for incoming freshmen, scholarships, research opportunities, and a close cohort of talented students who foster a sense of teamwork with each other. Its current four-year class of Meyerhoff Scholars includes 300 students, 60 percent of which are underrepresented minorities.
Williams said she plans to study these lessons carefully in the program’s implementation at Penn State. “My goal is to clone it as much as possible. It’s been successful for 25 years, so why mess with it? The more you change, the more you’re inviting failure.”
The president of UMBC, Freeman Hrabowski, is proud of how the scholars program has grown from its initial class of 19 African-American male science students in 1989. “What Meyerhoff has done is get us to think about our responsibility to students who say they want a STEM degree,” he told Mervis. “And what helps underrepresented minorities will also help the rest of our students.”
MORE: When People Said Minorities Weren’t Interested in Science, This Guy Proved Them Wrong
Correction: June 5, 2014
A previous version of this post misstated the funding for this program. It is funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, not the UMBC.

This Woman Proves You Don’t Have to Be A Hoodie-Wearing Male to Make It in Today’s Tech World

Posted on May 16, 2014 by robbie

When Angela Benton, CEO of Black Web Media, looked around Silicon Valley, she didn’t see many faces like her own. Statistics support her observation: A survey of 150 Silicon Valley companies by the law firm Fenwick & West found that almost half of them had no female executives.
Benton would look around at the tech companies she was working for and think, “Wow, I am the only African American and the only woman in my department. It just can’t be only me!” she told Myeisha Essex of the Chicago Defender. Seeing the lack of diversity drove this 32-year-old African-American coder and entrepreneur to start Black Web 2.0 and the NewMe Accelerator.
Through Black Web 2.0, a website Benton launched along with Markus Robinson in 2007, she keeps others informed about African-Americans involved in technology and new media companies, with the goal of making people interested in these fields feel less alone. NewMe, an accelerator founded in 2011, helps women and minority entrepreneurs find the mentorship and capital needed to start new businesses. So far, NewMe has helped raise $12.9 million for the start-ups it works with.
“There are great entrepreneurs who don’t necessarily look like the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world,” Benton told Essex. “I don’t think the [tech world] is behind necessarily, I think they are working on patterns. So if everyone who is successful looks like Mark Zuckerberg, they are going to continue to fund and support more things that are like that. What a lot of people think, especially when they think about entrepreneurship, it’s very risky. When you start to talk about investors and capital, people are investing in things that are most likely to succeed. So when they are doing that they are taking notes from other things that have been successful. So it’s really like this self-perpetuating problem, at least until we really break through.”
MORE: These Girls Had Little Chance of Becoming Scientists, Until They Connected With An Innovator Who’s Improving Their Odds

Why Are These Female Scientists Tweeting Photos of Their Manicures?

Posted on February 13, 2014 by robbie

Hope Jahren runs the geobiology lab at the University of Hawaii Manoa that bears her name, The Jahren Lab, where scientists study things like the carbon isotope composition of terrestrial land plants. But just because Jahren is brainy, it doesn’t mean she can’t also enjoy showing off her manicure. Jahren noticed that Seventeen magazine regularly invites its readers to share a photo of their nails on Twitter with the hashtag #ManicureMonday. Jahren thought, why not invite female scientists to contribute to this Twitter hashtag in the hopes of changing girls’ perceptions of what it means to be a scientist?
She tweeted her idea and it took off, attracting such manicure photos as that of Sarah Hörst, working on a post-doctorate in Astrophysics at the University of Colorado, who posed her glossy planet-themed nail next to a tiny model of the Mars Rover. Jahren recently tweeted a photo of herself holding a dish of algal infections, which she described as “the bane of our existence here in @JahrenLab.” Other scientists posted photos of their nails gripping beakers or ferns or measuring fossils or accessorizing with leaf insect nymphs.
Young women checking out the Seventeen hashtag responded by tweeting questions to the scientists, and just may have had their minds changed about what a typical scientist looks like. Jahren told Laura Vanderkam of USA Today, “I like to have pretty nails and cute shoes and makeup and dresses, and I do care about the way I look. But I am also very serious about my science, and these two things are not incompatible.” The scientist manicure photos, which continue to appear, sound like a fun Twitter game that just might get girls to consider the important academic field.
MORE: This Woman is Inspiring the Next Generation of Female Engineers

If We Want More Women in Science, We’re Going to Have to Train Them. Here’s How to Do It

Posted on January 27, 2014 by robbie

Washington University in St. Louis has established itself as a leading scientific institution with such initiatives as the Human Genome Project. Now the school is supporting a new project that could be just as revolutionary: fostering the next generation of female scientists. The university is sponsoring a girls-only charter school focused on science and engineering, projected to open in St. Louis in August 2015, and here’s the revolutionary part—it won’t cost students a dime. A combination of private donors and public funding will finance the school, which hopes to enroll 500 students a year by 2020, although it’s starting with only sixth and seventh graders.
Hawthorn’s founder, Mary Danforth Stillman, told Diane Toroian Keaggy of Washington University:
“The single-sex option is out there for people who can pay, and now we are saying, ‘Let’s provide that option to students with limited financial resources.’ At Hawthorn, every leadership role will be filled by a girl. Every classroom discussion will be led by a girl. Hawthorn girls will be encouraged to reach their highest potential in and out of the classroom, and our faculty and staff will provide the support and encouragement they need to realize that potential.”
How’s that for girl power?

One Simple Change Can Help Fix Gender Disparity in Science

Posted on January 10, 2014 by robbie

In science, bias can ruin an experiment. And it may also be behind the academic field’s gender disparity problem. Women earn roughly half of the graduate degrees in science and engineering in America, but only 20 percent of full professors in the sciences are women. It turns out that academic conferences, which can be key to advancing a scientist’s career, might be playing a big role. Researcher Dr. Arturo Casadevall, a microbiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, found that simply adding a woman to the planning committees for scientific conferences increased the number of women invited to speak by 72 percent compared to how many were invited when the organizers were all men. The presence of a woman on the planning committee also significantly reduced the instances of all-male conference sessions. Casadevall, chair of the planning committee for the American Society of Microbiology, told Stephanie Pappas of LiveScience, “My hope is that when people become sensitive to this, they will design convening teams that have gender diversity up front. If that is the case, we should see a significant increase [in female speakers] this year.”
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