The post that follows (and its sequel) is probably the one that is the closest to my heart and has been the longest time coming. Originally to be titled 'Quantum Leaps', it has developed and grown thanks to the Outreach work I've been lucky enough to take part in this year.
In case you're unfamiliar with the term, Outreach involves engaging schools, colleges and other local groups with your work or, in my case, research, in the hope that you will all go away having learnt something. In my field I'm lucky enough to get to play with cryogens and superconductors, and freezing things with liquid nitrogen is a very effective way to get people interested in science and engineering (by showing them that it's really cool *science pun*).
For my workshop in the 2013 edition of Dragonfly Day I started the session by looking at some of my female engineering heroes - some of whom have already been mentioned on this blog. After a conversation spawned from a faculty equality and diversity committee meeting, however, it became clear that encouraging girls and young women to reach their potential in STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects was only one of the tasks that lay ahead on the road to closing the appalling gender gap that still exists in the UK in these areas. One of the biggest discouraging factors for many people hoping to enter STEM areas (men as well as women) is the subtle, residual culture of misogyny that can (though does not always) still haunt these subjects and occupations. Educating the boys from a young age in the great achievements of STEM women, therefore, is just as important.
And so I've started taking my WISE (Women into Science and Engineering) slides to all the schools I visit and prefacing all my talks with this message:
At no point in history have there not been great female scientists and engineers to equal - and often better - the work of their male peers. We have always been there, often behind some of the biggest breakthroughs to shape our society. Unfortunately, not a lot of people know that.
Sometimes, the scientists or engineers in question have been modest and unassuming or their work has been overshadowed by similar advances in the same field; and so their names have passed into obscurity naturally, as is sometimes the case in all fields and for all people, male or female. Often, however, these incredible people have been direct victims of a prejudiced society: most have had to fight incredibly hard be able to do their work in the first place, as well as to have it even read - let alone accepted - by their contemporaries, and after all that, more often than not the credit has intentionally gone to a male colleague, sometimes one without a fraction of the their skill or knowledge.
This is a problem that is slow to change. A recent careers special in the New Scientist magazine shows that women are still likely to earn an average of £2k/year less than men in all STEM occupations other than 'Subjects allied to medicine' and 'Education'. (Page 8.)
It's time for this to stop. It is widely acknowledged ([1] [2] [3] for example) that the STEM gender gap is detrimental not only to women but to society as a whole. Imagine all the great inventions, technological developments, solutions to everyday problems that we are denying ourselves by discouraging 50 % of our potential scientists and engineers from ever entering their fields. How far would we have advanced already if we hadn't been suffering from this social disease for so long? (This of course also applies to the the equally important issues of economic and racial segregation that still shockingly exist in these areas too.)
But enough from me - the point of this blog is not to rant but to celebrate as many great achievements as possible, to publicise the previously unpublicised and give voice to some of the many unsung heroes of our society.
So let us now embrace the positive, rather than the negative, of women in the STEM world. Read on with the optimism that we are on the road to change [4] rather than the pessimism that this post may have accidentally engendered (no pun intended in this case).
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to all of the people I'm about to mention, not only for your fantastic contributions to the world - without most of which I wouldn't be sitting here now, with a laptop, sharing this information wirelessly over the internet - but also for the message you personify:
No matter what anyone says, or what society suggests - you can change the world too.
[1] http://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/
[2] http://www.thenuclei.com/why-women-stem/
[3] http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/02/12/saving-our-science-anissa-ramirez/
[4] http://oro.open.ac.uk/29517/1/ukrc_statistics_guide_2010.pdf
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