International Women in Science:
Trailblazing Scientists Share Their Journey
I attended this event at the Chicago
Cultural Center on February 11th. There were seven women from,
Botswana, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Mexico, and Poland. They were scientists,
researchers and ministers who all had incredible stories. I mistakenly assumed
their names would be online, and as a result, didn’t record them as they were
long and difficult to spell! It’s a shame because I would love to learn more
about what they did.
Overview:
Mexico:
She was inspired to study because it was the only way she would be able to
travel the world, as her family could never economically support that. She
achieved a PHD, studying all over the world, in Denmark, and 5 years in
Edinburgh. She heads 140 researchers, of which only 15 are women. She says that
in the cities, where people have money, children study science, but very few
children study science in rural areas. In Mexico there is a stigma around
science, “science women are seen as weird women.”
Hong
Kong: She said there were very few girls at university studying science with
her, which made it extra hard, though it was already a stressful environment.
Her interest lies in environmental protection, but due to lack of jobs, works
in infrastructure and city planning with a focus on environmentalism. Hong Kong
is apparently very modern and unique, with special bamboo technology to build
high rises.
Botswana:
She is interested in plants, having patented a special technique to extract chemicals
from plant matter using high temperatures and pressures to mimic natural
solvents. Below is a short documentary on the Moringa tree (also called
“miracle tree”), which is the main plant the Botswanian woman worked with. She
said that sadly, women don’t enroll in science in Botswana because they are
told that science is “not for ladies!” and that much more needs to be done to
encourage women.
Poland:
If I heard her correctly she was the director of higher education and science
ministry, working especially with Poland’s integration with the EU. She has
been the R and D directorate general, working in securing funds. Right now, she
controls 80 people, mainly men over 50, (she is young and beautiful and
obviously a woman which doesn’t match the people who work under her, so I got
the sense that she has to fight to be heard, though she clearly manages it.
She’s very charismatic and assertive.) She is pleased to have noticed that more
and more women have been working in her field. There aren’t nearly enough
programs targeted specifically at women in science in Poland, in her opinion.
But there are two new measures, “Baby at University” which promotes daycare for
student parents, so that they can go to university with a child, as well as a
new type of grant financing scientists, which can be prolonged so that the
scientist can have a child during research, and or take a break.
Indonesia
UNESCO: This woman works in disaster management, awareness, building
infrastructure, helping rural people access and use computers, GPS etc.
Israel:
She directs the science education for one district in Israel, focusing on
education inequality due to gender and socioeconomic differences. She worries
that immigrants are taking STEM jobs due to lack of Israeli interest, and so
she has her school district begin to offer advanced sciences in year 7. This
has made it so that 45% of students in her district are studying advanced
sciences, 15% more than the national average.
The
event was difficult to understand because the women all had such strong
accents, and the cultural differences made it so that each women was used to
trying to get across a different sort of thing, be it their personal value, the
value of their country, the value of women, or the issues immigrants create. Regardless,
they all had incredible experiences to share and were clearly insanely
intelligent. I wish that the woman who moderated it wasn’t so condescending
toward them, interrupting and trying to finish their sentences.
Women
aren’t highly represented in STEM fields in America either. While women hold
close to 50% of jobs, they only hold 25% of STEM jobs. I believe this is mainly
due to stigma around science and math being things only men can succeed at.
Perhaps what is more worrying is that women with STEM degrees are less likely
to pursue STEM careers, usually switching over to education or healthcare,
potentially due to such a low concentration of female peers.
“One of the things that I really strongly
believe in is that we need to have more girls interested in math, science, and
engineering. We’ve got half the population that is way underrepresented in
those fields and that means that we’ve got a whole bunch of talent…not being
encouraged the way they need to.”
-- President Barack
Obama, February 2013
