Female role models who work in STEM careers

[Missandra]

I really hope you don’t mind me asking this.

I work in education. I don’t work in a school but deliver work shops and similar to primary schools.

I am developing a program of activities to deliver to primary school girls with the aim of encouraging more girls to consider STEM careers in the future. I know it’s very young for them to think about careers but all the studies I’ve read show that children can have very fixed stereotypical ideas about the sexes by the time they are in Year 6. My hope is to challenge this by showing them how exciting the STEM subjects can be. Girls are so unrepresented in the world of STEM.

I am looking for female role models that I can talk about but they need to be as young as possible because I want them to be relatable. I can think of lots of amazing older woman but despite a lot of searching I’ve hardly come up with any. The only one I can find is a young teenage girl who has joined the NASA cadets, she was feature in a cbc programme a while ago.

I’ve fought so hard to get funding and feel so passionately about it I really want to get this right.

Sorry for all the typos!

This one was very cool - a team of schoolgirls from Afghanistan won a STEM prize for a solar-powered robot for farming:
www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-girls-science-idUSKBN1DU1R2

Anne Marie Emafidon, founder and CEO of STEMETTES, a child prodigy, motivational speaker and still only 30! Her siblings are all geniuses too!

Allie k Miller on Instagram
Young woman leading in AI
Great motivational posts encouraging other women

Brilliant, thank you both. I’ll have a look at them now.

I think your problem might be finding case studies that are both newsworthy and relatable. You might want to think about which is more important to your programme. Depending on where you are based you might have success with recent graduates from your nearest uni. For example, my dd did a physics degree and is now working on a project to build a nuclear power station. That could throw up a lot of discussion points for you. I haven’t asked her but I’m sure she’d be happy to help but she’s not an exceptional role model like your NASA example.

Check out the A mighty girl
Website, often has young women who've invented cool stuff (can you tell I'm not a scientist?! )

I've forgotten her name but how about the one who worked on the photo of the black hole? (Just found her - Katie Bouman. Looks like quite a few other women in the team too!)

TBH though if you're looking for people who are already a bit "famous" in their fields, then most of them will be older...

There's Professor Devi Sridhar too, apparently she's 36 so not mega young but certainly not ancient!

Two women who won Nobel prize for chemistry. One spoke about encouraging girls and importance of women in research teams

Yes, "exceptional" and "early career" is a very, very rare combination.

Possibly a mixed approach - girls like the school team designing a robot, so the pupils can see "girls just like me... or my older sister (since you mention primary children) doing cool stuff."

Students talking about why they wanted to do STEM and what excites them.

Early career scientists talking about their work.

And maybe - to bridge the gap to older women - students / early career scientists talking about the older women who've served as inspirations. (For me as a schoolgirl, it would have been going on a summer course with Jocelyn Bell Burnell as one of the speakers; for the schoolgirls of today, it might be Maggie Aderin Pocock, for example).

I really like Naomi Wu, an outspoken Chinese coder and maker/designer, 26 years old and lesbian. Her image is very openly sexual though, so I don't know how your school would view that. She's challenged a lot stereotypes I hold, as a fairly tomboyish women in STEM myself.

You may want to look into STEM ambassadors: www.stem.org.uk/stem-ambassadors

They will have volunteers who may be able to come and visit the school (or maybe do a Zoom call... bearing in mind COVID-19), and talk about STEM.
Some of the volunteers will be young and female, and working in (or studying) STEM.

You may want to look quite locally. Most construction firms are happy to send their female apprentices into schools for example.

Mona Chalabi is great

www.gemmamilne.co.uk/

Gemma is a scientist and writer. Great communicator and young.

By the way, I think it would be dishonest to sell STEM as being all about people who get Novel Prizes, and end up being world famous, etc.

What's inspiring about STEM is the work, not the people. And the team is usually more important than the individuals. So it makes a lot more sense to invite a random PhD student to come and talk (with passion and insight) about her exciting research topic, than to look for some sort of "exceptional STEM celebrities"

*Nobel, not Novel -_-

@Kaiserin

By the way, I think it would be dishonest to sell STEM as being all about people who get Novel Prizes, and end up being world famous, etc.

What's inspiring about STEM is the work, not the people. And the team is usually more important than the individuals. So it makes a lot more sense to invite a random PhD student to come and talk (with passion and insight) about her exciting research topic, than to look for some sort of "exceptional STEM celebrities"

Agree with this. I'd have been much more inspired by that than random famous people. Or as @seainasive says, young women from local firms.

I agree that you are better finding local women who work in STEM, and imo, not in research but in more applied fields. It makes it more relatable, and more 'people like us' and so acheiveable. After all, I have no more in common with a Nobel laureate than I do Beyoncé, but as X's mum who lives in their town, and just happens to be a physicist who makes the technology that is treating their grans cancer, you can see how you might make life happen.

For female role models, working in STEM, and with disabilities, look at www.lightyearfoundation.org/role-models The Lightyear Foundation]] where one of my colleagues is featured

Have a look here
www.womeninstem.co.uk/#
and here
www.stemwomen.co.uk/blog/2019/09/women-in-stem-percentages-of-women-in-stem-statistics
and
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_science_and_technology_awards_for_women
and
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_organizations_for_women_in_science
and
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Women_in_Technology_International_Hall_of_Fame_inductees

and this project links into the whole not just old white blokes side
www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00812-8

How about Rachel Riley? She's a bit lightweight compared to the women mentioned above, but she is young and relatable.

I agree with looking for normal, not exceptional or newsworthy girls and women. By all means mention the latter when they arise as in the Nobels, but we want girls to know STEM is for everyone, not just the geniuses.

Contacting the local unis is a good idea. They often have outreach programs (my DD is an engineering student who participates in these). Local firms, as already mentioned. A lot of these may be doing things aimed at both sexes but be delighted to do things specifically for girls.

As you're focussed on primary age, maybe there's also scope for partnering with a secondary school? Perhaps some of their girls could present science or tech projects they've done (eg if they've done crest, go4set, Arkwright etc).

There's the Women in Engineering Society (WES) they have a top 50 award every year and last years focused on past and present apprentices, loads of which have an interesting story. Plus the Women In Construction and Engineering awards (WICE) have loads of women on there and specific awards for younger women. Depending on where you're based there are loads of Catapult centres around the country who do outreach and have some amazing women who work there. Not well known but have achieved a lot. (Can you tell I work at a Catapult centre)

Britney Gallivan was an American high school student when she proved that you could fold paper in half more times than previously thought.

www.sciencealert.com/watch-what-happens-when-you-try-to-fold-paper-more-than-7-times-with-a-hydraulic-press

Also, the Polger sisters experiment is a great one if you want to show them that fixed ideas about men/women are wrong.

Their father wanted to prove that with practice anyone could become an expert at something so chose chess being a good amateur himself - all three sisters became grand masters. Judit Polger in particular is still the best female player.