Visiting my parents and I'm pointed towards a persistent mud wasp. I thought I was being shown a cool new critter (my preferred love language) but actually they just want to know where it's nesting. The answer: in the brickwork of their back door. Hello new friend!
Sure, women are growing in representation among undergrads and grad students. But then there's this. Fig by Rissler et al 2020.
The research by social scientists has shown that this isn't a passive filter. It's caused by harassment, discrimination, and overt bias.
academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...
π₯new paperπ₯ the syllabuses we use to teach our young scientists are misleading and fail to acknowledge the contributions of #WomenInSTEM. 145 unique scientists across all states and territories and only 1 of them a woman? Disgraceful and inaccurat journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
This situation is crap, and it needs fixing. So here are 5 awesome women (now and historical) to learn about:
@eco-aly.bsky.social
@drspacejunk.bsky.social
@nomadpenguin.bsky.social
Barbara McClintock
Lise Meitner
And if you happen to be here in SA, might be worth contacting your local MP.
Hey South Australia, did you know your high school students are being taught the contributions of 66 different scientists, and only one of them is a woman? Why are we deliberately misleading our young scientists about diversity in STEM?
Out of the 145 scientists mentioned in the high school curricula we studied, only 1 female scientist was named.
Rosalind Franklin.
This is a problem, and we are working with education depts. To fix this
Learn about our mission at includeher.au
We studied high school STEM curricula to explore the representation of male & female scientists in these courses.
We also checked if a name was mentioned because it's about the *person* (scientist) or if it's a law/idea *named after* the person (concept).
The results vary dramatically!