Mean Girls: The Role Of Women In Science

Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Edwin Hubble. These are just a few of the fifty-one names that appear when you google “famous scientists.” Among those fifty-one names, only three are women. What does this say about women in science? At first glance it would seem to imply that women simply aren’t interested or aren’t skilled at science. But this, of course is not true. A similar search that substitutes “famous” for “female” presents a list of brilliant women who were incredibly important to our understanding of the world, and yet not as well known as their male counterparts. Some of this is due to the way women in science are treated by their peers and society and have had their work and discoveries hidden or claimed by others.

Since women make up roughly half of the US population, it makes sense that they would also be about half of the workforce with a college education. But as reported by the national science foundation, only 29% of the science and engineering workforce is female. A possible cause of this, is the way an interest in math and science is viewed in the US as nerdy or uncool. Most of you are probably familiar with the movie Mean Girls, in which the main character Cady joins the Mathletes, a team of all boys. When she tells her friends, they are shocked and tell her “you can’t join Mathletes. It’s social suicide!” While Mean Girls is purely for entertainment, there is a bit of truth in that line. Young women are held back by the fear that if they truly enjoy and excel at science or math, they will become outcasts, isolated from society. Eileen Pollack tells in her article for New York Times Magazine how she gave up on physics after none of professors encouraged her, leading her to feel that she was inadequate, when in actuality she was quite skilled. She also reflects on discussions she had with more recent female students studying science at Yale. She tells the story of girl who was the only one in her AP physics class who was teased by her male classmates, telling her “girls can’t do

Luckily, there are organizations like the P.E.O. SIsterhood and Girls Who Code working to change that. Although P.E.O. is not specifically focused on getting women in STEM, their main purpose is getting women a college education, and their motto is “Women helping women reach for the stars.” They offer several scholarships and own Cottey College, a women’s college in Nevada, Missouri. P.E.O. is supporting women in any career, including a science based one. Girls Who Code, on the other hand, is focused on getting young girls interested in coding and computer sciences, a field that is growing rapidly. Their mission is a simple one: “close the gender gap in technology.” According the statistics on the Girls Who Code website, “less than one in five computer science graduates are women,” but they also report that 65% of girls who have participated in Girls Who Code programs, are now considering a major in computer