Monday, January 31, 2022

Women in STEM

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1/31/22

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One 1970s experiment asked children to draw a scientist. Fewer than one percent sketched a woman. In more recent iterations of that study, around 40 percent of kids have drawn a female scientist. That shift is a testament to the rising number of opportunities for — and recognition of — women in STEM.

But there’s still a long way to go toward gender equality in science. Women remain vastly outnumbered in fields like engineering and computer science — and in some fields, closing that gender gap may take more than a century. At the grade-school level, girls are underrepresented in STEM activities and are more likely than boys to doubt their STEM potential. To boost the visibility of women in STEM and inspire the next generation of female researchers, celebrate February 11 — International Day of Women and Girls in Science.

Science News for Students has profiled many awesome female scientists over the years, from researchers investigating the health impacts of racial discrimination, to climate change, to the human brain . In fact, in 2016, Science News for Students called for women in STEM to submit short profiles of their lives in science — and got more than 150 responses from around the world. In a series on women in STEM, we published dozens of these profiles, spotlighting number-crunchers who work in math and quantum physics, scientists who study fossils and volcanoes, not to mention astronomy and aurora researchers and many others.

Find these stories in our Science is for Everyone collection. Others there also highlight people from historically underrepresented communities who have been transforming STEM in all its facets.

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