Read about: Jean Golding, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Athene Donald, Sophie Scott, Helen Czerski, Helen Sharman, Angela Attwood, Barbara Sahakian, Dorothy Hodgkin, Elizabeth Blackwell.
Read about Sheryl Sandberg (COO at Facebook), Joan Clarke (Bletchley Park code breaker), Radia Perlman (inventor of the spanning-tree-protocol), Hedy Lamarr (Hollywood actress and inventor of radio frequency-hopping), Zoe Quinn (developer of Depression Quest), Mitchell Baker (executive chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation), Lila Tretikov (executive director of Wikipedia Foundation).
Quote:
“Lovelace may have been a computing pioneer, but the percentage of women studying computer science has plummeted since 1984 due to a lack of sense of belonging. This feeling, even more acute for women who veer off the beaten track into more esoteric fields, can be countered by education and role models – something we desperately need more of if we are to capitalise on the Ada Lovelaces of today.”
Alexandra Petri takes the liberty of “translating some famous sentences into the phrases a woman would have to use to say them during a meeting not to be perceived as angry, threatening or (gasp!) bitchy.”
Male engineering student becomes online sensation after writing a letter to his female classmates about why they aren’t equal to men (because they’ve had to work HARDER while dealing with sexism)
• Jared Mauldin, a 34-year-old senior at Eastern Washington University, wrote an inspiring letter to his female peers in the school’s newspaper
• The Montana native praised the women in his major for working tirelessly just to be taken seriously in the STEM field
• His piece has been shared thousands of times on social media since it was published on October 5
• Jared is autistic and suffers from Lupus and avascular necrosis of both hips
By EMILY JAMES FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:18, 12 October 2015 | UPDATED: 18:34, 12 October 2015
Jared Mauldin’s letter:
Quote: “Speaking with the Today show about his piece, Jared said: ‘Really, when you look at this letter, I said nothing new. I didn’t say anything that another feminist writer hasn’t said before. The distinguishing factor happens to be that I am a man. That is a problem.'”
Source: www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/what-really-keeps-women-out-of-tech.html
Quotes:
“The percentage of women studying computer science actually has fallen since the 1980s. Dr. Cheryan theorizes that this decline might be partly attributable to the rise of pop-culture portrayals of scientists …”
“… research shows that young men tend not to major in English for the same reasons women don’t pick computer science: They compare their notions of who they are to their stereotypes of English majors and decide they won’t fit in.”
“… new research demonstrates, young women today still are avoiding technical disciplines because, like me, they are afraid they won’t fit in.”
“… strategies such as creating separate introductory classes for students with no programming experience and renaming courses (“Introduction to programming in Java” became “Creative approaches to problem solving in science and engineering using Python”) led to an increase in the percentage of computer science majors who are female …”
“Computer scientists and engineers are going to be designing the future that everyone inhabits. We need women and minorities to enjoy an ambient sense of belonging in those professions if the future they create is going to be one in which all of us feel at home.”
Researchers find reason to balance the executive team …
Source: www.theguardian.com/film/2015/sep/27/sexism-film-industry-stories
Quotes:
“The director is considered the general, and just like in the military, they still can’t picture anyone not born with the Y chromosome with that title. The industry still insists on telling most stories from a male point of view and even if women write male-driven fare, they’re assumed to be less competent at it.”
“The figures support the idea that men are perceived mainly as the directors. This conditioning affects women as much as men, and therefore some women looking to hire directors may think about the men out there before women.”
“I have experienced sexism at work. Most of the time it’s a refusal to do what you’ve asked, or to doubt the legitimacy of the instruction.”
“Until recently, women represented less than 1% of all cinematographers. Now there are many more, but progress has been slow and double standards persist. I’ve heard, for example, that if a male director is being picky, people say he has a strong vision. With a woman, people will say she is being difficult. It’s also common to assume that kindness is a sign of weakness. The tendency is to idolise directors who are arrogant and dismissive in the way they wield their power. … Women directors have traditionally found more opportunities in independent cinema, where the focus is more on making good films than box office.”
Source of source: http://www.loreal.com/media/press-releases/2015/sep/the-loreal-foundation-unveils-the-results-of-its-exclusive-international-study
Quote:
“Based on the responses recorded in the study, it would seem that overall 67% of Europeans think that women do not possess the required skill set in order to achieve high-level scientific positions (the figure is 64% specifically for the UK). Meanwhile, in China an absolutely staggering 93% believe that women aren’t cut out to be scientists.”
“When asked what impeded women’s rise to the top, both men and women said cultural factors were important. However, 45% of women believed that men blocked women’s progression, and 44% of them (compared with 37% of men) said there was a problem in the support management provided for women.”
“Despite all the negative connotations around women in science, those questioned actually thought there were more of us female scientists out there than there really are. They estimated that women hold 28% of the highest academic functions within scientific fields across the European Union. The reality? There are around 11% women at the top.”
“Any female scientist may or may not be impeded by men and management (as the answers suggest), but she will definitely be surrounded by a crowd of people who do not believe she is likely to succeed. If the people she talks to in the cinema queue, in the bar or the student union are prone to say ‘really?’ when she admits to loving science and aiming high, the drip-drip-drip of negativity is liable to sap self-confidence and aspiration.”
UNESCO initiatives for supporting women scientists (2015).
Source: www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/priority-areas/gender-and-science