by Devinder Buttar, AWC London
A survey conducted by Microsoft in Europe found that young girls are interested in pursuing STEM subjects at age 11 and then rapidly lose interest in their teens. The innumerable reasons for girls not entering STEM industries range from peer pressure, to a lack of role models and parental support, to a general difficulty in visualization of what STEM careers could look like on a day-to-day basis.
The somber fact is that there are role models and history is replete with pioneering women who should be great role models for us all, had they not fallen prey to the Matilda Effect. In 1993, Margaret Rossiter came up with this name while referencing suffragist Matilda Joslyn Gage’s essay ‟Woman as an Inventor.” Published in 1893, Gage’s work described the bias against acknowledging the achievements of female scientists, instead attributing their work to male colleagues: “Although woman’s scientific education has been grossly neglected, yet some of the most important inventions of the world are due to her.” and “A very slight investigation proves that patents taken out in some man’s name are, in many instances, due to women.” (p. 483)
There are some well-known examples of women scientists who suffered due to the Matilda Effect and many that were deliberately left out of historical records; sadly, we cannot credit them for their work to this day. A few who ARE known are:
- Chien-Shiung Wu was an experimental physicist who joined the Manhattan project. She designed an experiment, which was named after her, and worked with two male colleagues. Both of her male colleagues were awarded a Nobel Prize in 1957 while Dr. Wu was not.
- Dr. Lise Meitner led the research that ultimately discovered nuclear fission. But it was her male colleague, Otto Hahn, who received a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1944.
- British scientist Rosalind Franklin was an important contributor to the discovery of the double helix structure in DNA, the building block of all life, and was sidelined by her male colleagues. It is heartening to know that the ExoMars rover, set to launch next year to find evidence of life on Mars, has been named after her.
- Hedy Lamarr, a Hollywood movie star known for her glamorous roles, was a co-discoverer of frequency-hopping used in WiFi and Bluetooth, and dispels the myth of a STEM pipeline. Her story is inspirational and shows there can be multiple paths to a STEM career.
- Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson were exceptional women whose mathematical skills at NASA were crucial in the moon landings, and they ensured that they opened the doors for all women and have been honored with the highest civilian honor – The Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Even with this rich heritage, girls can often have little notion of what being a scientist entails and popular culture can reinforce false stereotypes. These stereotypes impact particularly negatively on female students and, in particular, female students of color. At some point, girls start to believe they cannot 
pursue STEM subjects and fall within defined gender stereotypes, which is often coupled with a lack of active encouragement from parents. This fuels low self-confidence in their ability to master math and science.
A 2008 study from the National Academy of Engineering asked children if they wanted to be engineers: girls were twice as likely as boys to say no. But when asked if they would like to design a safe water system, save the rainforest, or use DNA to solve crimes, the girls answered yes. This is encouraging and it is, thus, imperative that girls are given support and that they are openly encouraged to pursue STEM classes and careers. Girls need to develop the confidence that a STEM career is something that they can do.
As that confidence is embedded, we will hear more success stories. Case in point: we have come full circle, or helix, as Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna have been awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2020 by discovering one of gene technology’s sharpest tools: the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. This technology has had a revolutionary impact on life sciences and may make the dream of curing inherited diseases come true. Let's hope womenlike this continue to be role models.
The success of every woman should be the inspiration to another. – Serena Williams
SOURCES:
Picture by Devinder Buttar: Dr. Senna Al Bahrani and Diya Dhawan (STEM students)
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2020/press-release/
https://www.stylist.co.uk/people/matilda-effect-what-is-it-erasure-achievements-by-women-susan-sontag-hidden-women/267412
https://www.edutopia.org/article/keeping-girls-stem-3-barriers-3-solutions
