Women in Science: 50 Fearless Pioneers Who Changed the World

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I never used to try to be a role model. And I never thought they actually mattered. I never had a female role model myself. But for some people it clearly does matter. And I suppose I have somewhat reluctantly been thrust into this position, and I feel I have to embrace it because people tell me it matters to them. I am aware from comments made publicly on my blog and privately to me that women really find it valuable that I am prepared to stand up and say some of the things I think, because they don’t feel able to. It’s a way of empowering them.

Are you happy to take up that mantle? It must have its frustrations, for instance interviews like this one which focus on gender rather than science. Women play an increasing role in environmental sciences and conservation biology. In fact, women played a foremost role in the development of these disciplines. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson proved an important impetus to the conservation movement and the later banning of chemical pesticides. Women played an important role in conservation biology including the famous work of Dian Fossey, who published the famous Gorillas in the Mist and Jane Goodall who studied primates in East Africa. Today women make up an increasing proportion of roles in the active conservation sector. A recent survey of those working in the Wildlife Trusts in the U.K., the leading conservation organisation in England, found that there are nearly as many women as men in practical conservation roles. [149] In engineering and related fields [ edit ] Ruby Payne-Scott, was an Australian who was an early leader in the fields of radio astronomy and radiophysics. She was one of the first radio astronomers and the first woman in the field. You wrote to me earlier that you think of these books as for women in science rather than about women in science.Women, in the United States and many European countries, who succeed in science tend to be graduates of single-sex schools. [110] :Chapter 3 [ needs update] Women earn 54% of all bachelor's degrees in the United States and 50% of those are in science. 9% of US physicists are women. [110] :Chapter 2 [ needs update] Overview of situation in 2013 [ edit ] The leaky pipeline, share of women in higher education and research worldwide, 2013. Source: UNESCO Science Report: towards 2030, Figure 3.3, data from UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Susana López Charretón was born in Mexico City, Mexico in 1957. She is a virologist whose area of study focused on the rotavirus. [129] When she initially began studying rotavirus, it had only been discovered four years earlier. [129] Charretón's main job was to study how the virus entered cells and its ways of multiplying. [129] Because of her, and several others, work other scientists were able to learn about more details of the virus. [129] Now, her research focuses on the virus's ability to recognize the cells it infects. [129] Along with her husband, Charretón was awarded the Carlos J. Finlay Prize for Microbiology in 2001. [129] She also received the Loreal-UNESCO prize titled "Woman in Science" in 2012. [129] Charretón has also received several other awards for her research. What may be the cause of this "leaky pipeline" of women in the sciences? [ tone] It is important to look at factors outside of academia that are occurring in women's lives at the same time they are pursuing their continued education and career search. The most outstanding factor that is occurring at this crucial time is family formation. As women are continuing their academic careers, they are also stepping into their new role as a wife and mother. These traditionally require at large time commitment and presence outside work. These new commitments do not fare well for the person looking to attain tenure. That is why women entering the family formation period of their life are 35% less likely to pursue tenure positions after receiving their PhD's than their male counterparts. [137]

Astronomer Jill Tarter is best known for her work on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Tarter was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in 2004. [126] She is the former director of SETI. [127] Dorotea Bucca was another distinguished Italian physician. She held a chair of philosophy and medicine at the University of Bologna for over forty years from 1390. [28] [29] [ self-published source?] [30] [31] Other Italian women whose contributions in medicine have been recorded include Abella, Jacobina Félicie, Alessandra Giliani, Rebecca de Guarna, Margarita, Mercuriade (14th century), Constance Calenda, Calrice di Durisio (15th century), Constanza, Maria Incarnata and Thomasia de Mattio. [29] [32] In the US, women with science or engineering doctoral degrees were predominantly employed in the education sector in 2001, with substantially fewer employed in business or industry than men. [139] According to salary figures reported in 1991, women earn anywhere between 83.6 percent to 87.5 percent that of a man's salary. [ needs update] An even greater disparity between men and women is the ongoing trend that women scientists with more experience are not as well-compensated as their male counterparts. The salary of a male engineer continues to experience growth as he gains experience whereas the female engineer sees her salary reach a plateau. [140] Although women excelled in many scientific areas during the eighteenth century, they were discouraged from learning about plant reproduction. Carl Linnaeus' system of plant classification based on sexual characteristics drew attention to botanical licentiousness, and people feared that women would learn immoral lessons from nature's example. Women were often depicted as both innately emotional and incapable of objective reasoning, or as natural mothers reproducing a natural, moral society. [43] Maria Nieves Garcia-Casal, the first scientist and nutritionist woman from Latin America to lead the Latin America Society of Nutrition.

Gertrude B. Elion was an American biochemist and pharmacologist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1988 for her work on the differences in biochemistry between normal human cells and pathogens. Isobel Bennett, was one of the first women to go to Macquarie Island with the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions ( ANARE). She is one of Australia's best known marine biologists.