Welcome to the New Year!

Happy New Year! As my regular followers may have noticed, I fell off the map more than once with my posts, so this year I will be starting off with several posts about women in science who motivate me!

First, I would like to ask and answer the question, “why do we need woman in science?” Well, first of all, diversity is a good thing. Women are likely to see a problem differently than men and therefore will provide a new perspective. This is important. Some other reasons include the inequality that woman feel in the workplace, the pay gap that reflects this, and the attitudes and expectations for women and “care work” persist today. However, not all women are happy with this type of work. Not all women want a family, and not all women fit the mold that was created so long ago for what women “should do.”

That being said, there are still some men who do not think that women have a place in science. There was the famous Tim Hunt case where he said women cause problems for men in labs. This is quite certainly untrue. Sure, women and men may be attracted to each other. But it is not a requirement that men and women get attracted to each other. I truly believe the older you get as a single individual, the more likely you are to meet someone you are attracted to in your job, or at a work-related function. I believe this for two reasons: 1) you do less outside of work, and 2) as you develop your career, you start to care about it more. Thus, you find common ground with somebody easier when work is the medium. Okay, so it can happen, but it doesn’t have to happen, and it doesn’t ruin anything. One might argue that Tim Hunt is alone in his thinking, but I believe that would be incorrect. People are quite rarely alone in their thoughts.

So this month I will be posting about the following women who have shaped science. These are women I have known about for a while now, some my whole life and some I only learned about in graduate school. Each of them has a story that inspired me, and I hope to share those stories here with you. And, as a special treat, I will be ending the month with a post about my friends opinions and feelings being women in science. Most of these people have gone to graduate school and each has a different perspective on what it means to be a woman in science. Most importantly, their support during a period of my life whether continued today or not, has been very meaningful. Here’s the list of famous women in alphabetical order by last name:
1) Marie Curie
2) Gertrude B. Elion
3) Rosalind Franklin
4) Shirley Jackson
5) Henrietta Lacks
6) Sally Ride