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Okay, so, where is the female Bill Nye?
Let's talk about why it's hard to be a woman in science, why it's hard to be a science communicator, and why it's ESPECIALLY challenging to mix them both. I'm not going to cover every aspect since it's a big topic, so chime in please!
Let's talk about why it's hard to be a woman in science, why it's hard to be a science communicator, and why it's ESPECIALLY challenging to mix them both. I'm not going to cover every aspect since it's a big topic, so chime in please!
When I was a sciency girl, I learned the cost of speaking out. In 7th grade I noticed that only the boys asked questions in class. "Psst," I said to a friend. "Why don't the girls ask questions?" She stared at me like it was obvious. "If we did, the boys wouldn't like us!"
We live in a world where we see and hear from fewer women. Women are vastly underrepresented in background scenes in films, and said 27% of the words in 2016’s biggest movies (Amber Thomas freecodecamp.org/news/women-onl…). Plus, women speak less at colloquiums (insidehighered.com/news/2017/12/1…).
There are tons of these studies. Basically, we hear from women less, and when we do hear from them, we perceive it as being WAY more prevalent than it is. (Of course, this goes double/quatruple/zillianoople for underrepresented people eg. people of color, nonbinary people)
As a science communicator, my whole purpose is to communicate. To speak, draw, write. To listen, share, and be heard. So what does this mean for me? Well, some institutions and groups are already leery of supporting science communication because they see it as a waste of time...
You guessed it. Women who communicate science are seen as doing lower quality work. gap.hks.harvard.edu/matilda-effect…
So, where's the female Bill Nye? She's already here. Women do more outreach than men, so your odds of finding her are good. But she's wearing an invisibility cloak made out of societal bias, her voice buried and ignored, oh and then there's the harassment scientificamerican.com/article/as-cli…
How can you help? There's so much you can do, and that's a topic for 50 other threads, but here are a couple: Elevate the voices of women. Be mindful of invisible women. Here's a cool tool that'll check your bias and help you follow more women on twitter: proporti.onl
Support women. Support science communicators. Support women who do science communication. And remember how very brave they are.
