1/25/18
1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics 1 Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson
27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28
29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49 1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. 1/25/18 • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, 2 portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson
27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28
29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49 1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on 1/25/18 accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 3 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson
27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28
29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49 1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on 1/25/18 elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 4 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson
27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28
29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49 1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 1/25/18 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson
27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28 5 29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49 1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson 1/25/18 27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28
29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
6 32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49 1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson
27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28
29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. 1/25/18 • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 7 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49 1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson
27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28
29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, 1/25/18 Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for 8 little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49 1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson
27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28
29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine 1/25/18 and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 9 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49 1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson
27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28
29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as 1/25/18 the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49 1 Beyond Marie Curie: A History-Based Unpacking of Ongoing Discussions of Women and Gender in Physics
Dr. Amy Bix – History, ISU
2 • Maria Sklodowska Curie; Warsaw 1867-1934 • 1893 Sorbonne degree in physics (top in her class), 1894 math (2nd in class). • 1895 marries Pierre Curie, lab chief at School of Industrial Physics & Chemistry • 1897 Marie industry-funded research on magnetism of tempered steel;
3 • interest in Becquerel’s mysterious “uranium rays”; crucial theoretical assumption: emission as atomic property of uranium. Coined term “radioactivity”; • Invent technique for isolating radium in enough quantity to study properties. Refined 8 tons of raw ore to get 1 gram of radium. "Sometimes I had to spend a whole day stirring a boiling mass with a heavy iron rod nearly as big as myself. I would be broken with fatigue at day's end.” Never patented.
4 • Pierre abandons own research on crystals to work with Marie. Curies identify radium & polonium; determined atomic weight. • 1900-1906 taught physics girls' high school;
5 • 1903 Marie & Pierre Curie & Henri Bequerel share physics Nobel. First only Pierre nominated; "If it is true that one is seriously thinking about me (for the Prize), I very much wish to be considered together with Madame Curie with respect to our research on radioactive bodies." • Nobels created 1901, Marie first woman Nobelist – "devoted fellow laborer in her husband's researches”.
6 • 1906 Pierre killed; Marie his chair at Sorbonne (first female faculty there); • Criticism - Was "the woman to abandon her traditional household occupations to give herself over to abstract studies which until now have been the privilege of the man?”
7 • Sought election to French Academy of Sciences 1911. Rejected by one vote - "Women cannot be part of the Institute of France.” Criticized for having "pushed her taste for recompense & honors a little too far - needed lesson in patience & modesty". • French Acad. of Sciences 1962 first female member.
8 • 1911 Nobel chemistry for discovery radium & polonium (first to win 2 - and in different fields). Personal scandal - rumors affair with (unhappily married) physicist Paul Langevin. Insisted on accepting prize in person, "There is no connection between my scientific work & private life”. Papers ignored or downplayed Nobel; Marie depressed,
9 • 1914 new Institute of Radium (Paris). • WWI Marie director of new Red Cross Radiology Service, portable X-ray machines,
10
11 • Irene Joliot-Curie – 1935 Nobel in Chemistry with husband Frederic. Post-WWII, helped lead construction first French atomic pile.
12 • Marquise Emilie du Chatelet - 1740 Les Institutions Physiques (Foundations of Physics), to reconcile ideas of Newton, Descartes, & Leibniz; first translation Newton’s Principia Mathematica from Latin to French;
13 • Caroline Herschel – 1828 gold medal Royal Astronomical Society
Caroline’s illustration of Halley’s Comet
14 • Mary Somerville – 1848 British translation Laplace’s Mechanism of the Heavens; comments orbit Uranus;
15 • Laura Bassi 1700s professor Univ. Bologna, lectures experimental physics; • Maria Agnesi - 1738 Philosophical Propositions - essays on elasticity, Newton’s laws, celestial mechanics;1748 Analytical Institutions (calculus) `Witch of Agnesi’ curve
16 • Lise Meitner – expt’l team nuclear fission 1930s (Otto Hahn 1944 Nobel, minimized) • Chien-Shiung Wu – Manhattan Project, studies of beta decay • Maria Goeppert Mayer – Nobel 1963 - nuclear shell model • Jocelyn Bell Burnell – pulsars • Vera Rubin – existence dark matter • Sally Ride – 1st US female astronaut • Shirley Ann Jackson – 1st female, 1st African-Am. chair Nuc. Reg. Comm. • Rosalyn Yalow – 1977 Nobel medicine – radioimmuno assay techniques
17 • Science, medicine & engineering as intellectual and social enterprises, within context of time & place - ideas about race, class, gender roles. Science, medicine, & engineering have a gendered history.
18 • women in science (natural philosophy) back to ancient Greece – barred from universities, Royal Society, French Academy of Sciences, etc. • Finding women in STEM means knowing where to look: • Scientific illustrators (Maria Merian); translators, patrons, textbook/popular book authors;
19 • technicians, assistants (access through father, husband, brother);
20 • Women’s colleges, women’s medical schools;
21 • Maria Mitchell (Vassar) - one female or male mentor in right place at right time makes difference;
22 • Iowa State College – 1871 "ladies' course of study”
23 • Home economics – “domestic science” “domestic engineering” – serious science/technical courses, jobs – Iowa State College
24 • WWII Iowa State home-ec majors extra electrical engineering, algebra, trig, calculus – request Naval Research Lab. • Nickname - “WIRES”- “Women Interested in Real Electrical Subjects.” • Work for GE, GM testing radio transmitters, amplifiers, small motors, and circuit breakers
25 • Female mathematicians as “computers”: • Harvard Observatory - “Pickering’s harem” • WWII computers (“ENIAC girls”)
26 • “Hidden Figures” – 1940s NACA – hundreds/thousands women “West Computers” - Katherine Johnson
27 • 20thC still institutional/social barriers: access to professional societies, education, employment; • ideas of what’s “proper” for women (men)
28
29 • Big changes in sci, tech. last 60 years • Revolution in assumptions who can, should work in STEM, re-envisioning the future of STEM to include K-12 girls, minorities - careers long assumed for relatively well-off white men.
30 • Agendas NSF, NAE; local, nat’l, int’l sci/eng groups; companies, gov’t; teachers, counselors, parents, children themselves. Perfect? – no… But - powerful message - to make intellectual & economic gains, to be fair, widen opportunities. 2015, White House science fair, Pres. Obama: “We get the most out of all our nation’s talent reaching out to boys and girls of all races & backgrounds. Science is for all of us. And we want our classrooms & labs & workplaces & media to reflect that.”
31 • 1970 over 80,000 women STEM bachelor’s degrees; 2000, over 200,000 – professors, employers, role models, parents. • Engineering less than 1% 1970; 20% 2000. • Organizing, networking - Assn. for Women In Science (AWIS) 1971: “to promote equal opportunities for women to enter the profession & achieve their career goals.” • Hiring in academia, industry, government; • Conferences, networking, mentoring
32 • Outreach to K-12 students: “Some day I’ll be an engineer like Aunt Jennifer.”
33 • Today organized advocacy – NSF, NAE; Girl Scouts, Grace Hopper conference, more…
34 • women 37% of U.S. undergrad computer-science degrees 1985; 18% in 2012. “Girls Teaching Girls to Code” “Black Girls Code,” “Girls Who Code,” 2012 - 2016, over 10,00 girls 42 states, (GE, AT&T) $1 million scholarships, internships
35 • Museum, library programs; TV shows – “Magic School Bus” (1994), “SciGirls” (2010), “Doc McStuffins” (2012).
36 • Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Amandla Stenberg, Mayim Bialek, Danica McKellar • Silicon Valley – girls’ STEM advocates YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, SpaceX COO Gwynne Shotwell, Oracle co-pres. Safra Catz, • Rosie Revere, Engineer, Ada Twist, Scientist, The Most Magnificent Thing, Interstellar Cinderella, Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding
37 • Concern – girls lack boys’ hands-on experience tinkering – unfamiliar; • 2012 Debbie Sterling - “Engineering Toys for Girls” - $150,000 in five days’ Kickstarter : “The scary truth is that only 11% of engineers are women, and girls start losing interest in science as young as age 8…. This is our chance to change that… to inspire a generation of girls who are more confident & tech-savvy…. GoldieBlox is more than a toy; it’s a movement.”
38 • literally shaped GoldieBlox to fit perceived gender differences - pastels, curves, soft “innately appealing to girls.” “I had metal pieces in one prototype, and hardly any girls wanted to touch them…. You have to meet the girls where they are.” • spin Goldie’s animal friends. Idea girls interested in social purpose behind engineering. “[Girls] aren’t just interested in ‘what’ they’re building, they want to know ‘why’…. Goldie’s stories relate to girls’ lives…. Girls care about nurturing.”
39 • “my daughter clearly felt pride at having built something all by herself.” • “Pinkified toys do not send the right message.” “This is insulting, and only reinforces the idea that STEM is masculine and girls will only be interested if we pinkwash it.”
40 • Ongoing debate over gender stereotyping in toys – 2012 “Lego Friends.” Neuroscientist Lise Eliot: “If it takes color- coding or ponies & hairdressers to get girls playing with Lego, I’ll put up with it, at least for now, because it’s just so good for little girls’ brains.”
41 • Computer Engineer Barbie 2010 • SWE pres. Nora Lin: “Engineer Barbie will show girls that women can turn their ideas into positive impact on people’s everyday lives in this exciting & rewarding career.” • “geek chic” appearance - SWE/NAE consultant: “Barbie will broaden the realm of what feels accessible – being smart, confident, & tech-savvy, without sacrificing femininity & fun.”
42 • Critics -“You can’t rework a caricature of womanhood with impossibly long legs,pert breasts & glossy hair into some equal-opportunity role model by giving her a laptop, clothes with circuit board motifs and bright PINK glasses.” • female engineers - how to define femininity in male-dominated job • Issues marriage; balancing career and family;
43 • Message then undermined; • Mattel - “While it used to take years of negative messaging to teach women and girls that they are 2nd-class citizens in technology fields, this little gem can give you a great head start at a tender young age. As a computer scientist, and as the father of a little girl (named ‘Ada’), I am viscerally nauseated to encounter a children's book so utterly inappropriate.” #feministhackerbarbie.
44 • no magical solution to reverse STEM gender imbalance. • Growth women in engineering schools plateau, decline post 2000 (18-21%); ongoing underrepresentation computers, certain areas of sciences (US different than some other countries)
45 • K-12 advocacy easy “sell” – non-partisan, non-controversial - avoids real issues – high dropout rate for women in STEM employment; sexual harassment; pay/promotion discrimination; “stereotype threat” “imposter problem” “hostile workplace” “chilly climate” “brogrammer culture” • MIT study - “microdiscrimination” • Harvard Pres. Larry Summers 2005; Nobelist Tim Hunt 2015
46 • Why does it matter? • Fairness – STEM important, exciting rewarding intellectual / professional / economic opportunity for women; • National/world value in cultivating all talent; • Women/diversity – less cut-throat, hyper-competitive, hostile environment STEM • Different perspectives - might bring new ideas, approaches to science, ask new questions.
47 • dramatic historical shift; 1950s few Americans worried about getting more girls into STEM boys’ club, 1/25/18 • today’s activists command mainstream support for change, to position science & engineering as appropriate, enjoyable, and rewarding for girls.
48 Thank you for letting me talk about a subject I love !
49
11