Watching the movie in the review session reminded me of one of my favorite web comics, Hark! a Vagrant
It’s a little painful to watch the (admittedly dramatized) examples of casual sexism Franklin endures in the movie. Adding insult is the fact that Franklin didn’t receive recognition until after her death. In that spirit, I looked up some great women who contributed to scientific research. The link is a great read if you are in need of some inspiration or a pick-me-up.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/ten-historic-female-scientists-you-should-know-84028788/?all
related: http://www.nature.com/ni/journal/v10/n6/full/ni0609-559.html
^commentary about women at Harvard
I met Larry Summers! I actually attended a lecture he gave at Harvard as a prospie. He definitely has a polarizing personality – very charismatic and arrogant.
What I love most about being at this this educational institution is that I gain *such* an appreciation for the many women in science that serve as my role models, though admittedly it simultaneously skews my perception of the whole lack of women in STEM fields. If Wellesley was representative of the entire world, we’d certainly be making tremendous progress on this issue.
I’ve never been able to look at history with exactly the same level of keenness as science, and so admittedly, the article “Ten Historic Female Scientists You Should Know” might not have piqued my interested four years back in high school. Now, as an undergraduate who has experienced a few different off-campus research settings, I am reading this article with many thoughts of “Hell ya” and “You go girl” because I’ve gained a sense of how hard it can be (sometimes) as a woman in a STEM field.
For example, I keep on feeling this illogical desire to “have to prove myself”, to show that I’m not just a young woman who doesn’t know her way around a lab. I am lucky enough to not have gone through a time when sexism was blatantly obvious, but I certainly feel just by *being a woman* I am automatically assumed to know less or be “less successful” than male counterparts. Is that unfounded? Probably. But is that thought loosely woven into the structure of society? I’d have to say yes, otherwise why would I feel this way? Love the comic and the link, thanks for sharing!