In 2009, October 11th was declared as a day to celebrate women in the S.T.E.M fields, aptly named “Ada Lovelace Day” after the eponymous Victorian-Era women who is hailed as the first Computer Programmer.
In America, women make up just shy of half (48%) of the overall workforce. However, specifically in the STEM fields, women make up just 24% of the total workforce. Historically, Science was considered as a “man’s line of work” and women have been faced with constant evolving challenges to enter and remain in the field.
From simply being accepted into higher education to having to sit behind a screen in the classrooms as to not “distract the male students”, women have had far more obstacles than men, particularly in this field. Despite all these man-made (literally) barriers, women proved to contribute groundbreaking advancements in the Science field.
Some of the many Notable Women in Science:
- – Margaret Hamilton headed up the development of Apollo 11’s onboard flight software.
- – Lise Meitner co-discovered Nuclear Fission (but she was overlooked by the Nobel Committee when they gave awards for this work).
- – Katherine Johnson played the role of a “Human Calculator” for Apollo moon landing.
- – Alice August Ball created an injectable cure for Leprosy.
- – Ada Lovelace created the first Machine Algorithm for a hypothetical computer.
We shortened that list to only 5 for the sake of brevity, but there are countless other women who have played major roles in STEM fields.
All this to say women are awesome! We ask that you’d join us as we encourage the next generations of women to pursue their passions in Science.
