Connecticut Women's Education and Legal Fund

Women currently earn 41 percent of PhDs in STEM fields – that is, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics – but make up only 28 percent of tenure-track faculty in those fields, according to a 2011 report published by the Department of Commerce. That same report says that women hold less than 25 percent of STEM jobs in the U.S., despite filling nearly 50 percent of jobs in the current job market, and that women hold a disproportionately low share of STEM undergraduate degrees, particularly in engineering.

There are plenty of reasons why, including gender stereotyping and a smaller number of female role models in STEM fields. But one factor lies with how young girls are frequently discouraged from pursuing studies in STEM subjects.

Despite that, many girls are becoming increasingly interested in STEM subjects – thanks in part to the efforts of organizations like CWEALF that develop entire programs to encourage their studies – and it shows.

Young women across the U.S. are developing apps, inventing technological advances, and even working on diagnosing certain types of cancer. Here are a few admirable young women who have used science, technology, engineering, and math to make headlines.

Eesha Khare

More than 1,600 finalists from 70 countries around the world entered the 2013 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Arizona. The fair – the world’s largest international pre-college science competition – is geared toward students in grades 9-12. This year, out of the massive collection of entries, Eesha Khare, an 18-year-old student at Lynbrook High School in California, was selected as the competition’s winner.

Khare invented device that can charge a cell phone between 20 and 30 seconds. According to Huffington Post, the “supercapacitor acts as an energy storage device that holds a great amount energy in a small amount of space.” So not only does it have the ability to charge phones with incredible speed, but the device is small and could fit inside of cell phones and other electronics. This innovation could ultimately make it so that we’ll eventually rely on electronic outlets less often

For her work, Khare won $50,000, which she said she will put toward her education at Harvard.

“I will be setting the world on fire,” she said.

Brittany Wenger

Sarasota, Florida, student Brittany Wenger recently developed a computer algorithm to diagnose leukemia. Pretty big deal, no?

The 18-year-old “built a custom, cloud-based ‘artificial neural network’ to find patterns in genetic expression profiles to diagnose patients with an aggressive form of cancer called mixed-lineage leukemia (MLL),” according to Mashable.

Her invention could change the face of cancer – or, at the very least, mixed-lineage leukemia, which typically has a poor prognosis, with a five-year survival rate of only 40 percent.

And this wasn’t even Wenger’s first foray into scientific discoveries: she previously used artificial-intelligence technology to determine whether a breast mass was malignant or benign. It was called Global Neural Network Cloud Service for Breast Cancer.

Other instances

Wenger’s breast cancer research garnered her grand prize at the 2012 Google Science Fair, which annually collects more than 10,000 entries from young people ages 13-18. She was just 17.

The year before, in 2011, girls swept the competition, a feat Fast Company wrote not only covered, but celebrated. Shree Bose, a 17-year-old girl Texan won the grand prize for her research on the chemotherapy drug, cisplatin; Naomi Shah of Portland, OR, won the age 15-16 category with a study of the effects of air quality on lungs (particularly for people who have asthma); and Lauren Hodge of York, PA, won the age 13-14 category for research on whether marinades reduce the amount of cancer-causing compounds produced by the grilling of meat.

The efforts – and the impact – of these young women cannot be understated. Gone are the days when words like “doctor” and “scientist” and “engineer” are synonymous with male; instead, young women like Eesha, Britney, Shree, Naomi, and Lauren are rising. These girls, like many others when given the right tools and encouragement, are determined, innovative, and smart. So let’s keep pushing young women to think big. When they’re encouraged to study science, technology, engineering, and math, there’s really no telling what they’ll do. They might just change the world.

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Crystal Maldonado is a writer by day, and super-feminist by night. Find her on Twitter @crysmaldonado, or check out her new online magazine, Positively-Smitten.com.

thereconstructionists:

In an age when women were decades away from the second wave of feminism and a complete rarity in science, British biophysicist Rosalind Franklin (25 July 1920 – 16 April 1958) conducted a series of seminal X-ray diffraction studies that would lead to the groundbreaking discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.

When Franklin first started working as a research assistant at the biophysics laboratory at London’s King College in 1951, there was only one other female scientist on the staff. Working with Raymond Gosling, one of the Ph.D. students assigned to help her, she applied her mastery of X-ray diffraction techniques to decoding the structure of DNA, but conflict in the scientific community was quick to take hold. Over the next few years, as the research was gathering momentum, so was the friction. In early 1953, Francis Crick and James D. Watson of at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory gained access to Franklin’s data without her consent — most notably, the famous Photo 51 — thanks to Maurice Wilkins, her chief rival at King’s, and used it to enhance their own existing research.

So antagonistic was Wilkins’s attitude toward Franklin that in March of 1953, he announced her departure from the lab in a private letter to his friend Crick:

Our dark lady is leaving us next week.

The following month, the prestigious scientific journal Nature published an article proclaiming Francis and Crick’s discovery of DNA’s double helix. In it, they made an intentionally oblique reference to Franklin’s work, the core armature of the very work they were claiming as their own:

It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material.

Franklin died of ovarian cancer in 1958, shortly before her 37th birthday. Despite her pioneering contribution to science, she was never nominated for a Nobel Prize, which wasn’t being awarded posthumous at the time. Her death thus made her ineligible for the 1962 Nobel Prize, which was eventually awarded to Watson, Wilkins, and Crick.

In his 1968 autobiographical account, The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, Watson repeatedly belittles Franklin’s work. But a recently released illustrated and expanded edition shines new light on some of the controversies.

In lieu of formal recognition on par with the scale of her work’s influence, Franklin’s greatest legacy is perhaps her ethos and her unwavering faith in the power of science as a force of social good. In 1940, barely 20, Franklin wrote in a letter to her father, Ellis:

Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated. Science, for me, gives a partial explanation of life. In so far as it goes, it is based on fact, experience, and experiment. … I agree that faith is essential to success in life, but I do not accept your definition of faith, i.e., belief in life after death. In my view, all that is necessary for faith is the belief that by doing our best we shall come nearer to success and that success in our aims (the improvement of the lot of mankind, present and future) is worth attaining.

Brenda Maddox eloquently captures the essence of Franklin’s spirit in Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA:

She did not find life easy — as a woman, as a Jew, as a scientist. … The measure of her success lies in the strength of her friendships, the devotion of her colleagues, the vitality of her letters and a legacy of discovery that would do credit to a scientific career twice its length.

Learn more: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA | Rosalind Franklin

What a great quote and even more inspirational woman!

(via gender-and-science)

coolchicksfromhistory:

Sophia Brahe (1556-1643)

Art by Carolyn Bernhard (website, tumblr)

Tycho Brahe was one of the most important astronomers of the sixteenth century.  The last major astronomer to work without the aid of a telescope, Tycho built his own instruments to track the movements of celestial bodies.  His work paved the way for Johannes Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.

Tycho’s younger sister Sophia assisted him in his scientific observations.  Their family was part of Denmark’s high nobility and although the Brahe children were well educated, their parents did not consider science an appropriate field for people of rank.  Nevertheless, Sophia taught herself astronomy and as a teenager helped her brother observe a lunar eclipse.  Throughout their lives, Tycho and Sophia maintained a close correspondence. 

Sophia also studied alchemy, horticulture, and chemistry, but her most lasting individual work is her genealogy of Danish noble families.  Published in 1626, it remains an important source for Danish historians today.  

There are so many amazing female scientists, Sophia Brahe is one of them!

(via gender-and-science)

californiastatelibrary:

Marilyn Reece, Civil Engineer

What do you do when you like math but don’t want to become a teacher? You could be a civil engineer, like Marilyn Reece.

She was the first woman to be a fully-licensed civil engineer in California and she’s featured in our May calendar of women trailblazers in science, tech, engineering and math.

Let’s kick off Monday with an awesome woman in STEM!

(via gender-and-science)

With workshops like “CSI New Haven,” “Hybrid Vehicle Demonstration,” and “Assessing Pain in Hospitalized Patients” (all pictured above), CWEALF’s STEM Expo at Gateway Community College on Friday was a success! 

Brilliant Minds: Women in Mathematics

visualoop:

Via

Interesting Infographic!

In the spirit of Pi day, did you know that some recent studies have addressed the myth of gender and math performance? Common myths tell the tale that girls just aren’t as good at math, but researchers suggest this just isn’t so. In reality, a more complex constellation of cultural factors may be at work.

Professors Kane and Mertz from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater comprehensively explored math performance among girls and boys. They tackled the “greater male variability hypothesis”, which states that math ability among males varies more widely (males at very high and very low ability) than math ability among females. In order to see if this hypothesis held weight, they gathered data from over 80 countries around the world and compared the variability of boys’ and girls’ math performance.

Results of their study showed that the variability of ability between genders varied by country. For example, Kane and Mertz indicated that, in Taiwan, eight grader boys’ score varied much more widely than did girls; yet they found that, in Morocco, boys and girls had equal experiences and patterns of school attendance) contribute to variability. In those countries in which women have a high labor force participation rate, and have a small gender wage gap, girls have the highest math scores.

“In summary, gender equity and other socio-cultural factors, nor national income, school type or religion per se, are the primary determinants of mathematics performance at all levels for both girls and boys”.

To read their research, see the American Mathematical Society

To learn more about CWEALF’s work with girls and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) go to our website

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Photo by Paul Smith (originally posted to Flickr as Pi pie) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

It’s Girl Scout cookie season! While you’re off ordering (or dreaming about the delivery of) those rich, decadent Thin Mints, let’s celebrate some of the other reasons why Girl Scouts of Connecticut (and nationwide) are awesome.

1. It’s sort of like the younger sister to CWEALF. If you’ve never been a Girl Scout, you might not know just how closely the organization’s mission lines up with Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund’s. Girl Scouts of Connecticut’s website (where all stats and facts used in this article can be found) talks all about how it aims to “builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.” Sound familiar? If so, that’s probably because those young girls could easily become advocates for CWEALF, which has the mission of “empowering women, girls and their families to achieve equal opportunities in their personal and professional lives.”

2. It reaches out to 65,000 girls and adults each year. In fact, their reach is so far and so influential that the organization has been recognized by CWEALF for its efforts. Last year, Jennifer Smith Turner, president and CEO for Girl Scouts of Connecticut, was named one of the 2012 Marie Miller Stewart Awardees. Smith Turner helped to ensure that each Girl Scout reaches her full potential.

3. It encourages girls to become interested in the government. It’s never too early to get young women interested in politics, and the Girl Scouts of CT take that notion very seriously. In fact, they will be taking a trip to Connecticut’s capitol on Feb. 27, where they’ll speak with legislators and participate in workshops. I see a future president of CWEALF (and maybe even the U.S.) in the making.

4. It helps make science, technology, engineering, and math (also known as STEM) accessible. Girl Scouts of CT provides ample opportunities for its young members to get involved in fields of interest often geared toward boys; there are astronomy clubs, LEGO leagues, and chemistry groups the girls can join. G2O, a program by CWEALF, does the same. G2O - it stands for Generating Girls’ Opportunities - brings STEM to high school girls and helps them transform an interest into a future.

5. The cookies. We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Girl Scouts are amazing because of the delicious goods they sell each year. More importantly, however, is the message and lessons behind the cookie sales. Girl Scouts of CT - and CWEALF, for that matter - are all about providing women with the opportunities to be self-sufficient, strong, and knowledgeable. The Girl Scouts cookie program is a chance to do that. Its five goals include strengthening each girl’s ability to set goals, make decisions, manage money, deal with people, and consider the ethics of business - all skills that extend far beyond a simple cookie sale.

Next time you’re thinking of purchasing a box Samoas, remind yourself of why Girl Scouts is such a lovely program - and feel free to add an extra box to your order (for the greater good!).

Photo by bamalibrarylady, “God bless vegan girl scout cookies!” 2/2/13. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic License.

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Crystal Maldonado is a writer by day, and super-feminist by night. Find her on Twitter @crysmaldonado, or check out her new online magazine, Positively-Smitten.com.

CWEALF currently has 16 volunteers, some of which are pictured above. They help us with a variety of projects whether it’s tracking legislation, staffing our Information and Referral line, coordinating our STEM Expos, or updating this blog! We couldn’t do all the work we do without their help and we are very grateful to them. While many will be celebrating Valentine’s Day with their special someone, here at CWEALF we have dubbed this week Volunteer Appreciation Week to celebrate the people we love most - our volunteers!