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The United Nations has declared February 11 to be the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. It's kind of like Galentine's Day, but with science, and, unfortunately, no amazing handmade gifts from Leslie Knope. The UN noted that "science and gender equality are both vital" for international development, but, sadly, women and girls are still largely excluded from the scientific arena. In fact, a study the UN conducted across 14 countries found that women are less than half as likely as men to earn a degree in science-related fields. This, obviously, is a bunch of crap. Women and science are both rad! And they're rad together! Their intersection should be celebrated, today and every day. So here are seven fabulous women in STEM (but there are so, so many more).
Unfortunately, if asked to name three women scientists, the average person would probably list Marie Curie and those two broads from The Big Bang Theory, because neither women nor scientists tend to get much attention, and women scientists — they're like unicorns, right? Nope! Although it's true that women are vastly underrepresented in many scientific fields, there are some awesome ones out there (besides Madame Curie), both presently and throughout history. Here are just a handful of awesome women scientists you should get to know (and then teach your daughters about):
Kimberly Bryant
Kimberly Bryant has been employed as a biotechnology engineer in leadership roles for various Fortune 100 companies. She has said she experienced cultural isolation in school, because nobody else looked like her. As a result, she founded the nonprofit Black Girls Code, which offers girls of color opportunities to learn skills in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. Bryant serves on the National Champions Board for the National Girls Collaborative Project, and the National Board of the NCWIT K-12 Alliance. She's been a recipient of the Jefferson Award for Community Service and was named a Champion of Change by the White House.
Kathy Reichs
Did you know that Bones is a real person? If you're not into awesome TV shows, a quick introduction: the Fox series Bones is about Dr. Temperence Brennan (nicknamed Bones), a forensic anthropologist who works with the FBI and also enjoys a side job writing bestselling novels about a fictional version of herself. Bones is based on a series of bestselling novels written by Kathy Reichs, who is a real-life forensic anthropologist. So yeah, Bones is real, and she's awesome. Trained in bioarcheology, Reichs originally worked with ancient skeletons, she told the Huffington Post, but law enforcement kept approaching her for help with their cases.
She helped catch serial killers, exhumed mass graves, identified Sept. 11 victims and World War II soldiers. She testified at both the Casey Anthony trial and at the United Nations tribunal on genocide in Rwanda. She's one of only 82 forensic anthropologists ever certified by the American Board of Forensic Anthropology. She's a professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte. And, yet, she still found time to write two book series (she cowrites a young adult Bones spinoff series with her son, Brendan), and produce a hit TV show. Presumably, she sometimes also sleeps, but I couldn't say when.
Jennifer Eberhardt
Jennifer Eberhardt is an associate professor of psychology at Stanford University. She works directly with law enforcement to help them change their approaches to move away from techniques that are more "heavy-handed" to techniques that require community involvement and communication, according to a Stanford news article.
In her research, she evaluates race and crime — specifically, the way people profile others based on their race, according to Business Insider. Her most recent research sounds crucial to conversations about disproportionate police brutality against black people, according to her Stanford website:
My most recent research focuses on how the association of African Americans with crime might matter at different points in the criminal justice system and how this association can affect us in surprising ways.
These are just a few of the amazing women in STEM, and they are just a few who have paved the way for women to enter the traditionally male-dominated space.
CORRECTION: This article has been updated to recognize the enormous contributions of women of color to STEM fields. An earlier version of this post overlooked those contributions, and we deeply regret that error.