Telling the Stories of Women and Girls in Science
Contact for Enquiries: [email protected] Womenstagram Popular Posts Mary Anning - The Greatest Fossil Hunter Ever Known
Two Students Start Women’s Tech Network Called She++
These Women have Changed the World with Science - Too Bad a Man was Given all Credit
The Godmother of Modern Physics - Denied pay for 8 years for being a woman
Kenyan teen starts her own hacking school
Without Women computing as we know it wouldn't exist
College at 12 PhD at 16 meet the amazing Tesca Fitzgerald
Vera Rubin - Proved the existence of Dark Matter - Rejected From Princeton for Being a Woman
Teen Sisters Build Homemade Functioning Mars Rover
Heddy Lamar - Inventor of Wifi Technology & Hollywood Bombshell
Iqbal Al-Assaad - The Palestinian Refugee who has become a Doctor at 20
Marie Van Brittan Brown Inventor of CCTV Home Security
15 Year Old Invents No Battery Flashlight Powered by Heat from our Hands
Mileva Maric - Einstein’s Hidden Wife, Was she his Secret Collaborator?
Anorexia Scholastica - The disease doctors made up to stop women getting educated
Jeri Ellsworth - Self Taught, Automotive Engineer, Computer Scientist, Inventor & Entrepreneur
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These adorable little girls grew up to be legends of science. They fought against oppression, violence and segregation, saved millions of lives, and completely transformed the world with their discoveries. All this was possible from their hard work but also because they had that one person in their lives who believed in their greatness when others didn’t. On this International Women’s day, which little girl will you inspire?
Sources: National Library of Medicine, NLM, NLM, NLM, Sophia Smith Collection - Smith College, Jesse De La Tour,
Hadiza Mohammed being presented with the inaugural IOP Student Science Publication AwardÂ
 Throwback: I don’t usually discuss my personal achievements here but this is one of my proudest moments. That’s right, a Tumblr blog won Student Science Publication of the year from the Institute of Physics and the Association of British Science Writers. Couldn’t do it without y’all!Â
I know the quantity of posts on here has decreased but I’ve been working very hard behind the scenes to produce something even bigger and better for Women Rock Science and I so appreciate your patience.
Today (July 24, 2015) is the 101th birthday of pharmacologist, Dr. Frances Kelsey. She is renowned for her refusal to grant FDA approval of thalidomide in 1960, despite its widespread use in Europe at the time. Thalidomide had been considered a wonder drug for morning sickness in pregnant women, but it had yet to be discovered that thalidomide was actually a teratogen, or a chemical capable of crossing the placental barrier that causes birth defects. Thalidomide use resulted in children being born with limb deformations.Â
Thalidomide is a classic example of chirality, occuring in a racemic mixture (equal parts of both the R and S enantiomers). Interestingly, due to the position of the chiral center, thalidomide is capable of racemizing in vivo, so separating the entantiomers for individual administration is futile, unfortunately. The same entantiomer that was responsible for binding to the protein cereblon, that prevented proper limb formation in children in the 1960s is now being used as a potent chemotherapeutic today!
Let’s take today to celebrate a pioneer female scientist who saved the US from thalidomide and made us reconsider how we address the safety and efficacy of pharmaceuticals!
Source: (x)
Image from Wikipedia.
Thanks to idristhetardisboardoffandom for bringing this to my attention!
Female scientists told paper is no good unless they get a man to help them
Dr Fiona Ingleby, Research Fellow at University of Sussex
Yes this really happened - two accomplished female scientists were told to get a man to co author their paper in order to be published. Dr Fiona Ingleby and Dr Megan Head are evolutionary biologists researching how gender affects PhD students transitioning into post doctoral jobs. In life imitating art their paper was rejected by a reviewer at the journal due to “issues on methodologies and presentation of results”. They were advised to remedy this by finding “one or two male biologists” to assist or be active co-authors in the paper.
The reviewer also critiques their research remarking that men have “marginally better health and stamina” and that may be the reason they publish in better journals than women, rather than any gender bias. It continues “So perhaps it is not so surprising that on average male doctoral students co-author one more paper than female doctoral students, just as, on average, male doctoral students can probably run a mile race a bit faster than female doctoral students”.
The reviewer goes on: “Or perhaps it is the case that only some small portion of men (and only men) have the kind of egomaniac personality disorder that drives them on to try to become the chief of the world at the expense of all else in life.”
The review was also littered with bizarre spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. Dr Ingleby and Dr Head are well established researchers and have published over 40 papers between themselves. Critique is an essential part of the scientific process but these unprofessional, sexist and opinionated critiques only set us backward and hinder scientific development.
Sources: The Independent
"14-year-old Parkview High School Freshman, Caleb Christian was concerned about the number of incidents of police abuse in the news.  Still, he knew there were many good police officers in various communities, but had no way of figuring out which communities were highly rated and which were not. Â
So, together with his two older sisters: Parkview High School senior Ima Christian, and Gwinnett School of Math, Science, and Technology sophomore, Asha Christian, they founded a mobile app development company– Pinetart Inc., under which they created a mobile app called Five-O.
Five-O, allows citizens to enter the details of every interaction with a police officer.  It also allows them to rate that officer in terms of courtesy and professionalism and provides the ability to enter a short description of what transpired.  These details are captured for every county in the United States. Citizen race and age information data is also captured.
Additionally, Five-O allows citizens to store the details of each encounter with law enforcement; this provides convenient access to critical information needed for legal action or commendation.”
Hello I'm currently in my last year of high school and I would like to study a science course relating to the environment but my problem is I don't really see a lot of career opportunities that pay well in that field so I'm discouraged by my family to study it,just wanted to know if you know of any promising career opportunities relating to environmental sciences
Hello, first I want to apologise for not replying for so long and being such a flake. Sometimes I get stressed out and overwhelmed by running Women Rock Science, we don’t have any funding and I have to juggle it with my work and it just gets the better of me.Okay, back to your query, woaaaah, there are soooo many careers and employment opportunities in environmental work. Every year more and more environmental legislation gets passed so there are more and more sectors and specialisms opening up all the time. How old are you? What’s your progress in terms of education? Are you planning to go to college? which specific area of the environment do you want to work with?
Get back to me, do you have gmail? we can chat on google chat or hangouts. Any other science cats want to chat as well? Or have advice to offer? Add me on google: [email protected]Â
Meet Ranavalona I of Madagascar- the deliciously wicked queen and torture master seen as a supervillan by European rulers
This post is with thanks to Rejected Princesses who did all the hard research and translations to tell us about this remarkable woman.
If you've always identified with Ursula over Ariel, thought Maleficent was really not that bad or would actually really like to see Yzma on the throne then Queen Ranavalona is really the woman for you. This woman started life as a peasant and became supreme ruler and Queen. She fought off colonial rule, started one of the first industrial revolutions outside Europe and maintained Madagascar as an independent, self sufficient state making developments in science, engineering and agriculture. She also, errrrrrr, murdered 30%-50% of her own people, outlawed clapping, dancing and mattresses, forced everyone in her kingdom to shave their hair and developed so many methods of killing and torture that it's really hard to keep up. She was beautiful but also brutal and harnessed the powers of STEM to develop weapons and torture devices to destroy her enemies.
Ranavalona was born into poverty but got a lucky break when her father uncovered a murder plot against the king. As a reward, the King took in Ranavalona as a member of his own family and married her off to his first born son Radma . She was the first of his 12 wives and whilst at the palace made as many friends and allies as possible. Now here's where things get fishy, we can't say for sure but it looks like almost certainly, definitely, yes Ranavalona murdered her husband Radma so she could take the throne. She then used her friends and allies to secure the palace and killed off every single member and distant relative of the royal family. Welp! With all her challengers banished or executed she was officially crowned Queen and ultimate ruler of Imerina, modern day Madagascar.Â
Madagascar was under constant threat from European forces, Ranavalona knew that if they were going to survive as an independent nation they had to be self sufficient and be able to protect themselves. A young French explorer by the name of Jean Laborde became shipwrecked on the island and Ranavalona took him in and got him to teach her and her people everything he knows. It wasn't long before Madagascar became an engineering and manufacturing powerhouse - they developed factories, mills, plants, mines, roads and weapons and all with no imported machinery.Â
Ranavalona took lead position in the industrial development of Madagascar, particularly when it came to the manufacture of weapons. One of her craziest ideas was to build a ginormous pair of scissors that she could use on the battlefield to cut her enemies in two - sadly that one never got built.
Most of the writing we have about her comes from the French and they characterise her as being a mad evil villain. I actually think this is totally unfair. Some would call it bizarre that invaders such as the French would classify those they are trying to occupy as the evil ones but hey, I guess that's colonialism for you! Ranavalona destroyed any attempts the Europeans made to take over the kingdom of Imerina, everytime they attacked she fought them back and everytime they tried to overthrow her she foiled their plans. Sadly, after her death, her son undid most of her rulings, in particular he allowed free untaxed trade with the west. It wasn't long before Madagascar fell into decline and 30 years later the French took over, it remained a colony of France for the next 100 years.
Her son who was very pro-European
"She was undoubtedly a hardline ruler, if not an outright despot, and it’s indisputable that a great many died under her reign. But she saw herself, not unreasonably, as a sovereign at war, and in that context she was an arguably fantastic leader. By associating herself so strongly with the native beliefs, she legitimized her reign. This enabled her to make the country self-reliant, strengthen her own nation’s culture, and repel the team-up invasion efforts of the two most powerful nations in the world — a feat that her successors failed at, to dire consequences." -RejectedPrincesses.com
This ridiculously addicting game is supposed to find us all careers
Me when people ask me WTH I'm doing with my life
Have you ever wondered how you can combine your love of cats with your passion for retail and love of stats? Or maybe you like working with numbers and wonder how you can combine that with your feminist activism and turn it into a career? Well this totally addictive Plotr Careers game is claiming to have all the answers!!!
I have to say I've been playing it for the last hour and I think it's kind of awesome, it's really pulling crazy careers out the bag and giving me ideas I never considered. I totally see myself as naval architect, science teacher or draughtsman (maybe all 3!?!?!).
You play for a while letting the machine know your random loves, likes and dislikes and it brings up a list of totally out-there careers it thinks your compatible with so hopefully we can all be like yeah! We got this!
Women in STEM of WWII - The real “Rosie Riveters”
These women did a lot more than rivet, they designed, built and tested thousands of aircraft in factories across Canada and the US.  Prior to the war, women would have been mostly banned from taking up such jobs.
Me too! Annoyingly the person keeping the records just referred to them as "girl" or "girls" - That's history for you eh. These are not girls, they are women, hard working women who were integral to the factories' successes. Helen Bray is the only one for which a name was included.
The What I See project sat down with the amazing Professor Val Gibson to ask.......
What do you see when you look in the mirror?
"I see a scientist, who has the same passion for discovery…My two daughters and all their friends… they inspire me because they have open minds. You can tell them anything and they will take it towards the future."
In most countries women were not permitted to fight on the front lines of the war. Instead, they supported the war effort by learning, training and taking up jobs usually held by men.
These women did a lot more than rivet, they designed, built and tested thousands of aircraft in factories across Canada and the US.  Prior to the war, women would have been mostly banned from taking up such jobs.
