Championing The Success of Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths, and Medicine #ChampioningWISreport

To mark Ada Lovelace Day, the annual celebration that promotes women working in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) Digital Science have issued a new report.

“Championing The Success of Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths, and Medicine” includes a collection of think pieces around current issues faced by women in STEM authored by industry leaders. The report explores areas of gender inequality and potential causes of this inequality, offering up a collection of solutions.

Women’s reluctance to step into leading roles, their tendency to suffer from “imposter syndrome” and their career breaks as a result of motherhood, are just some of the contributory factors holding them back, as well as the outdated, sexist attitudes they sometimes have to face in the workplace.

The report offers some solutions to fostering better environments for women including:

• It is clear that proactive responses from the research community are needed in order to resolve these issues, creating a cultural change that will allow more women into management roles.
• Mentors can help encourage women to become more confident in their own abilities and accept opportunities which open up to them.
• Feedback from the academic community is also an important factor in measuring the rate and range of change.

Suw Charman-Anderson Founder, Ada Lovelace Day said:

“As someone who has worked for a decade to inspire women to pursue STEM careers, it’s great to see the effect that Lauren Kane and Alice Meadows’ call to action last year has had. This report is important because it’s so rare for women to see the impact of this kind of activism. Many of the contributors have valuable ideas and advice for how we build on the work that has already been done and how we expand to help even more women, and other minorities, in STEM.”

Contributions include:

• Foreword: Suw Charman-Anderson, Founder of Ada Lovelace Day
• What a Difference a Year Makes: Parity at the Podium Revisited: Lauren Kane and Alice Meadows
• To Accelerate Pace of Change, Women Need to Own Revenue: Tracey L. Armstrong
• Creating Change For Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths, and Medicine: Rhianna Goozee
• The Money Shows it is a Man’s World – How Can We Reduce the Difference? Michael Head
• Shut Up, Sit Back, and Listen! Bastian Greshake Tzovaras
• Women in Astronomy & Computer Science – There’s Still Work To Do: Kimberly Kowal Arcand
• Blind Spots: Seeing Sexism in STEM: Buddhini Samarasinghe
• Does Research Evaluation in the Sciences Have a Gender Problem? What Do Altmetrics Tell Us? Stacy Konkiel

Here at Digital Science we are committed to ensuring that the research community is fully connected and empowered. Inclusivity is key to this – tapping into the expertise of everyone, regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation. In our commitment to improving science, we hope this report will offer up some support and solutions to some of those issues.

The report is openly available to download under a CC-BY license on Figshare. You can share your thoughts on #ChampioningWISreport.