Need a Scientist? Here’s Over 500 Female Scientists

Danielle from Leaf and Core

6 years ago

Reading Time: 2 minutes.

Sometimes you just need a scientist. Maybe you’ve got a conference and you need speaker, or you’re a journalist and you need someone to comment on a scientific fact. Maybe you just have a really big important question. Due to bias in the scientific community (and our society at large), along with societal conditioning, you’ll likely end up finding a male scientist rather easily. Women battle unconscious bias and toxic environments daily, but many find these factors push them out of STEM. Some leave the field they love after years in the business. If only there was a way to specifically request a female scientist and elevate women in STEM.

Well, there is. 500Wom e nScientists.org makes it easy to request a female scientist. Hopefully this means event organizers will find it’s easier than ever to find the right woman for their speaking opportunity and journalists can increase the visibility of women in STEM.

500 Women Scientists: What it is and Why it Exists

A lack of female role models keeps young girls out of STEM. It prevents women from finding a way to further their education, careers, or projects. 500 Women Scientists looks to combat this by providing local chapters where women can gather and organize. It also helps others find a female scientist to confer with or learn from. The organization works to increase scientific literacy among everyone, and hopes to promote equality and equal opportunity.

Despite its name, there are actually 20,000+ female scientists from over 100 countries who make up 500 Women Scientists. Over 20,000 women signed the 500 Women Scientists pledge, affirming their support of science and marginalized groups in troubling times, with a political administration that seems hellbent on attacking both science and marginalized groups. The organizers thought 500 would be a lofty goal. They were wrong. This is a resource we’ve been clamoring for.

One of the key features of 500 Women Scientists is the “request a scientist” feature. This will help journalists, event organizers, students, teachers, and other scientists get in contact with a female scientist for work. Women are already a minority in STEM, though they’re still disproportionately skipped over for panels, quotes in news sources and other papers, This is a compounding issue. The people skipping over women for their work reinforce the belief that there are no women in science or that we don’t have something to say that’s worth listening to.

500 Women Scientists is a fantastic resource for anyone looking to find a woman scientist, support female scientists, or help young girls find role models in science. It’s going to take many years of hard work, but perhaps—one day—STEM will be as welcoming to women and non-binary people as it is to men.

Source/Further Reading: Vishwam Sankaran, The Next Web