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Wade’s wonder women
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Wade’s wonder women It’s no secret there’s an uphill battle when it comes to gender equality in STEM. At every level there’s a lack of women. From education (only 9 per cent of computing students at GCSE are girls) to employment (women make up less than a quarter of the STEM workforce), the research, innovation and thinking shaping our future is driven by men.
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ne woman has taken it upon herself to try to change this. Dr Jess Wade, Research Associate in the Department of Physics at Imperial, has made it her mission to use the forgotten women in STEM of the past, to inspire and engage those in the present. During the day, Jess’s time is consumed by her research in physics. Chiral organic light emitting diodes to be exact. But Jess isn’t just passionate about the future of materials. Her side project, for which she has received numerous accolades, including an Imperial College President’s award for Excellence in Societal Engagement and a British Empire Medal in the 2019 Birthday Honours for services to gender diversity in science, takes place outside the lab. Jess was inspired to take action after reading Angela Saini’s book, Inferior. “This phenomenal book looks at the stereotypes that have historically been used to exclude women from society. It breaks down all of the science that’s been used to try and hold women back, and then looks at how dodgy that bias is. “The biological differences between men and women are absolutely minute and nowhere near enough to explain the underrepresentation of women in science. Angela’s book was a powerful explanation of that, and it resonated with me because she approached it like a science experiment.” Since reading Inferior, Jess has carried copies of the book everywhere she goes, handing them out to women across the world. One of these women was Alice White, Wikimedian in Residence at the Wellcome Library, who taught Jess about the inequality on Wikipedia. Since the website was founded in 2001, Wikipedia has become the fifth most visited website, with 18 billion monthly page views, 5.8 million articles and 35 million users. Wikipedia’s selling point is that the information is crowdsourced. Anyone can add, edit and amend articles, democratising access to information. The problem? Jess explains: “The majority of the content on Wikipedia is created and
Issue two / 2019–20
