Feb. 11 marked International Day of Women and Girls in Science, a day to celebrate women and girls who are in the science field. Currently, fewer than 30% of researchers around the world are women, and only 35% of students in STEM-related fields are women, according to data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
“To me, the day is a way to bring awareness to specifically younger girls that there are women in STEM fields, so they can see role models like themselves pursuing what society portrays as a hard field to go into,” said April Horton, a physics major.
Physics major April Horton. Courtesy of April Horton
Horton was inspired to pursue a physics degree with the plan of continuing on to graduate school for astronomy, after an eighth-grade space and earth science class.
“I was really intrigued by the beauty of astronomy and just how big the universe was and how much we don’t know about it currently,” Horton said.
Over the summer, Horton spent 10 weeks at the University of Hawaii at Manoa through a Research Experience for Undergraduates program funded by the National Science Foundation, where she had the opportunity to study galaxy clusters.
Despite this, she said she can still feel intimidated going into this field because of her gender.
“It’s definitely intimidating at times,” Horton said. “I’ve been told I need to be more assertive, which I think is something I’m just not naturally. It can be scary, but you’ve got to find ways to just move forward.”
In Sarah Lehman’s, assistant professor of biology, experience, her area of study — the life sciences — is more represented by women. While she noticed fewer women in her physical sciences classes, many of her classes throughout her undergraduate studies, as well as her master’s program and currently in her doctoral program, have had a lot of women in them.
“For me, in the life sciences, there’s always been a lot of females, so I didn’t’ feel like the odd person out,” Lehman said.
Lehman said while she was more intimidated going into college because of the expectation that science classes would be really hard, classes like physics were more intimidating than others.
Assistant Professor of Biology Sarah Lehman. Photo by Aubrey Bartel
“I was more intimidated when I took physics and some of those classes that you feel more like if you were a guy you’d be better at,” Lehman said. “There’s this stereotype, but I don’t know if I ever felt alone in that, because there were a lot of other females around me.”
Lehman said she felt supported by those around her, including her family, a high school biology teacher and a favorite college professor.
“My favorite professor, that I still keep in touch with, was always super encouraging and never made me feel like I couldn’t do this,” Lehman said.
To Lehman, International Day of Women in Girls in Science, which also fell on her birthday this year, is another way to help spread her passion for understanding the world around us.
“I just have a passion to see people embrace science and to have helped students of any gender, especially females, to say ‘This is totally doable,’” Lehman said. “It’s not this unapproachable subject that’s really, really hard.”
