Insufficient awareness of gender discrimination in STEM continues to hinder women’s full involvement in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Many women themselves may feel like they don’t have much to contribute to this sector. Here are five books that we hope can raise awareness both on the possibilities women can take advantage of and on the contributions that were made by women in the STEM field.
Claire L. Evans, Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet (Penguin Putnam Inc., 2018)
Journalist and musician Claire L. Evans documents the contribution made by women to the creation of the internet as we all know it. In this Verge review, she advocates for a STEM history that accounts for contributions from both men and women. Given that she spoke with a lot of people in the later chapters of the book, Evans has the privilege of recounting these women’s personal stories from a human and intimate perspective.
As the author declared in her Story Changes Culture interview:
“In my book I document how women often get involved in new technological domains early in their development—long before there is an established order or hierarchy, when there is more freedom—and are gradually pushed out as their innovations and ideas become economically important. From the invention of programming to the dawn of the Web, it really has happened over and over again. I was struck, in my research, by that clockwork-like regularity. But I don’t find it surprising anymore, because every time I give a talk, someone inevitably comes up to me afterward to say something like, “This same thing happened in my industry!” That pattern of pioneering and exclusion is quite universal; it’s happened in many fields, from medicine to film editing. I can only hope that if we can learn to see it clearly, we can prevent it from happening again in the future.”
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Caroline Criado-Perez, Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men (Chatto & Windus, 2019)
Reviewed by the likes of The Guardian, Medium and Times, Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men spans different cases, in fields ranging from politics to medicine and media, she delves into many different biases and shows how the world currently leads to subtle but relevant discrimination geared towards women. As we read the book, we discover many facets of male privilege that may seem insignificant by themselves, but add up to show us a world that didn’t take women into consideration in its basic structure (we’re not talking about well-known issues such as the wage gap, instead we’re talking about mundane things such as phone design, car design, or healthcare). The goal of the book is to expose how we as a society are unknowingly discriminating against women and the real-world implications of such biases.
The award-winning writer and campaigner wants to shed light on the ways we impact women, both in their health and in their psychological well-being, also exposing ways in which they are underrepresented in scientific research as well.
In addition to the reviews that have been cited, the author has been interviewed by NPR, and you can read or listen to her interview here.
Virginia Trimble and David A. Weintraub (edited by), The Sky Is for Everyone: Women Astronomers in Their Own Words (Princeton University Press, 2022)
In a similar vein to Claire L. Evans’s work on women’s pivotal role in the internet’s genesis, Virginia Trimble and David A. Weintraub’s The Sky Is for Everyone: Women Astronomers in Their Own Words shines a much-needed light on the indelible contributions of women to astronomy. The volume collects the autobiographical stories of 37 women who have contributed to the advancement of astronomy.
As highlighted in the essay for Princeton University Press, the book underscores a recurring theme: “Professional successes like hers, built on her own credentials, accomplishments, and intellectual merits, were rare for women before 1900. Instead, most of the few women who in previous centuries had any role in astronomy typically gained access through their husbands, brothers, or fathers.” This highlights that even though men frequently facilitated their entry, women played a role from the very beginning. A significant historical shift occurred with World War II, which created numerous new educational and professional avenues in the sector. Additionally, certain testimonies within the book shed light on the specific conditions that contributed to these scientists’ achievements, a point also made by Nicolle Zellner in her American Scientist review: “Some of the women self-report their privilege (being white, coming from a middle- or upper-class family, having parents with a college education), acknowledge receiving the support of family members, or report having had male mentors who provided academic and career guidance. Others write of influential grade-school teachers, the value of education, or the satisfaction of knowing that working multiple jobs during their undergraduate years had helped them earn their coveted position.”
Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred (Bold Type Books, 2021)
In The Disordered Cosmos, Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein‘s debut book, the author reveals how physics and astronomy are inextricably linked to human identity and history. A native of East Los Angeles, an award-winning particle theorist, cosmologist, and professor at the University of New Hampshire, Prescod-Weinstein draws upon her personal experience as a Black queer agender Jewish woman to address the social injustices prevalent in scientific fields, including racism, sexual violence, colonialism, and capitalism. As the Astrobites review reveals, she skillfully employs concepts from particle physics and general relativity as metaphors to discuss issues of gender and social inclusion, compelling readers to view the evolution of physics through a humanistic lens.
