Diversity, equity & inclusion in STEM-call for blog collaborators
Stefanie A. Kroll and Lara Heacock
We are writing this 100 years after white women got the right to vote. Despite the work of African-American and many other people of color for women’s suffrage, many more years passed before Black, Indigenous and women of color would have this right in 1964, and there have been more barriers other than legal rights. So much has changed in these last 100 years, but so much has not. We are two women who have spent decades in STEM (Stef) and corporate America (Lara). We met at a women’s networking event and started comparing notes. We started getting angry together, as it turns out that there are many similarities to our stories. This series is our attempt to put that anger to good use; to not only share our common experience, but to provide actionable ways to impact change for women and other non-dominant identities, who find themselves in traditional-identity-dominated professional spaces. We started out thinking about the roles of women, so our work begins with that focus but is not restricted to it. It happens to be our starting point, but we hope this work can bring in more perspectives and reach a diverse group of scientists.
Much of our understanding of the history of women in science is patchy — we may know about Hypatia, Marie Curie or Maria Sibylla Merian, but who are our role models in all the period of scientific discoveries in the gaps in time? In part this has been a result of messaging, but it also reflects the uneven evolution of women’s roles in science. In her book Has Feminism Changed Science? Londa Scheibinger notes all the books published on female scientists, dating back to Boccacio’s De mulierbus claris biography of 104 female scientists, published in the 14th century (Schiebinger, p.22). Schiebinger writes that there were times before 1900 when [wealthy, white] women enjoyed the privileges of scientific discovery because it had not yet been made an academic pursuit. However, once it was relegated to universities, where women were not accepted, their roles lagged once again. In the United States, women took on workforce roles throughout all sectors during World Wars I & II for the simple reason that men were off at war. But upon the return of the soldiers and GI bills encouraging them to attend university and find jobs at home, women’s roles were once again established as in the home. We also have the example of Katherine Johnson (aw, rest in power!!), made famous in the film Hidden Figures, for her work on space travel in the 1950s, but Black and white women had been working at NASA since the 40s without substantial recognition and without fair and just treatment in the workplace. This rubber band effect of has been observed in the movement for equal rights for Black people, as documented in the New Jim Crow (Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness). This history of rights for African-Americans has carried with it not only exclusion, but violence and theft of their properties and rights. And there are so many other identities in the world that we are not covering here, but they all have one thing in common: we did not build the current system in which we live and work and under whose criteria we are judged for our work.
As I (Stef) considered on the length of our history and the seemingly stunted growth over the past 50 years of diverse minds in science, I found myself getting angry — reflecting on everything I have been through, hearing about all people with non-dominant identities who have also been putting up with bad behavior, losing patience with those around me who still didn’t understand how their actions were affecting anyone who didn’t look like them…and then I finally got to a place where I realized anger wasn’t going to solve this. With so many amazing action-oriented groups taking charge — #MeToo, Time’sUp, MeTooSTEM, and others, it seemed there is still room for more of us to work on this puzzle. I want to explain to today’s scientific world where injustice, inequity and discrimination still exist and the forms they take. I want to sit in a room with a variety of backgrounds and perspectives and have us work together on making decisions. I want people who are in college and graduate school to know what is appropriate and what isn’t for peers and mentors, and to have tools to deal with what is not appropriate treatment. I want to help connect the young people I meet to mentors they can relate to. I don’t want folks to have to go through the rites of passage in education and early employment that often lead to talented people changing careers because they simply lost patience for the prejudice and discrimination they experienced. I would like all of us to feel the same level of comfort and discomfort when we sit in a room together, and for privilege and power to be less exaggerated. I think we can get there by sharing tools, phrases and mechanisms for bringing these issues to light and supporting each other.
Lara started her career in technology. At that time, I (Lara) had strong male mentors who encouraged me to develop my technical skills. When my interests began aligning with more of the sales part of the process, I made a change, and I was really excited. For the first time, the prospect of working for a successful, powerful female VP landed on my lap. Little did I know that traditional patriarchal conditioning would be stronger from her than it ever was from my male leaders. Our team was 3 women and a man. Three wildly successful, talented women, I might add. The man on our team was fine, but the 3 of us consistently outperformed him…as our female VP continued to protect and even reward him. How is this like life? It happens in so many places, and while my experience is corporate not STEM, my STEM female clients have opened my eyes to the level of inequity in that world. Back in my late 20s, I didn’t have a name for this. Now I do and it’s patriarchy, and I want to impact it in a positive way — beyond the complaining and “what can I do” point of view. I’m action focused and that’s what this is. Lest you think this is a male bashing piece, in my early 40s, I actually worked for a male who was significantly more elevating of women than that late 20s female leader. He assembled one of the most diverse teams I’d ever experienced, and that team quickly became the “place to be” in the company. From veterans to women of color to having a team that was 85% female, this mini case study demonstrated what’s possible when we choose to expand our horizons beyond those who look like us. You cannot find a study that says homogeneous teams outperform diverse teams. It doesn’t exist. Yet we’re still dealing largely with homogeneous teams in corporate, and particularly STEM.
But we are also aware that we carry more layers of privilege than others who are struggling with deeper levels of discrimination to explore the careers they are passionate about.
We found ourselves wanting to make a change, and it seemed like writing might be the way to start. Our hope is that through this series of articles we can create some community, share stories on what has worked and what hasn’t, and work with others in the STEM fields who are seeing solutions to the inequality we are experiencing in the workforce.
We are seeking collaborators (who would like to write and co-write articles) and contributors (who would like to share stories, resources, tips and tricks) and any other mode of participation that might help us work as a group to raise awareness about the way things are now, the way we envision them, and the steps we are taking and foresee to build toward a more diverse and equitable STEM workforce.
If you’re interested in collaborating, please write a short statement on the topic, the role you seek (co-writer or content contributor, cover art designer, translation to a certain language, or any role you think would be useful to a blog on this topic), a short description of what you want us to know about you (area of expertise, etc.) and your contact information. Email us at diverSeTEM@gmail.com.
This blog may move slowly because of the collaborative nature and, frankly, because of our day jobs. But we think it is important to take the time to include anyone who is interested to move forward: if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together (“African proverb” is the only citation we can find)!
A note on blind spots: We know we make mistakes, so if we have misused any phrases or written content where the wording is problematic (i.e. offensive in some way), please let us know. We are working to communicate with compassion, integrity and sincerity, and we ask you to do the same in communicating with us! We are committed to working on this project with folks from different backgrounds to represent perspectives more diverse than our own.
Thanks!
- Stef and Lara
Lara Heacock helps leaders and companies leverage kindness to gain powerful results through her business. She is an MBA, certified coach, award-winning writer, Editor in Chief of popular personal development blog Kind Over Matter ( laraheacock.com).
Stef Kroll is a researcher at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. She studies stream restoration, coordinates community science, and works to make data accessible to all audiences (stefaniekroll.weebly.com, ansp.org/drwi).
