This week, to celebrate Canada Day, the first in CSP’s Women In Science series was posted on their blog. For this post I interviewed Dr. Andrea Kirkwood, an Associate Professor of biology at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.
My goal with this series is not to rehash the theory and problems behind the issues that plague women in STEM fields, but to get a personal view from the women doing science on what their experience has been. It’s a perspective from the trenches, as it were, rather than from the control room.
“While the topic of women in science receives a lot of theoretical attention, stories from actual women in science can be few and far between. There are studies on why women leave academic science, how we can recruit more women to STEM fields, what we need to do at different stages along the ‘pipeline’ to keep it from ‘leaking’….but it seems as though little is done, and we remain bound to the societal norms that are so clearly explained in Virgina Valian’s Why So Slow?, a book that can make thoughts of systemic change seem futile.
For this Women-in-Science post, I wanted to talk to a woman in science about her own personal experiences. While this is by no means representative of the experience of all women in science, it provides a glimpse into one personal story and career trajectory, and gives us a window into potential ways in which we help – or hinder – women in science. For girls and women interested in science, this post is intended to help them better understand what that career path might look like.”
Read more here.
