Alexandra Elbakyan recently shook up the science world by creating Sci-Hub, the largest website for pirated academic papers. She created the website to allow everyone access to scientific journals that are behind a paywall. You can read about the grad student in the center of the conflict here.
Prominent women from tech companies like Pinterest, Slack and Google are coming together to diversify the tech industry. They created a nonprofit called Project Include where they can collect and share data about the employees hired at these tech companies. This project came about because the women in the group were championing for more women and minorities to be hired, and decided to do something about it.
Equal pay activist
Similarly, investor Natasha Lamb decided to tackle another important issue for women in technology: the gender pay gap. She has been sending proposals to the top tech companies and forcing them reveal how much they underpay women.
STEM Gender Pay Gap
Speaking of the gender pay gap, a new study found that women make 31% less than men in STEM fields. In STEM like in other fields, there is a wage gap between men and women. And for STEM careers,this wage gaps starts from the first year after graduation.
‘Females are strong as hell’
A top malaria researcher at NYU was fired for complaining that her boss was making sexist comments towards her. He told her that ‘women are not strong enough to do science’ and other derogatory comments. She complained about the remarks, and says she was fired shortly thereafter for complaining, according to the lawsuit she is bringing against NYU.
Mentoring via IM
A new program called Cybermentor, a program from the Unviersity of Calgary, is trying to motivate girls to enter STEM fields by pairing them up with scientist and engineer mentors. Girls in grades 6-12 will speak to their mentors via an online instant messaging system.
More for Women in Science
Check out this compelling article about a women’s experience in science, from men ‘mansplaining’ her own research to her to conferences about women in science were women are not picked on to speak.
While there are many issues in the tech industry that need to be address to fix the gender imbalance, but one might be the stereotype that tech and computer science are geeky.
Bonus this week
New Emojis are being proposed that show women doing more than getting their nails and hair done. These new emojis will show women (and men) as engineers, scientists and doctors. So cool! Can’t wait to use them ?(you can check some of them might look like here)