Day of Women and Girls in Science : 11 February
It is truly unfortunate to see how the presence of women in the scientific community today is still very marked by prejudice. We have all heard at some point that "science is a man's business". But the reality is very different from this stereotype.
Mathematicians, chemists, physicists, engineers, programmers... Science is full of women who have marked a before and after in history. And they continue to do so in the present and in the future the girls of today will do it.
Next February 11th is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. In 2015 UNESCO established, for the first time, an annual day to recognize the work of all those women who are part of this field of study, as well as to make visible the need to educate girls in it. But, above all, this day serves to try to break down the gender stereotype that indicates that women "are not good at science" and that girls can freely decide their professional future, without their gender being a barrier.
According to CSIF, only 3 out of 10 people dedicated to scientific research are women. Why? For lack of references, because they have wanted to eliminate us from history, because very little has been written and recognized about all those women who created, researched and carried out discoveries essential for our present.
Caroline Herschel (the first to discover a comet), Marie Curie (discovered radium and polonium), Ada Lovelace (found the first algorithm processed by a machine), Lise Meitner (studied radioactivity and coined the term "nuclear fission"), Margarita Salas (discovered DNA polymerase), Rosalind Franklin (managed to show the double helix of DNA). Each and every one of them deserves recognition in our society. All their works are essential to understand and improve the modern world. They cannot continue in the shadows.
That is why from FEM we have created two t-shirts in honor of women scientists. This year's t-shirt seeks to vindicate the fundamental role of women in scientific research under the slogan "We have the formula". You can find the new t-shirt here.