Women in education and science fields

Science is knowledge and knowledge is power.¹ (Sir Francis Bacon)

Science and education have an important role in developing civilizations. As we see it today, working got easier and done in better conditions.  As far back as ancient times, scholars and learners have contributed to creating strong pillars to sustain and improve scientific treasure, through research and more or less successful experiments.

Discussing about woman’s role in this important evolution, we sadly get to the conclusion that it’s almost missing. Why? Because women started to emancipate only in the XIX century, when they were just receiving rights.

Even after that, women had to fight more to be considered equal to men and even now, they still fight for that in some countries.

An example is Saudi Arabia, where in April, 2013, women received the right… Pay attention! to ride a bicycle.

But women and their rights in the Muslim countries represents a vast topic that deserves to be discussed in other circumstances.

Starting with the second half of the XIX century, women is trying to be part of the important achievements of mankind.

Thereby, the first student girl of Harvard University, from Cambridge, Massachusetts, was Mary Ann Shad Cary who, after graduating, also became the first female journalist.  At the Oxford University from England, women have been matriculated only in XX century and single-gender education has been canceled only in 1970. The list goes on and we convince ourselves that women are actually as capable as men to study, research and occupy posts that only men could occupy in the past. Sometimes a woman does even a better job than a man.

At present, fortunately, women are encouraged to do their studies and to have a career in STEM². Now, there are scholarships and seminars, demonstration campaigns , discourses and competitions that make women get involved in the domain of Exact Sciences.

One of these projects is UNESCO – L’Oreal for Women in Science Programme that offers two scholarships for young researchers that work in domains like life and physics sciences. And we, EduSoft, have organized an informatics competition just for girls and you can find more about this, by clicking the link below:  http://www.edusoft.ro/thebeautyofcode/ .

Even if now, women have important roles in society, some think that because of this involvement in the scientific field, women have less time for their families, some of them sacrifice their personal life to do research.

Elena Echimenco (translated by Elena Golăi)

1 – Science is knowledge and knowledge is power. – from Latin “scientia potentia est”, aphorism attributed to the English philosopher Francis Bacon.

2 -STEM – acronym that stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

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