Women’s History Month: Celebrating Trailblazing Women in Science and Advancing Women’s Representation in STEM

This Women’s History Month, SSP International (SSPI) celebrates the women throughout history who paved the way for modern science, historians who uncovered hundreds of uncredited scientific contributions made by women, and the women scientists, researchers, and scholars continuing to make history today.

The Fight to Reclaim Women’s Historical Contributions to Science

For the last few centuries, science has been systemically biased against women — especially women of color. Scientific discoveries and contributions to research made by women were suppressed and credited to their male colleagues. Margaret Rossiter, an American historian of science and professor emerita at Cornell University, coined this phenomenon the “Matilda Effect.” Rossiter named the phrase after American suffragist, abolitionist, and feminist critic Matilda J. Gage, whose early contributions to the women’s suffrage movement in the 19th century were nearly erased from history due to her advocating for the rights of not only women but all Americans, including Black and Indigenous people.

Gage’s advocacy for women’s rights also extended to the field of science. In 1870, Gage wrote the article “Woman as an Inventor,” in which she highlighted the important yet overlooked inventions made by women that helped modernize society, criticized the disproportionate men-to-women inventors ratio due to a lack of opportunities for women, and advocated for legal protections for women’s inventions and intellectual property.

More than a century later, Margaret Rossiter published “Women Scientists in America,” a book that brought to light the work of hundreds of women astronomers, physicists, chemists, and more erased from history. It is thanks to historians and advocates like Margaret Rossiter and Matilda J. Gage that women’s role in science across history is recognized and celebrated today, inspiring new generations of women in STEM.

Women’s Representation in STEM & Modern Scientific Discoveries Made by Women

While there has been some progress in women’s representation in the STEM workforce, there is still much work to be done to reach gender parity, close pay gaps, and increase representation for women of color. Between 1970 and 2021, the percentage of women STEM workers in the U.S. increased from 8% to 27%, with men still making up 73% of all STEM workers. Nearly two-thirds of men in the STEM workforce also identify as white. There needs to be more opportunities and pathways to support women in STEM, especially women of color, and help them stay in research, academia, and the private and public sectors.

Some of the greatest discoveries and breakthroughs have been made by women across all scientific fields, from astronomy to biochemistry. Dr. Gabriela Gonzalez, for example, is an Argentine pioneer in gravitational-wave astronomy.  Her work on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) team led to the discovery of gravitational waves in 2015, which, until then, had only been predicted by Albert Einstein.

When speaking about space exploration, we cannot forget to mention Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the NASA scientists and mathematicians whose roles getting Apollo 11 to the moon were immortalized in Margot Lee Shetterly’s book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Who Helped Win the Space Race” and its film adaptation, “Hidden Figures.” In more recent global events, biochemist Katalin Karikó’s groundbreaking research on ​​nucleoside base modifications led to the development of mRNA vaccines against COVID-19 and helped put an end to the deadly pandemic, for which she received a Nobel Prize.

How SSP International Creates Pathways to Science for Young Women

SSP International is committed to cultivating the next generation of women scientists, researchers, and scholars by providing young women in high school, especially those who identify as persons of color and/or first-generation students, with immersive scientific research experiences, soft skill development, and mentorship opportunities to help transition to college. In 2024, SSP International’s flagship program, Summer Science Program, had a near fifty-fifty gender ratio on each host campus, reflecting the gender parity in scientific communities that SSP International envisions for the near future.

As part of the Summer Science Program experience, SSP International hosts guest speakers who lead pioneering research to share their experiences with our students and show the breadth of careers and STEM fields that are out there for them. One of these guest speakers is none other than one of our very own alumna, Emma Louden, an astrophysicist, policy and strategy expert, a PhD candidate at Yale University, TEDx speaker, and the author of “Mia and the Martians.” In addition to inspiring our Summer Science Program participants during her guest lectures about the importance of space exploration, Emma also mentors recent alumni through SSP International’s mentorship program, SSP Connect.

Young women like Emma, who participate in the Summer Science Program, discover a newfound sense of belonging in science and academia, with many going on to pursue careers in STEM. Sonia Kekeh, a 2022 Summer Science Program alumna, is currently a second-year undergraduate student majoring in aerospace engineering and minoring in African and African diaspora studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She aims to “work at the intersection of aerospace engineering and public policy, advocating for responsible space governance frameworks, fostering international collaboration, and advancing technologies that promote equitable access to space resources and opportunities.”

Other Summer Science Program alumnae have gone on to become the educators supporting the next generation of researchers and scientists in their STEM journeys. Anna Ho, a 2009 Summer Science Program alumna, is a professor of astronomy at Cornell University who, along with her students and postdocs, uses “telescopes located all over the world and in space to study the lives and deaths of stars” as well as other energetic cosmic events. To this day, Anna still remembers the first time she saw the Milky Way with her own eyes while participating in the Summer Science Program in Astrophysics at New Mexico Tech.

SSP International is proud of all the trailblazing women who have participated in its Summer Science Program since 1969, all our women faculty who teach our participants each year, and all of the women staff who help operate the organization. Happy Women’s History Month!