By: Taylor Dunn
There was more focus than ever on women scientists during this year’s International Day of Women and Girls in Science on February 11th, due to their importance during the fight against COVID-19.
In the STEM field, women and girls and largely misrepresented and women and girls of color even more so. Before 2020, there was a bigger push happening to get girls involved in the STEM field.
A previous member of her high school robotics team, Gabbie Jackson says in a phone interview she “remembers going to science camp during the summer when {she} was younger and the robotics team from the high school would come and show us how to build little robots. It made {her} feel confident.”
While robotics and technology are just one branch of STEM, the women scientists at work in the hospitals and labs are the ones that are celebrated during COVID-19. Due to their majority in the hospital workplace, they are commonly portrayed at the forefront of the pandemic.
However, behind the scenes they are wildly misrepresented. According to the OECD Development Centre’s Social Institutions and Gender Index, women carry out far more work than men, especially during the pandemic.
As scientist worked tirelessly around the globe to find out the cure to the pandemic in 2020, there was a spotlight upon the doctors and the brains behind the idea, and their frontman was Dr. Fauci. A renowned scientist and doctor in his field, his contributions and findings were helpful and good for the public to understand. However, behind the scenes, there were teams of women like the ones at the Center of Disease Control in Atlanta breaking down the science of the vaccine one by one.
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