Sciencewomen

Here's my take on the top 10 women in science stories of 2007. It's highly biased toward blogospheric developments. Many thanks to skookumchick, Tara, Pat, and Karen for helping me compile items for inclusion on this list.

• 10. Microbiologist Rita Colwell received the National Medal of Science. Tara at Aetiology gives us the scoop, but Zuska points out that still only two of the eleven winners were women.
• 9. Girls won all of the top awards at the Siemens competition for research by high school seniors.
• 8. Women make out of this world astronauts. 2007 saw the first time that a woman has commanded the international space station and there were two women aboard the space shuttle Endeavor; too bad NASA won't be making the next round of space suits in women's smaller sizes.
• 7. Women engineering students thought they were combating stereotypes by stripping for a calendar fundraiser. Skookumchick and her commenters weren't so sure.
• 6. Scientific American recently published an article on "Sex, Math, and Scientific Acheivement." This article is part of the on-going response to Larry Summer's remarks in January 2005 and the NAS Beyond Bias and Barriers report issued in 2006. Pat at Fairer Science promises to blog about the article soon.

• 5. Younger female scientists are breaking into academia: Dr. Shellie, skookumchick, Janus Professor, and I all got tenure-track positions in 2007. We have the opportunity to make things better for the next generation of women scientists.
• 4. Women scientists are achieving positions of power. Two universities named women scientist president: immunologist Kim Bottomly at Wellesley College and astrophysicist France Córdova at Purdue University. (Bonus! Harvard University replaced Larry Summers with historian Drew Gilpin Faust.)
• 3. Zuska conducts a course on Feminist Theory and the Joy of Science on her blog enabling everyone to read along and participate. Here's a blurb from the course syllabus: "The implications for an adequate feminist theory of science, and for attracting members of underrepresented groups to science and engineering, will be a focus of the course." If you missed out when the course was offered, all the reading summaries and discussion posts are still available, so click on over and partake.
• 2. Sometimes child TV stars grow up to be great role models. Such is the case of Danica McKellar (Winnie from the Wonder Years). She graduated summa cum laude with a mathematics degree from UCLA. In July 2007, McKellar's book "Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math Without Losing Your Mind or Breaking a Nail" was released. Tara C. Smith at Aetiology has details about the book and an interview with the author. And at FairerScience, Pat posted a review by a 12-year-old girl, the book's target audience, who gave it a thumb's up.
• 1. Scientiae debuts! The carnival devoted to "stories of and from women in science, engineering, mathematics, and technology" held its first soiree back on March 1st thanks to the vision and hard work of skookumchick. I think this carnival has really fostered a strong community and support network for women in STEM.

scientiae-carnival