The women forging innovation through science and technology #ChoosetoChallenge
You see man made the cars
To take us over the road
Man made the train
To carry the heavy load
Man made the electric light
To take us out of the dark
Man made the boat for the water
Like Noah made the ark
The world has changed a lot since James Brown released ‘It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World’ in the 1960’s, which references a number of inventions made by men:
- ‘You see man made the cars’: Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot, who is credited for the first mechanical vehicle in 1769
- ‘Man made the train’: Richard Trevithick, who is considered as the builder of the first train in 1803, and
- ‘Man made the electric light’: Humphry Davy, who developed the first incandescent light in 1802
Whilst the song continues to transcend through the generations (and we’d be lying if we said we weren’t a fan of the song too!), if written today, the lyrics would be pretty different. Every day women are making significant contributions to the world of science, technology, engineering and maths (known as STEM).
In 2019 there were over 1,000,000 women working in STEM fields in the UK. That’s just shy of 25% of the STEM workforce — a huge contrast to where we were 50 years ago, but highlighting the continued need for us to do more to encourage more women into these careers and challenge the gender-bias that lies in traditionally male-dominated fields.
#ChoosetoChallenge
To celebrate this year’s International Woman’s Day we’re celebrating three incredible women, all with very different careers— asking them to share what it’s really like to be a women in STEM and what employers can do to encourage more gender diversity at work.
Tell us a bit about you + what you do
Cristina: I am the Chief Technology Officer at MediSieve, a medical device company working on the development of a technology called Magnetic Blood Filtration (MBF). I lead the technical development of our medical device products and their regulatory compliance.
Read Cristina’s interview here.
Claudia: I’m a Senior Software Engineer at Weaveworks. My job is a little abstract to explain, but it basically involves building programs for platform engineers, which lets them build the cloud, which lets web/application developers run their code.
Read Claudia’s interview here.
Vicki: I’m an online marketing and website optimisation consultant and run by own consultancy, Hey Vicki Jakes. I help other entrepreneurs get more leads and sales from their websites.
Read Vicki’s interview here
International Women’s Day 2021 — #ChoosetoChallenge
A challenged world is an alert world and from challenge comes change.
So let’s all choose to challenge.
International Women’s Day is about celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity. To find out how you can get involved visit www.internationalwomensday.com/
