Subject Resources: Women in STEM: Print Books

The Bold and the Brave investigates how women have striven throughout history to gain access to education and careers in science and engineering. Author Monique Frize, herself an engineer for over 40 years, introduces the reader to key concepts and debates that contextualize the obstacles women have faced and continue to face in the fields of science and engineering. She focuses on the history of women's education in mathematics and science through the ages, from antiquity to the Enlightenment. While opportunities for women were often purposely limited, she reveals how many women found ways to explore science outside of formal education. The book examines the lives and work of three women -Sophie Germain, Mileva Einstein, and Rosalind Franklin - that provide excellent examples of how women's contributions to science have been dismissed, ignored or stolen outright. She concludes with an in-depth look at women's participation in science and engineering throughout the twentieth century and the current status of women in science and engineering, which has experienced a decline in recent years. To encourage more young women to pursue careers in science and engineering she advocates re-gendering the fields by integrating feminine and masculine approaches that would ultimately improve scientific and engineering endeavours.

This innovative work critically studies the contemporary problems of one segment of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. The lack of a diverse U.S.-based pool of talent entering the field of engineering education has been termed a crisis by academic and political leaders. Engineering remains one of the most sex segregated academic arenas; the intersection of gendered and racialized exclusion results in very few Latina engineers. Drawing on cutting-edge scholarship in gender and Latino/a studies, the book provides an analytically incisive view of the experiences of Latina engineers. Sponsored by the National Science Foundation through a Gender in Science and Engineering grant, the authors bridge interdisciplinary perspectives to illuminate the nuanced and multiple exclusionary forces that shape the culture of engineering. A large, multi-institution, longitudinal dataset permits disaggregation by race and gender. The authors rely on primary and secondary sources and incorporate an integrated mixed-methods approach combining quantitative and qualitative data. Together, this analysis of the voices of Latina engineering majors breaks new ground in the literature on STEM education and provides an exemplar for future research on subpopulations in these fields. This book is aimed at researchers who study underrepresented groups in engineering and are interested in broadening participation and ameliorating problems of exclusion. It will be attractive to scholars in the fields of multicultural and higher education, sociology, cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and feminist technology studies, and all researchers interested in the intersections of STEM, race, and gender. This resource will be useful for policy-makers and educational leaders looking to revitalize and re-envision the culture within engineering.

Women in the developed world expect to work in the labour force over the course of their lives. On finishing school more girls are entering universities and undertaking professional training for careers than ever before. Males and females enter many high status professions in roughly equal numbers. However, engineering stands out as a profession that remains obstinately male dominated. Despite efforts to change, little progress has been made in attracting and retaining women in engineering. This book analyses the outcomes of a decade-long investigation into this phenomenon, framed by two questions: Why are there so few women in engineering? And why is this so difficult to change? The study includes data from two major surveys, accounts from female engineers in a range of locations and engineering fields, and case studies of three large engineering corporations. The authors explore the history and politics of several organisations related to women in engineering, and conclude with an analysis of a range of campaigns that have been waged to address the issue of women¿s minority status in engineering. Challenging Knowledge, Sex and Power will be of great interest to students of feminist economics, and is also relevant to researchers in women¿s studies and engineering education.

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Dava Sobel, the "inspiring" (People), little-known true story of women's landmark contributions to astronomy A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2017 Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Economist, Smithsonian, Nature, and NPR's Science Friday Nominated for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award "A joy to read." --The Wall Street Journal In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as calculators, or "human computers," to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. At the outset this group included the wives, sisters, and daughters of the resident astronomers, but soon the female corps included graduates of the new women's colleges--Vassar, Wellesley, and Smith. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The "glass universe" of half a million plates that Harvard amassed over the ensuing decades--through the generous support of Mrs. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in stellar photography--enabled the women to make extraordinary discoveries that attracted worldwide acclaim. They helped discern what stars were made of, divided the stars into meaningful categories for further research, and found a way to measure distances across space by starlight. Their ranks included Williamina Fleming, a Scottish woman originally hired as a maid who went on to identify ten novae and more than three hundred variable stars; Annie Jump Cannon, who designed a stellar classification system that was adopted by astronomers the world over and is still in use; and Dr. Cecilia Helena Payne, who in 1956 became the first ever woman professor of astronomy at Harvard--and Harvard's first female department chair. Elegantly written and enriched by excerpts from letters, diaries, and memoirs, The Glass Universe is the hidden history of the women whose contributions to the burgeoning field of astronomy forever changed our understanding of the stars and our place in the universe.

In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn't turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design, helped bring about the first American satellites, and made the exploration of the solar system possible. For the first time, Rise of the Rocket Girls tells the stories of these women--known as "human computers"--who broke the boundaries of both gender and science. Based on extensive research and interviews with all the living members of the team, Rise of the Rocket Girls offers a unique perspective on the role of women in science: both where we've been, and the far reaches of space to which we're heading.

Career success guide for female engineers.