International Women's Day, a Video to Celebrate
Dear friends of women in science,
March 8 is International Women's Day. I've had a lot of messages about this day, but not many of them have included information about activities in celebration of it. The conference from which I just returned, CREST sponsored by Women in Science and Engineering at McMaster, was in celebration of this day. They just had it a little early so I could be there and provide their keynote talks.
I did find one really good celebratory item, from Facebook. Introduced by Sheryl Sandberg. It's a video with comments about women in technology from both women and men. There is one really spectacular interview with a woman who actually writes code, a woman who describes arriving in a computer science class in a cheerleader's uniform. And then, she describes the day when the teacher had to introduce her as...but why should I spoil it for you? Go and listen here. And then perhaps follow the engineering thread on facebook here.
Happy Women's Day!
Laura
Wow, that Sophia Chung was something else! She really had chutzpah to stick in that programming class after the reception she got! I loved this video, even though it's too late for me in some ways. But I'd love to see today's students succeed in Computer Science.
ex CS
Hi Livi and Small Science Woman,
Here's the great thing: at McMaster, the organization is all done by students and postdocs, not faculty!! They do need funds, of course, but if a dean will step up to get things started, they can even solicit sponsors. What an energetic and powerful group of women I met at McMaster, the seven who ran the conference. Wow! It had to have developed their leadership powers.
best,
Laura
Hi Laura,
We don't have anything special, and it's too bad. I think it would be great to have a conference, but all the faculty here work so hard I hate to ask them to do more. In some ways, we have women's day every day, never letting a chance to encourage women pass.
Hi Laura,
We went over to a good talk at UCLA, but it was not on STEM fields. Maybe next year we'll try to organize something. At least a talk, although that conference you went to sounds really good. I need more people if we're going to do that much.
Livi
