More Than A Magazine, A Movement
Despite the political, economic and public health challenges this year—or perhaps because of them—feminists mobilized, fought for our rights, and made progress on many of the issues we care deeply about.
From voter mobilization to reproductive justice, politicians to pop stars, here are our top feminists of 2020.
Sunniva Sorby of Canada and Hilde Fålun Strøm of Norway, two citizen scientists, became the first women to overwinter alone—or spend the winter—in the Arctic, without men.
These two have returned to overwinter in the high Arctic for the second time, bringing groundbreaking scientific research to prestigious institutions while raising awareness about climate change.
The award of the Nobel in Chemistry to Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier speaks volumes. The challenges these women faced are just the most recent in a long history of minimizing the important role women have played in genetics, starting from early in the field.
The energy sector in Mexico is known for its gender imbalance. While women are underrepresented in board of directors in all sectors, the energy sector is worse, with only 3% female participation.
In order to support women’s advancement to the upper echelons of the industry, a group of prominent women in the sector have formed an advocacy organization called Voz Experta. The organization aims to advocate for its members to balance out expert panels composed only of men, or “manels.”
For the first time in the last 20 years, girls outnumber boys and represent 60 percent of this year’s group of Regeneron Science Talent Search finalists.
“It is a major misconception that the lack of women of STEM is a result of girls not being interested in STEM. The truth is girls are rarely given the chance to be interested in STEM.”
Gender stereotypes inform the expectations of women working in public health. Women’s job performances have always been—and continue to be—assessed along different metrics than men’s.
London, 1953. Scientists are on the verge of discovering what they call the secret of life: the DNA double helix. Providing the key is driven young physicist Rosalind Franklin. But if the double helix was the breakthrough of the 20th century, then what kept Franklin out of the history books? A play about ambition, isolation and the race for greatness. Listen to the audio play here!
Through the darkness of the COVID-19 pandemic, (s)heroic stories still shine—like that of June Almeida, who first discovered coronaviruses in 1964.
Illustrating data feminism in action, Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein’s “Data Feminism” shows how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical—and empirically wrong—classification systems.
Kathy Bisbee, a 2019 Virtual World Society Nextant Legacy Award winner, is promoting access, inclusion and diversity in the realm of XR—the spectrum of Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and beyond—through Brookline Interactive Group’s Public VR Lab, a program committed to enacting social and economic change now so that others can benefit later.
