Making #HerStory Matter: Promoting Gender Equality on Arabic Wikipedia
The overwhelming majority of articles in Arabic are about men—as are the vast majority of editors. To see more women's stories, more women need to edit, which is one of the goals of the campaign. Click through to read more about the #HerStory effort—because marginalization, oppression and inequality can only be fought effectively when we fully appreciate women, their lives and their stories.
egyptianstreets.com - Wikipedia, the sixth-most-visited website in the world, is a hub for many hoping to find information about their favourite movie stars, historical locations, sports and more. With more than 40 million articles in 293 languages, it is therefore not surprising that a new campaign was launched to promote greater representation of women on Wikipedia.
#HerStory hopes to tackle the issue of gender equality in all areas of Wikipedia’s operations. Launched by UN Women in Egypt, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Empower Women, the HeForShe campaign, and UNIT, #HerStory aims to double the number of female editors on Arabic Wikipedia while increasing awareness of women’s contributions online and increasing knowledge about gender concepts.
According to the campaign, there are at least 76,380 articles about men on Arabic Wikipedia and just 13,617 about women. Meanwhile, 85 percent of Wikipedia’s editors are men despite the fact that the website is used by both men and women equally.
It is these statistics and more that have pushed #HerStory to campaign to close the gender knowledge in the online sphere.
Mentorship And The Art Of The Cold Email
fastcompany.com - Myriad blogs and self-help books tout the benefits of having a mentor: that person that helps guide you up your career beanstalk. But finding a mentor can often seem elusive. Perhaps that’s because looking for a single person to lead you through your career isn’t the right approach.
"I don't think anyone should have one mentor unless you have one problem for the rest of your life," insists Liz Wessel, cofounder and CEO of WayUp, a startup aimed at connecting college students with jobs. When she encounters a problem or needs advice, she makes a list of all the people that she knows might be best at solving that particular issue, then contacts each person directly.
"I'm all about cold emailing," she says while speaking with two other female founders, Jennifer Fitzgerald, CEO and cofounder of Policy Genius, and Kathryn Minshew, cofounder and CEO of The Muse, at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival. It's an intimate audience mostly made up of women.
The cold email, Wessel says, has landed her dinner at Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s house and conversations with executives at Match Group and Twitter. Wessel’s endearing nature may play a part in her success, but she says her cold emails work because she carefully researches her prospective mentors.
'Science Wide Open' Aims to Change the Game for Girls In Science
We're big believers in the saying "if she can't see it, she can't be it," so we were thrilled to see the book series Kickstarter Science Wide Open succeed wildly, exceeding its goal by more than ten times.
Science Wide Open, by John Coveyou, will teach "some basic concepts in chemistry, biology and physics in simple and memorable terms by using the natural questions and curiosity of a young child"--but the coolest thing is that the series will do so by telling the stories of women scientists throughout history. The author hopes to inspire a generation of young girls to strive to explore the mysteries of science, just like boys and men have always been encouraged to do.
Coveyou has covered science for young minds before, and has a passion for tapping into the well of wonder and curiosity that drives young people to learn and discover the world around them. It was his daughter that motivated him to represent women in his latest series. Click through to learn more, and keep teaching our young girls and boys to explore and care for the world!
observer.com - Despite the fact that women-led companies perform three times better than those with male CEOs, women in the U.S. earn only 28 percent of computer science degrees, own only 5 percent of tech startups and hold only 11 percent of executive positions at Silicon Valley companies. They make up only 29 percent of the science and engineering workforce, and only 11 percent of physicists and astronomers are women. No matter which part of the STEM world you look into, women are underrepresented. And throughout history, many of the discoveries of female scientists have been actively diminished and sometimes even stolen. That’s not to say girls and women aren’t interested in science, though—a 2012 study from the Girl Scout Institute found 75 percent of girls were interested in fields related to science, technology, engineering and math.
So where are the women scientists? The gender gap in STEM certainly has to do with bias, but the real reason there are so few women in science starts long before they’re ready for careers. It starts when they’re toddlers.
From an early age, girls are—both indirectly and directly—discouraged from pursuing math and science. They’re given (or at least marketed) dolls and play kitchens, while boys are naturally thought to want LEGOs and microscopes. A new Kickstarter from Genius Games, however, is trying to change that with a series of children’s books about women scientists that is both educational and inspiring. It’s called Science Wide Open and has already raised over $30,000 in just the first three days, which is five times its goal.
These Georgia Tech physicists helped prove Einstein right - Atlanta Magazine
Deirdre Shoemaker, director of the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, and longtime researcher Laura Cadonati discussed their findings recently. The breakthrough confirmed predictions made 100 years ago, by Albert Einstein. Their team confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, predicted by Einstein's theory of relativity. The finding will affect how physicists study and describe the entire universe going forward.
If you find gravitational waves a bit tough to understand, you're not alone—we're a bit fuzzy on the details. But it's a fascinating, inspirational read, and just one more way women are—excuse the pun—making waves. Read more at the link to learn about their amazing work.
atlantamagazine.com - Deirdre Shoemaker has known from the time she was a 12-year-old science fiction fan that she wanted to spend her life studying black holes. But when she came to Georgia Tech in 2008 as a founding faculty member of the university’s Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, she found few other female postgraduates.
“You see women in biology, life sciences, and even math, but physics is still lagging for whatever reason,” says the bubbly Shoemaker, who in 2013 became director of the center, which researches cosmic mysteries like dark matter and particle physics.
This past February, Shoemaker and Laura Cadonati, a veteran researcher who joined Tech last year, were part of the international team that confirmed the existence of gravitational waves, a long-elusive cosmic feature first predicted a century ago by Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity.
A few days after the scientific breakthrough made headlines around the world, the two women delivered a presentation on the findings during a Sunday afternoon event sponsored by the Atlanta Science Tavern. Before an improbably standing-room-only crowd at the Decatur Recreation Center, they explained that the first gravitational waves ever to be detected had come from the collision and merger of two black holes—each about 30 times the mass of the sun—that occurred 1.3 billion years ago.
“The gravitational wave discovery,” Cadonati says, “has opened up new ways to study the universe” because the waves can be used to collect data about distant objects like neutron stars and cosmic events like the Big Bang.
This Woman Created an App to End Hunger in America
MAKERS brings us this story of Komal Ahmad, who was astounded by the dichotomy between those who go hungry and the excess food businesses throw out every day. She founded Copia as a way to make it easier for companies to share extra food. The app "technology enables businesses to receive a tax write-off and a reduction in disposal costs for providing meals to communities in need," according to the company's website.Click through to read more.
makers.com - "It shouldn't be this hard to do the right thing."
That's what Komal Ahmad said after offering to buy lunch for a homeless veteran while she was an undergraduate at University of California Berkeley. The encounter allowed her to compare two stark realities: just across the street the university was throwing away thousands of pounds of food while the veteran sitting across from her was having his first meal in three days.
What became a mission to feed the hungry with the university’s leftovers blossomed into an app to end hunger in America.
Today, Ahmad is the founder and CEO of Copia, an app that she describes as "an Uber for food-recovery," matching non-profits serving veterans, children, women, and those in need to companies with leftover gourmet food. This past Super Bowl weekend, Copia organized numerous pickups of food throughout the San Francisco Bay Area that ended up feeding more than 41,000 people.
"It is the sexiest thing that you could solve instantly," she said in an interview later adding, "We use technology to optimize every other portion of our life, why can't we use it to optimize the most unnecessary problem of our time?"
Read more here.
The Movie About NASA’s Black Female Scientists That’s Been A Long Time Coming—ThinkProgress
Women, especially women of color, do not always enjoy the notoriety and recognition of their male peers—even when they are instrumental in the scientific progress of humanity. One movie, Hidden Figures, focuses on black women mathematicians working for NASA during the 1960s. ThinkProgress has more about the movie, the nonfiction book upon which it's based, and the movement to recognize women, especially women of color, as central players and leaders in the human story. Check out the trailer here, and read more at the link.
thinkprogress.org - The movie trailer premiered to Twitter fanfare on Sunday night during Olympic prime time. Sandwiched between two Olympic events, the timing of the new trailer seemed aimed at generating buzz for these long-overlooked women among the widest audience possible.
The trailer for Hidden Figures, an upcoming movie focusing on three black female mathematicians working at the NASA during the days of Jim Crow and the civil rights movement, attacks this erasure head on.
The highlights of the space race still loom large in the American imagination. John Glenn, the first man to orbit the earth, and Neil Armstrong, the first man to step on the moon, are both household names. But behind those celebrated men were legions of scientists and engineers, among them scores of brilliant women of all backgrounds, whose brainpower made it all possible. Those women, for the most part, have been forgotten — until now.
In the trailer, a white cop comes across the movie’s three central women — Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae) — marooned on the side of the road thanks to car trouble (the alternative, one of the women says half-joking and half-not, would be to “sit in the back of the bus”). When the cop asks for ID, they hand over a NASA ID card.
Tech's Gender Wage Gap Is Real, Partly Because Men Don't Believe It Is.
Melissa Loble, VP of platform and partnerships at Instructure, talks about the gap -- both in the industry and in perceptions -- and discusses how we might combat it, as well as some encouraging news for the future.
entrepreneur.com - Much has been said and written about the gender gap in tech, including the disparity in pay between men and women. We’ve all seen the statistics. According to salary data from Glassdoor and the U.S. Census Bureau, women in tech fields earn roughly 75–80 percent of that earned by their male counterparts in tech positions. The biggest disparities occur among coders (more on that later). This isn't just a moral problem. It's an issue of missed opportunity for the tech economy. It's time we get beyond acknowledging the problem and get started on figuring out why it exists so we can fix it.
The first step in fixing the wage gap is acknowledging the perception gap. According to a study by Bridge, the corporate training arm of my company, men don’t see the equal pay problem as much as women do. In fact, the majority of men think women have equal opportunity, but less than half of women agree. This finding seems to support the opinion of Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor. "My view is that in heavily male dominated fields, the people who are making the decisions about pay and promotion are disproportionately men, and that can play a role in why we're seeing gaps in male and female pay," Chamberlain told the L.A. Times.
Celebrating women’s contributions to science
researchgate.net - While gender parity remains a significant problem in STEM research—according to UNESCO, women account for just 28% of researchers worldwide—female scientists are also making major contributions in male-dominated fields. We speak with some of those women about their work and ask them what advice they have for aspiring scientists.
Brooke Anderson Thornton Mission Operations Manager - NASA
ResearchGate: Could you tell us a bit about your work?
Thornton: I am the Mission Operation Manager for the Stratospheric Aerosol Gas Experiment (SAGE) III on International Space Station (ISS). I oversee the operations of the instrument on the space station. The number one priority is to ensure the instrument is working properly, and we do this by monitoring temperatures, voltages, currents, and other information from the instrument to ensure it is operating within its limits. We also develop and execute the commands that operate the instrument, download the science data from the instrument, and coordinate ISS activities and special science requests.
RG: When you were entering your field, were there women you looked to as science role models?
Thornton: When I first began at NASA, I was performing radiation analysis on new concepts for space suits and habitats. During my research, I encountered some of the work that Dava Newman had done at MIT. Her use of multi-disciplinary research on the space suit gave me the motivation to look into how different materials could not only provide radiation protection, but also support other systems including structural and thermal support. Now it’s great to see that her hard work has propelled her to Deputy Administrator at NASA, and this continues to motivate me to work hard knowing the possibilities I could reach.
RG: What advice would you give young women thinking of pursuing careers in science?
Thornton: My advice to young women is to have determination and not take things personally, especially negative feedback. Know that you will make mistakes and people will call you out on them. When this happens, it’s easy to take it personally and let it lower your self-esteem. Criticism doesn’t mean you’re not a good scientist or engineer! You need to have determination: learn from it, correct it, and continue to work hard; then you will earn respect from your colleagues.
The Amazing Women Building Tech Networks in the Middle East
projectgirlspire.com - All across the Middle East, women are revolutionizing their local societies, becoming prominent leaders in a variety of fields, including tech. Not only are women entering tech in larger numbers, but they are also using their presence to help other women start a career in the industry. Here are some Middle Eastern tech-centric organizations by women, for women:
ArabWIC
Professor Sana Odeh is the founder and chair of Arab Women in Computing (ArabWIC), which aims to “elevate the status of Arab women in computing, and allow them to achieve their career goals.” The group, which was founded in 2012, also works to create networks between groups of women in the computing sector. Specifically, ArabWIC holds an annual conference on Arab women in computing and provides a mentoring program to new computer science students and graduates.
ArabWIC raises awareness for the unique problems faced by Arab women working in the tech industry and is currently developing scholarships for female graduate students in computer science. Their leaders include women from all over the Middle East who share a common focus on creating a better environment for women in the field of computing.
Wonder Women Tech Conference to Highlight Female Tech Contributions
With the theme #WEAREPIONEERS, the 3,000 attendees will explore women, diversity in tech, and the pioneers leading the way for innovation, according to a city release. Long Beach is set to sponsor the event for the next three years.
“I wanted to co-create an ecosystem where we could discover a diverse range of pioneering women and men as role models, and cultivate a network where women were supporting and educating other women through their journey toward building success in tech, STEAM and innovation,” said Lisa Mae Brunson, founder of Wonder Women Tech, in a statement.
Five winners will be announced for the women, who entered the #InvestInABoss Pitch Competition in May. The pitch is featured as one of many events at Wonder Women Tech.
Winners will be judged on their initial pitch video submission by a panel of judges, which include industry professionals, city officials, and VC/Angel Investors, according to a release. Winners will receive a custom crowd-sourced funding and resource campaign for one year, along with exposure of investors and potential customers.
Get your ideas out fast, exec tells women entrepreneurs at WiSTEM
The advice was part of the keynote address at a pitch event for WiSTEM, a program connecting women entrepreneurs to capital, community and technology resources. The program is hosted by 1871, an entrepreneurial hub in Chicago dedicated to digital startups.
Read on and click through for more insights and details from the event.
chicagotribune.com - Entrepreneurs need to get ideas in front of people ASAP to make sure customers actually want their products, a Chicago financial tech pioneer said.
Many businesses fail simply because they settle on products for which there is no customer need, said Kristi Ross, co-CEO of Dough, Inc., which includes the Tastytrade online financial network and the younger-skewing Dough trading platform.
"An important part is making sure when you have an idea or a product, you get it out there," said Ross, offering tips on Thursday to a group of women-led startups and their supporters.
Ross was the keynote speaker at latest pitch event for WiSTEM, 1871's program for women-led startups. About 300 people turned out to hear the incubator's second cohort of companies pitch their products.
The 12 startups that pitched included a science, technology, engineering and math education program; a service offering to help employee engagement; and a platform to make the immigration process smoother.
Ross' company launched Tastytrade with a heavier emphasis on fun, hiring Second City comedians to keep things light.
This Afghan girl is defying the Taliban to become an astrophysicist
Nicholas Kristof, author of Half the Sky and New York Times contributor recently spoke with her and calls her Sultana, leaving her last name and location anonymous.
After the Taliban threatened to sear her skin with acid if she continued school, her family (especially her father) devised a plan to allow her to learn.
At first, her education began with leftover articles written in English -- scraped up from her brother’s school lessons. Piece by piece she taught herself English prior to voraciously finishing textbooks she acquired. Then her father added something to the house that transformed her struggle -- the Internet.
Suddenly, a connection to a seemingly infinite world of education was found. Soon, Sultana was chatting with university professors, supporters, and accomplished authors such as Kristof.
One person Sultana met online is Emily, a student at University of Iowa, who is helping Sultana come to US to study. This move brings Sultana one step closer to achieving her dream of becoming a physics professor. And despite some of her family’s reservations, Sultana is no less determined.
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Girls Can't Code Because, You Know, Boobs (And Other Myths)
“I’ve tried to get into coding but my cleavage is just so distracting,” quipped one young woman in this provocative YouTube video.
“When I'm not menstruating, I'm ovulating, so there’s no time to code at all,” lamented another.
If this all sounds entirely ludicrous, it’s supposed to.
Girls Who Code, a nonprofit dedicated to bridging the gender gap in tech, created this satirical clip to feature in a three-part series that explores the ridiculous gender stereotypes that exist in the world of computer science.
"We wanted to try something different and use humor and satire to question the stereotypes that tell our girls that coding is not for them," said Reshma Saujani, the organization's founder and CEO, in a statement. "Our hope is these videos will spark a much-needed conversation about the messages we send our young women and what we can do to create a more inclusive, well-rounded image of a programmer.”
Partnership Launched to Tackle Cervical Cancer in Africa
The new partnership, “AFRO Comprehensive Cervical Cancer Prevention and Control Initiative”, will work across the African Region to improve awareness; help empower women and healthcare professionals to improve prevention, screening and treatment rates of breast and cervical cancers.
“There are many obstacles to cervical cancer screening in resource-constrained countries, generally attributed to the lack of infrastructure as well as technical, medical and financial resources, and a lack of awareness and education on cervical cancer among women and healthcare providers,” explains Dr Abdikamal Alisalad, Acting Director, Non-Communicable Diseases, at WHO Regional Office for Africa. "Many lives can be saved if public awareness is strengthened on the importance of testing and early treatment,” he added.
Meet ELLE's 2016 Women in Tech
Marcela Sapone, 30, spent spring break of her first year at Harvard Business School in 2013 on "start-up lockdown," a project she'd thought up that involved her and four other students testing five business ideas over five days. The concept that seemed least feasible, conceived by her classmate Jessica Beck, was a subscription service that allowed busy professionals to outsource household tasks such as grocery shopping and cleaning. "We couldn't get the economics to work," Sapone says. But she and Beck knew there had to be a market, particularly after calling high-powered businesswomen (Sapone, who grew up in Copenhagen and Paris, had previously done a two-year stint at consulting firm McKinsey) and discovering almost all had live-in nannies or housekeepers. "But if you're 26, how can you afford that?" Sapone says. "We wanted to solve the problem for us."
Hello Alfred-named after Bruce Wayne's valet-was their answer. At first, Sapone and Beck collected customers with old-school flyers tacked up around Boston and hired employees through Craigslist-or did the errands themselves. But after graduating, they raised $2 million, launched HelloAlfred.com at the 2014 Tech Crunch Disrupt conference, and became the first all-female team to win the event's start-up competition (and its $50,000 prize).
Google Wants New Emojis to Represent Professional Women
In a proposal to the Unicode Consortium, which controls specifications for emojis, Google says it wants to create a new set "with a goal of highlighting the diversity of women's careers and empowering girls everywhere." The proposal says women — and those under 30 in particular — are the most frequent users of emojis.
Sample emojis provided by Google in the proposal show several female characters in professional clothing, including business suits, lab coats, medical scrubs and construction hats. One sample emoji even has a pitchfork and a farmer's hat. Google has also included sample male versions of the same emojis.
Mountain View, California-based Google wants Unicode to standardize the emojis by the end of the year.
Pros and Cons of Facebook's New Emojis
Jimmy Fallon weighs the good and bad of being able to do more than "like" a Facebook post. (Published Wednesday, March 2, 2016)
Guardian studies sexism, bias in online comments
We all know the adage. But what about when you're not face-to-face? Many women who write or produce content for the Internet have long experienced sexism in the reactions to their material. Now the Guardian has quantified the phenomenon, in a commissioned study examining over 70 million comments left on its site in the last 10 years.
It paints a disheartening picture, and we can only hope that becoming more aware of cruelty online--including that it can be every bit as damaging as cruelty offline--will help us to break down the oppression that comes with prejudice and online hate. And if you don't have something nice to say? Maybe learn more before speaking your mind, or just sign off for a bit.
Read an excerpt below, watch the video, and click through to read the rest and join in the conversation, as the outlet invites readers to weigh in on the issue and help them host better conversations online.
(Language warning for the video, mostly from the cruel comments being discussed.)
theguardian.com - Comments allow readers to respond to an article instantly, asking questions, pointing out errors, giving new leads. At their best, comment threads are thoughtful, enlightening, funny: online communities where readers interact with journalists and others in ways that enrich the Guardian’s journalism.
But at their worst, they are something else entirely.
The Guardian was not the only news site to turn comments on, nor has it been the only one to find that some of what is written “below the line” is crude, bigoted or just vile. On all news sites where comments appear, too often things are said to journalists and other readers that would be unimaginable face to face – the Guardian is no exception.
New research into our own comment threads provides the first quantitative evidence for what female journalists have long suspected: that articles written by women attract more abuse and dismissive trolling than those written by men, regardless of what the article is about.
[embed]https://cdn.theguardian.tv/interactive/2016/03/21/160321AbuseTop_4M_H264.mp4[/embed]
Although the majority of our regular opinion writers are white men, we found that those who experienced the highest levels of abuse and dismissive trolling were not. The 10 regular writers who got the most abuse were eight women (four white and four non-white) and two black men. Two of the women and one of the men were gay. And of the eight women in the “top 10”, one was Muslim and one Jewish.
And the 10 regular writers who got the least abuse? All men.
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Supermodel Karlie Kloss chats with us about the launch of Kode With Klossy, a coding camp for girls
Kloss, who says she’s always been interested in math and science, started learning to program a couple of years ago.
The supermodel partnered with the Flatiron School in New York City last year to launch #KodewithKarlie, a scholarship program for teen girls.
The supermodel is now starting Kode With Klossy, a coding summer camp for girls ages 13-18. The two-week camp will provide scholarships to 80 young women from New York, Los Angeles and Karlie’s hometown of St. Louis, Missouri.
Kloss chatted with me recently about why she decided to pick up the coding trade, how that plays out in her supermodel world and why she decided to launch a camp for young women interested in programming.
TC: You’re a supermodel with an ultra-successful career in the fashion industry. Why learn to code? What’s the story behind wanting to do that?
KK: I grew up in St. Louis and didn’t really know anything about fashion until I walked in a charity fashion show at my local mall and was signed to a modeling agency. Before my modeling career took off, I really loved my math and science classes in school. My dad was an ER doctor and as a girl, I dreamed of following in his footsteps. Taking coding classes brings me back to the excitement I felt as a kid in first-period biology. I’m a curious person and coding allows me to think about how our world is built.
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A new study says “digital fluency” can help women close the workplace gender gap by 2040
Gaining knowledge and confidence when it comes to technology may help women close the gender gap in the workplace by 2040, according to a new study. Whether it's perceived lack of expertise or an actual lack of education, we're certainly planning to follow these studies as they help paint a complex picture of pay inequity--and what we can do to resolve it. qz.com - A lack of digital prowess is hindering women in the workplace, according to a new study.
Women lag behind men in the workplace in many respects, from pay to leadership roles to opportunities in science, technology, and other fast-growing industries. They are also falling behind in the use of digital skills, the study found. It argues that helping women become more digitally savvy will help level the playing field for them in other areas in the near future.
Doubling the rate at which women use digital skills to learn, connect, and become more efficient can help close the workplace gender gap in the developed world by 2040, according to consultancy Accenture.
Accenture’s report focuses on what it calls “digital fluency.” It’s less about doing things like learning to code, and more about using technology to become more “knowledgeable, connected and effective” via taking remote courses, teleworking, or looking for jobs online. Men around the world overwhelmingly rely on technology more than women do, Accenture found, and that’s partly what’s getting them ahead in terms of pay, promotions, and the like.
Read more here.
For women in tech, feminism is in the details
techcrunch.com - The topic of women in tech can take on different forms. It is about women‘s positions and promotions (or the lack thereof) in the tech industry, with initiatives meant to help women network, find opportunities or hold discriminating industry leaders accountable.
It is also about developing technology that can help us make this world kinder to women, by offering solutions to problems that have to do with women’s health, safety and career dilemmas. And not last nor least, it is about how the information we consume and are exposed to influences the representation (or, once again, the lack thereof) of women everywhere.
The tech world is an arena where discoveries are made every day, and the responsibility to lead others in new directions is all around. Today’s human society learns via Wikipedia, blogs and social networks, which is why so-called insignificant changes are in fact quite dramatic. The following is a set of stories that have taken place over the past year; they may not be earth-shattering, but they absolutely symbolize the winds of feminist change.
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