TASSA Celebrates Women’s History Month
by Candan Tamerler, PhD
March 8th is the International Women's Day, giving us an opportunity to recognize and celebrate women around the world and their contributions to societies, science, culture, and more. It only takes a moment to remember the impressive achievements of women in all continents by looking back to a long history of huge enthusiasm and commitment to integrate the other half of the human talent to the professional life. Last century has witnessed great improvements and significant shift in both women`s and society`s thoughts about women`s equality and visibility in every aspect of life.
While International Women`s day is on the spot light, however, it is also important to continue to raise awareness to overcome persisting gender inequalities in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields (STEM). Based on a recent report by Association for Women in Science (awis.org, 2011), the undergraduate degrees completed by women in STEM areas in the United States are still not fewer than men. This may go up to a 20 percent difference when it comes to engineering degrees. Furthermore, pursuing STEM career is even lower than the degree received for women compared to men. There have been many studies referring to embedded gender bias and many myths related to these implicit approach. One such example is the myth regarding “Women don`t become engineers because they avoid math.” However the facts demonstrate that women have been almost half of undergraduate math majors since 1980s. Over the past decade there has been an increased awareness in the scientific community in the United States about the need to increase the representation of women in STEM fields. In academic fields, women holding full professor position in science, engineering and health fields increased from 10 percent to 22 percent in the last decade. Still, for example in biomedical fields, although women who have PhD degree increased to 40 percent since 1990s, the associate professors and full professors are still below 30% and 20%, respectively in basic science departments and medical schools.
We have exceptional women scientists and scholars in STEM areas in the U.S.; however, there is still much opportunity for progress. The increased recognition of the need to expand the nation’s technical workforce for the future resulted in many efforts that have been made to improve STEM education at all stages. One of the major effort is the National Science Foundation`s ADVANCE program: Increasing the participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers. This program actively focuses both on the transforming institutions as well as on tutoring women to change the academic culture to overcome the underrepresentation of women in STEM academic positions as well as in leadership roles. Many Universities around the U.S. actively participate ADVANCE programs. Another effort to mention is COACh (coach.uoregon.edu) organization focusing on increasing the number and careers success of women scientists and engineers. Their innovative programs and strategies provide networking and mentoring activities to assist women in their career advancement in the U.S. and across the globe.
The idea of an International Women's Day first was celebrated across the United States on 28 February 1909. It was continued to be celebrated as the last Sunday of that month until 1913, then it was transferred to 8th of March as a global date for International Women's Day. Since then, International Women`s Day has undertaken a new global dimensions for women in developed and developing countries. There have been many internationally agreed strategies, programs to advance the status of women globally. TASSA applauds the achievements of women who give their expertise to inspire other women in the US, and globally. We also hope that women all around the world will get equal access to education, training and science and technology!
TASSA wants to be a facilitator in closing the gender gap among women scientists and scholars bridging US-TR. To follow up on these activities, TASSA will initiate a Women In Science, Engineering and Social Science (WISES) workshop in the fall, 2013 gathering Turkish-American Women Scientists and Scholars from the U.S. and Turkey. There will be presentations, panel and career discussions among the participants. We will listen the journey of women in both countries and learn from their experience and follow their leadership.
TASSA newsletter The Bridge also is proud to announce another talented Woman Young Scientist, Ayse Kivilcim Coskun, from Boston University’s Electrical and Computer Engineering Department in the current issue! We have our regular column “Crossing the Bridge by Nilay Papila, and Gizem Donmez tells about her participation in NODE’s meeting.
I would like to finish with a paragraph from Nature Editorial “Science for all” (07 March 2013),
“Whether female scientists will want to celebrate International Women’s Day on 8 March may depend on how far they look back in time. Things have changed, and if you talk in terms of decades, there are considerable victories to cheer about. But despite those victories, progress now seems to have stalled.”
http://www.nature.com/news/science-for-all-1.12535
All the best for Women all around the world.