If you haven’t read this year’s bestseller Lessons In Chemistry, you’re missing out. Clever, funny and powerful, it follows the story of a single mother in the Sixties battling the patriarchy as she fights to make her way in the world of science. Abiogenesis specifically, aka the origin of life. Thankfully that was a different era, but despite recent progress, women are still underrepresented across STEM industries – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. According to the For Women in Science programme, a partnership between the Foundation L’Oreal and Unesco, women make up only a third of researchers worldwide, and less than 4% of Nobel prizes have been awarded to women. In a bid to change that, the programme supports hundreds of young female researchers every year – and also highlights five scientists from around the world working on ground-breaking and vital research, awarding them the honour of International Laureate. ‘In the time of a generation, the For Women in Science programme has contributed to creating a real transformation by raising the profile of women representing every continent and breaking new ground in all disciplines,’ said Alexandra Palt, executive director of the Fondation L’Oréal. ‘However, while we are conscious of the progress we have made, we remain determined, as the task remains significant. The presence of women in science and particularly in senior positions is still too low due to the gender inequality and discrimination they still have to face.

Representation, community, and equity: this is how we’re changing the face of tech. Watch Dr. Tarika Barrett speak about closing the gender gap in tech on PIX11 News.

When Ambika Kamath was a graduate student in evolutionary biology at Harvard University, she knew one thing for sure: She wasn’t going to research anoles, the lizards that her adviser, Jonathan Losos, specialized in. Losos encouraged her to work with anoles after all, because it was well established that males hold individual territories that they protect from other males, and females only mate with the male whose territory they reside in. That would make it more straightforward for Kamath to study how anole territoriality differed across habitat types, like forests and parks. So Kamath went to Florida, where she identified individual anoles and tracked their movements day in, day out. Kamath studied the anoles “in a larger area, in a longer period of time than anyone else had ever done,” says Losos, who is now at Washington University in St. Louis. But instead of revealing territorial differences, this massive dataset showed that the anoles weren’t actually territorial in the first place. Kamath looked into the historical record to see where the idea of anole territoriality originated. It started with a 1933 paper that described frequent sexual behavior between male lizards in the lab. The authors had concluded that this lab behavior must be “prevented by something” in the wild, Kamath says, which they inferred was the males protecting territories. “The very first conclusion,” she says, “was based on a homophobic response to observing male-male copulation.” That shaky conclusion caught on, and later researchers assumed it to be true.

Honoring the gay and trans folks that participated in the Stonewall Riots of 1969, June Pride is a celebration of the diverse identities that make up the LGBTQ+ community. While we may honor Pride in June, nature is celebrating all the time - as science increasingly shows, the natural world is a nonstop riot of identities, fluidity and adaptation, with diverse relationships we are only beginning to understand. For many LGBTQ scientists, the diversity and resiliency of the world they study provides inspiration all year long; it’s even prompted the growth of an emerging field, queer ecology. But the reality of being a queer scientist is not always easy. A 2018 study showed that LGBTQ students are more likely to drop out of STEM career pathways than their straight peers. LGBTQ professionals in STEM are also 30 percent more likely to experience workplace harassment compared with their non-LGBTQ peers. What is it like to be an LGBTQ scientist, studying our natural world? Read the students and alumni across UC answers about their experiences, the challenges they face, and the unique perspective being LGBTQ brings to their work.

If Chantal Navratil had listened to everyone who told her she didn’t seem like an engineer or was too young to start her own business, she wouldn’t have founded Chem Baddie Cosmetics. Read more about how she gives back to women in STEM and celebrates the beauty in science.

Females are appsolutely wired to know what platforms will land with an audience. And according to research, nearly 85% of all purchases are female-led - so why aren’t they at the helm of bringing more apps into reality? Read the blog naming our top 10 female-founded apps and their stories on how they got there.

Dr. Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian woman in space. Born in India, she immigrated to the United States after earning her degree in aeronautical engineering. In the 1980s, she became a naturalized citizen and obtained her masters and doctoral degrees in aerospace engineering. In 1994, NASA selected her as an astronaut candidate. Her first flight was in 1997 on the space shuttle Columbia, where she performed a spacewalk to recapture a Spartan satellite. Her second flight was in 2003 on Columbia, but when the shuttle re-entered Earth’s orbit for landing, part of the shuttle’s insulation broke off. This damaged the thermal protection system, causing hot gas to enter the wing and depressurizing the shuttle. All seven crew members died in the tragic accident. The crew’s legacy has been honored through documentaries and investigations to prevent future accidents. In 2010, the University of Texas dedicated a memorial to Chawla at the Arlington College of Engineering.

When Jane Donohoe, Director of Solution Engineering, joined Salesforce as a solution engineer, she admits she wasn’t quite sure she’d be a perfect fit for the role. But she loved working on Salesforce projects as a customer and was excited at the prospect of working with the solution engineering team. It didn’t take long for Jane to realise there is no cookie cutter fit for solution engineering. “I found that solution engineers have a lot of various characteristics. They are storytellers, builders, counsellors, consultants, mentors, technologists, architects, and innovators” she says. “Some have more of one attribute or a blend of all, but as a collective, we can and do have such a big business impact and influence on our customers and colleagues.” Read more insights from our conversation with Jane about the dynamic solution engineering team at Salesforce.

It’s hard to ignore the trendy headlines and wide range of reactions and emotions related to the topic of “quiet quitting.” The conversation points to two pressing concerns: worker (dis)engagement in corporate cultures, and employer anxiety about remote work and perceived low productivity that some have termed “productivity paranoia.” When unenthusiastic workers began sharing stories about separating their identities from their work, prioritizing “work-life balance” over career ambition, and choosing to do the bare minimum, it provoked a strong reaction from bosses who feared an epidemic of remote workers doing less than the bare minimum. Although this notion of “quiet quitting” is nothing new, in the context of a changing workforce it does point to a much-needed conversation about workplace culture, identity, inclusivity, and a reconfiguring of what work productivity can look like and how it can be assessed. What can be learned from research? Let’s start with some recent indicators of productivity and engagement among remote and hybrid workers. Microsoft reported that 87% of the rank and file say they’re just as productive at home, but 85% of leaders say the shift to hybrid work has made it challenging to have confidence their employees are being productive (Work Trend Index Pulse survey of 20,000 knowledge workers). Meanwhile, Microsoft says, office 365 data suggests greater productivity - more hours worked, more meetings, more multitasking. In another large survey, 55% of respondents reported working more hours remotely than in the office (compared to only 12% who reported working fewer hours). 90% said they were as - or more - productive at home (OwlLabs, 2021 survey of 2,050 full-time workers). Gallup reported a small overall increase in the ratio of “actively disengaged” to “engaged” workers in its most recent survey but found hybrid and remote workers to be more engaged than on-site workers. Government data shows a slump in workforce-wide productivity in 2022, following decades of growth, and in the context of continued supply-chain disruptions and other unique economic circumstances.

These Black women CEOs are on a mission to diversify the male-dominated gaming industry. They created their companies in hopes of increasing representation of not just gamers, but also the people making the games. When Dani Lalonders first fell in love with gaming, it wasn’t through some of the well-known classics that many enthusiasts name drop (though she does enjoy a good game of Super Mario and Zelda). Instead, it came from lighthearted offerings she played on her Game Boy and on the computer as a kid: Lizzie McGuire on the Go, Freddie Fish, Pajama with Sam, and Barbie’s Spa Adventure. A game that Lalonders wanted to play was one with some diversity. The only time she could play with a character who looked like herself was when she was able to customize players, and even then, there were limited Black skin tones. So, despite not having formal experience behind the scenes, she started building her own games, delving headfirst into game writing for visual novels, which she’d started doing around the age of 10. The end result was her first major game, ValiDate. Instead of an action game or something of the arcade genre, it’s a visual novel based on the dating experiences of younger twentysomethings, including those of the LGBTQ+ community.