Because STEM fields are so heavily male-dominated, some men may feel threatened when a woman comes in and completely OWNS that field. They may even resort to sending demeaning emails, asking for sexual favors or making sexist remarks to make that woman feel lesser than what she is.
This is the reality for Emily Temple-Wood, an aspiring biologist at Loyola University. In 2012, she co-founded WikiProject Women Scientists. The project ensures that women are rightfully being acknowledged for their accomplishments in science. It is inclusive of all the different types of women, including women of color. To this day, Temple-Wood is responsible for hundreds of articles, according to The Huffington Post.
But with her newfound important work on the internet, Temple-Wood also received tons of despicable trolling. The Wikimedia blog wrote that she got emails asking her for dates and saying she slept her way to the top (Pro-tip, guys: This is not the way to get a date. Maybe try being a decent human?). Instead of succumbing to the negativity that fills her inbox, the 21-year-old student is channeling that energy into something much more beneficial. For every negative email she receives, she keeps working on what she started, and writes a Wikipedia entry about a female scientist.
We could name several famous male scientists and inventors, but when it comes to naming a female one, many of us struggle. There is a very evident gender-bias of what has been instilled in us since we were little kids. Society continuously brushes female accomplishments to the side and praise male ones. Temple-Wood is well on the way to changing that.
Her project was just a spur of the moment decision too. “I just got pissed and wrote an article than night. I literally sat in the hallway in my dorm until 2 a.m., writing the first women in science article,” she told the Wikimedia blog in a 2012 profile. Women such as Elda Emma Anderson and Chien-Shiung Wu, who worked on the Manhattan Project, along with Julie Makani, who is renowned for her research on sickle cell disease. are among the amazing females featured.
So one more time—who run the world?