黑料导航

In honor of Women鈥檚 History Month, Assistant Professor of Behavioral Sciences聽Nicole Calma-Roddin, Ph.D., looks back on her role models, how far gender equality has come, and how far we have to go.

When I was a child, I was obsessed with women鈥檚 history. I think I read every book in the school library about the women鈥檚 rights movement throughout history, especially the women鈥檚 suffrage movement. In my everyday life, I saw discrepancies between how women鈥檚 sports were treated compared to men鈥檚 sports and how the efforts of well-meaning teachers trying to promote chivalry were often instead interpreted as a message that girls weren鈥檛 as strong or capable as boys.

At the same time, I was blessed to see female role models everywhere. In my reading, I learned about historical figures like Marie Curie, Harriet Tubman, and Shirley Chisolm. I witnessed strength, compassion, and independence in my mother and grandmothers. For entertainment, I read about fictional girls, like American Girl Historical Characters Samantha Parkington and Josefina Montoya, and watched Star Trek鈥檚 Dr. Beverly Crusher and Deanna Troi boldly go where no man (or woman) had gone before.

When I grew up, I didn鈥檛 think twice about wanting to pursue science as a career. While I typically felt encouraged in this pursuit, I was aware that not everyone saw women in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields as the norm. I remember vividly one time when I was a graduate student presenting my research at an academic conference in 2015. The conference was taking place in a big hotel in a major city, and I stopped at a convenience store in the hotel to pick something up after my poster session. While paying, the male clerk asked a question that he probably asked everyone: 鈥淎re you visiting for vacation or business?鈥� I told him that I was visiting for the conference that was going on. His face turned to surprise and disbelief as he asked, 鈥淎re you a scientist?鈥� It was a positive interaction, but it was clear that I was not what he expected.

We鈥檝e come a long way, and many feel we鈥檝e reached gender equality, but statistics show that this is not the case. While there鈥檚 been a big push for women in STEM fields, women are still severely . Similarly, women currently make up only . This percentage is celebrated as a record high, although this is much less than what we should expect given the proportion of women in the country. And women are still paid less than men. As I write this we approached Equal Pay Day (celebrated on March 14), a date that  although this is a slightly deceptive name as that symbolic date is actually much later in the year for women of color.  

To me, Women鈥檚 History Month is a celebration of what women have done and what we鈥檙e still doing. It is a reminder of the obstacles we鈥檝e overcome and the mountains we鈥檙e still climbing.

May we look back and be inspired by the examples of the women who came before us. May we look ahead as we envision and work towards a more just and equitable world. And may we look around us to see, support, and celebrate the women in our everyday lives.