PopGen Sparks Again

Since the 17th century in many countries, bringing home a son is one of their greatest constellations. But this only shows what great strides feminism has made to the 21st century girls and in their decisions. Today there are just a plethora of opportunities and positive role models that have shined a new light to the girls growing up in this era.

Unfortunately, as we romanticize all of those great concepts, we should also raise the negative impact science has made not only by gender but also of the color of your skin. In the recent reading of Double Jeopardy in Astronomy and Planetary Science, women we sought out in this study to better understand if women of color faced risks of gendered and racial harassment.

Throughout this mentorship in the Astronomy program, this table displays White Women (WW), Women of Color (WOC), White Men (WM), and Men of Color (MOC). The first piece of information that I collected was the ratio of white people to people of color. As you can see, there are over 200 white women whereas there are consistently less than 50 women of color. And as the authors have hypothesized, women were more likely than men to observe negative remarks across several of the categories.

When your identity is being stripped down for something so unreasonable, it impacts us and in our lives everyday. Growing up we are taught and learn to be like such great scientists but like Banu Subramaniam asks, Why weren’t they my skin tone? Why weren’t they my gender? But that is why we learn and study from strong women in science now. Even though women fight through these barrier, they are proven today. They stand willing and knowledgeable to go through the same rigorous training to become the heros in Science that girls may look up to.