Calling All Women Futurists

The future needs you, desperately.

I know a lot of women who work in science and tech. But I don’t know any women who consider themselves ~*futurists*~.

I know part of this is that there are a lot of different definitions of this word. For many people it brings to mind someone who forecasts trends for a major corporation, or someone who builds robots in a top-secret laboratory somewhere. These are valid definitions. But to me, a futurist is anyone who likes to think about, study, read about, dream about, and build the future.

Futurists are artists, activists, entrepreneurs, scientists, engineers, and dreamers.

They believe in magic because magic is just science and tech, undiscovered and unapplied.

They push us to think critically about our now so that a better reality can emerge.

The world will always need more futurists.

But leaders of the World Future Society and Association of Professional Futurists estimate that less than 1/3 of their groups’ members identify as a woman. And after a few years writing about and researching futurism, I can’t help but notice that most of the conversation around these topics is dominated by white men.