Boston.com reporter Erin Connolly writes about the MIT panel on women in STEM, highlighting the personal stories of three panel participants. “We really need to make sure that women have the privilege to move forward in any field we want,” said MIT senior Tami Forrester during the event.
Mónica Feliú-Mójer writes about the Latinas in STEM Foundation, created by five MIT alumae, for Scientific American. “We want to spread awareness about STEM and to encourage Latinas in K-12 grades,” says co-founder Diana Albarrán Chicas.
In a piece for The Boston Globe, Jennifer Smith writes about the Math Prize for Girls competition held at MIT over the weekend. “Now in its sixth year, the Math Prize for Girls competition is aimed at deflating gender stereotypes that organizers say dissuade young women from entering technology-based fields,” writes Smith.
Melissa Lott of Scientific American reports on the third annual Clean Energy Education & Empowerment (C3E) women’s initiative symposium co-hosted by the MIT Energy Initiative. The group works in partnership with governments around the world to increase the participation of women in the energy field.
Colleen DeBaise writes for The Huffington Post about a week-long summer program hosted by the MIT Enterprise Forum that introduces high school girls to tech entrepreneurship. "I love promoting women entrepreneurs,” says Lori Hoberman, the chair of the Enterprise Forum’s New York chapter. “We don't have enough of them.”
Nitasha Tiku of The New York Times interviews Dr. Natalie Rusk of the MIT Media Lab about how to interest young girls in coding. Rusk was one of the developers of Scratch, an open-source programming platform for children.
Writing for Slate, Elizabeth Weingarten looks at closing the gender gap in the STEM fields. As part of her reporting, Weingarten highlights the study Professor Nancy Hopkins led into gender biases at MIT, and how that evaluation made it easier for women to pursue a career at MIT while also raising children.
Irene Greif talks to The Atlantic’s Rebecca Rosen about being the first woman to receive her Ph.D. in computer science from MIT, her decision to pursue a career as a researcher and her efforts to pioneer the field of computer-supported cooperative work.
The Atlantic’s Rebecca Rosen profiles MIT alumna Radia Perlman in the first installment of a new series on pioneering women in science and technology. Rosen discusses Perlman’s early interest in science, her first introduction to programming and her time at MIT.
Institute Prof. Sheila Widnall, the first woman to lead the Air Force, and Linguistics alumna Jessie “Little Doe” Baird, an indigenous language preservationist, are two of the 10 accomplished women chosen to represent Massachusetts in USA Today’s Women of the Century series, reports Nicole Simmons. Baird was also included in the paper’s nationwide list of 100 Women of the Century.