Exhibition at the Swift Current Museum provides perspectives on women working in science and technology fields
Women have made many contributions in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), but their achievements have often been ignored or diminished and they continue to deal with systemic barriers.
Their determination and accomplishments as well as their ongoing challenges are featured in the travelling exhibition Iron Willed: Women in STEM, which is currently on display at the Swift Current Museum.
Melissa Shaw, the City of Swift Current’s general manager of cultural and aquatic services, said the museum is really excited to present this travelling exhibition to the community. The exhibition was created as part of the Diversity of STEM initiative by Ingenium – Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation.
“As soon as I saw it, I thought it was an exhibit that we had to have,” she said. “Females in STEM is something that’s being talked about more and more. It was such an obvious and easy yes, if we were able to bring that here, and we jumped at the opportunity.”
She felt it is also quite fitting that the museum is able to host this exhibition at the same time as the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, which is celebrated annually on Feb. 11 to recognize the role of women and girls in this field and to highlight the importance of their full access to and participation in science and technology.
“The other thing that I really like about this exhibit is it’s giving us an opportunity to highlight some local females in STEM,” she said. “The community can nominate a person and we can highlight their accomplishments and help share how this field is growing every day.”
Ingenium has created a series of 101 posters featuring women in STEM as an educational resource that can be used in classrooms, community centres or workplaces. One of these featured women is Dr. Emily Bamforth, a palaeontologist who worked at the T.rex Discovery Centre in Eastend until 2022 and is now the curator at the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum in Alberta.
The Swift Current Museum is using this same poster format to create the local women in STEM posters for the exhibition. Posters will be created and displayed as part of the exhibition for all individuals nominated by community members.
“If anyone wants to nominate a woman who works in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics, they can just send an e-mail to us,” Shaw said. “We’ll get some information and we’ll put it up as part of the display so our community can continue to recognize these amazing women.”
The Swift Current Museum will also be hosting a Lunch and Learn with the theme Women in STEM at noon on March 20. The featured speaker at this event will be Dr. Barbara Cade-menun, a research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-food Canada at the Swift Current Research and Development Centre.
Shaw said it is important to create a local connection through exhibitions at the museum and the theme of the current exhibition provides opportunities to do that.
“Every exhibit that we bring in will have a bigger educational piece that attaches to our whole country, but it makes it that much more important when we can tie it to our local area and our community members,” she noted.
The exhibition gives recognition to the role of women in STEM through their personal stories, which highlights their achievements as well as the challenges they encountered during their careers.
Their stories are set against the broader background of societal attitudes about women and their workplace roles, and how those perceptions have changed or remained the same over the years.
Canadian wireless communication expert Dr. Veena Rawat became the first woman to earn a PH.D. in electrical engineering from Queen’s University in 1973. She was denied entry to a nickel mine for her doctoral research due to her gender.
The research of British chemist Rosalind Franklin played a crucial role in the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA, but her male colleagues did not acknowledge her contribution and only they received the Nobel Prize for this discovery.
Alice Wilson became Canada’s first female geologist in 1911, but she was not allowed to go with her male colleagues on fieldwork trips. She carried out solo field trips, but did not receive a vehicle while her male colleagues did.
Dr. Roberta Bondar was Canada’s first female astronaut and the first neurologist in space when she spent eight days on the space shuttle Discovery in 1992. She became a consultant and speaker, and her advice to young women has been to surround themselves with a support system of both women and men.
The exhibition notes that women continue to face workplace barriers and gender discrimination, and they are still underrepresented in scientific fields. For example, 59 per cent of all university graduates were women in 2011, but women made up only 39 per cent of all STEM university graduates.
Female students made up only 30 per cent of math or computer science graduates in 2011. Other data indicate that less than 13 per cent of practising licenced engineers in Canada are women.
There are several interactive features in the exhibition. Visitors can try to produce electricity with the piezoelectric effect. Canadian inventor Ann Makosinski invented a flashlight that applies the principle of piezoelectricity when she was in Grade 9.
Another interactive panel provide multimedia presentations about the specialized work activities of several female employees at Ingenium.
There is a section in the exhibition that discusses negative stereotypes about the abilities of girls and women as well as the persistence of systemic gender barriers. It includes an interactive panel that provides exhibition visitors an opportunity to evaluate their own hidden biases by carrying out an implicit association test.
Shaw felt this is a very insightful part of the exhibition on a directly personal level, because the results might be surprising to those who complete the test.
“We are not only learning about women in STEM, but it then turns it back on us to help us learn so we can continue to grow and have a better understanding of ourselves,” she said.
This travelling exhibition will be on display at the Swift Current Museum until April 20. Admission to the exhibition and museum is free. The museum is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday from 1-5 p.m. For more information, call 306-778-2775 or send an e-mail to museum@swiftcurrent.ca