Last week, I touched a bit on the isolation you feel when in grad school (re: this post) which brings me to this week's topic: Women in STEM
Believe it or not I'm a woman in science everyday 👩🏻🔬 Happy #WomenInScience Day! #WomenInSTEM pic.twitter.com/MAjauQqMKi— Caitlyn Cardetti (@CaitlynCardetti) February 11, 2019
Being a woman in STEM can come with it's own set of feelings of isolation and feelings that you don't belong (i.e. sexism, microaggressions, harassment, discrimination, etc). While we could talk for days upon days on these issues, I want to only talk about one aspect of being a woman in STEM today - and that's finding your support network.
I am very fortunate because I am in a department where my peers are fairly equal in number for being males and females which is extremely important. Why is this important? Well, studies have shown that women in Ph.D. programs that have more women are more likely to graduate (read more about that here). I am also fortunate because my peers are very supportive of each other; males and females.
I honestly couldn't do grad school without my pharm fam. This is my cohort taking some much needed respite. We orally defended our qualifying proposals this past week after spending the last few months writing them. Love you all! #phdchat pic.twitter.com/AgfpBIwr32— Caitlyn Cardetti (@CaitlynCardetti) January 27, 2019
But I know many grad students out there are not so lucky, in which case I want to point them to resources outside of their department.
Here at Stony Brook University, we have an amazing organization and community, the Graduate Women in Science and Engineering (GWiSE).
The GWiSE mission is to enhance the scientific, professional, and personal development of graduate women pursuing STEM degrees at Stony Brook University and provide a space for dialogue on issues unique to women in science. To sum it up, it is about amazing women doing amazing things. We're all about supporting each other, socializing and science. But this group is so much more than just women supporting other women, we support everyone. We have male allies in our club, we have non-STEM majors in our club. We want STEM and quite frankly, our world to be a space where everyone is welcome so that is what we strive for and hope to reflect in everyone of our events.
We're loving the turn out tonight at our Women In STEM Research Showcase. Thank you for supporting #WomenInSTEM here at @GradSBU pic.twitter.com/lU4nJrrM5Z— SBU GWISE (@SBU_GWISE) April 4, 2019
Many campuses, have their own form of GWiSE in some form or another. But if you don't have this group on your campus, start one! It will be a lot of work but I promise you, if you build it they will come.
If you need assistance forming a club, many national organizations (see list of resources below) will assist you with form a chapter. SBU GWiSE is not-associated with any national chapters as this allows us to not need to collect dues, we are funded through the graduate student fees through the Graduate School Organization (GSO). SBU GWiSE is also a pretty new organization, we've only been here about four years but every year we are growing and gaining traction. If you're at SBU, join us (check out our upcoming events on Facebook or join our mailing list).
Additional Reading/Resources:
Do you have a similar organization on your campus? Do have any other resources or interesting articles relating to this topic? Please share them below in the comments.
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