• Question: Are you proud to be a women scientist?

    Asked by Shannon to Vinita, Kirsty, Andrea on 18 Jun 2016.
    • Photo: Vinita Marwaha

      Vinita Marwaha answered on 18 Jun 2016:

      I am proud to be a female scientist. I hope that by highlighting examples of successful women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Maths) on my website Rocket Women (www.rocket-women.com), young girls around the world are inspired to follow their dreams! As Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, said, “If You Can’t See, You Can’t Be.” Which is so very true!

      I wanted to become an astronaut when I was younger and remember being an enthralled six-year-old when I realised that Helen Sharman was the first British astronaut, and had launch into space a couple of years earlier. Her story and seeing her achieve her goal certainly inspired me at a young age to work in the space industry. I hope that Rocket Women can do the same for other young girls globally!

    • Photo: Andrea Boyd

      Andrea Boyd answered on 22 Jun 2016:

      I’m proud to be an Engineer 🙂

      The short answer:
      At work I’ve never found that gender/age/race/background/etc matter at all – Engineering is one of the few sectors where work performance really is evaluated on merit alone.

      The long answer:
      I get a bit annoyed by all the women’s programs because it makes me suspicious if I’m selected for something: did they choose me because of my work? or have they not even looked at my work and they just want me because I’m a girl to fill a quota? – At work there’s no problems but I always have to ask this nowadays to make sure things I participate in outside of work are merit based too.

      In the Engineering workplace: I have never had any issue due to my gender in 10 years of working nor in my 5 years of studying. A few years ago I was on a panel discussing “Women from developing countries in Aerospace” at the IAC (think Olympics of the space world), I represented Australia. [Female Engineering] Participants from Iran, China, South Africa, Uruguay and Georgia, chaired by a female engineer from Spain, all came to the same conclusion: gender is no longer an issue in our workplace. It turned out that NASA’s first female engineer was also present in the audience: delighted to meet a generation of young women for whom space engineering was just another everyday career choice.

      Of course, gender ratios in engineering are still quite skewed. I used to work underground in the mining industry – flying to and from work by plane – as a Control Systems Engineer before moving to ESA. At the time, the women present were mostly admin, finance or metallurgists counted in the stats. Otherwise it would have been about 90% guys on my site. In my current job though, over half the operations team for the ISS programme are women and when I teach at space schools usually 50-60% of the students are girls. Good news for the future. I hadn’t thought about it much, but the space industry clearly inspires both young men and women. It’s an epic place to work 😀

    • Photo: Kirsty Lindsay

      Kirsty Lindsay answered on 22 Jun 2016:

      I’m proud to do a job I really enjoy and which I’m excited about- I just also happen to be a women.

      I’m also really happy I can talk to girls and young women so they can see that scientists and engineers are real people- male and female, and not just a stereotype. After all I don’t wear a lab coat, have any bubbling chemicals or a atom badge, I do have glasses I guess… 🙂

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