Re-imagining 'Her'story: Women in STEM

As author Melissa Gregg points out in the opening chapter of her book entitled Counterproductive, "much of history is gendered," and the history of time management and productivity principles is no exception (2018). Women often find themselves on the outside of history looking in, despite the countless contributions they make to it. An example of this can be seen in the "commanding position of Frederick Winslow Taylor in the mythology of workplace timekeeping," which Gregg works to rectify by offering a female-centric recounting of said history.

As much as we'd like to believe that gender equality within STEM industries has changed for the better, we still have a long way to go. More recently, Dr. Katie Bouman, a postdoc at MIT and member of the team responsible for capturing the first ever visual evidence of a black hole, faced considerable backlash online after being recognized for her contributions. When it comes to giving credit where credit is due in the case of STEM breakthroughs,it appears as though women are either left out of the conversation entirely, or criticized for their efforts if they do indeed get mentioned.

So, how do we fix the situation? The cultural values we hold as a society clearly lean towards that of misogyny. Is it enough to simply 'ignore' the trolling and sexism? Or can social media - supposedly 'tech for good' - actually be used for 'good? Do you know of any STEM or tech campaigns that focus solely on giving women in the industry a platform, or make it their job to rewrite the history of women in the workplace? Do we need to change culture first to influence technology? Or do you believe that technology can influence culture for the better?

Gregg, M. (2018). Counterproductive: Time Management in the Knowledge Economy
[Kindle version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com

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