Women in Genetics

Gender inequality has riddled our history and is still frequent today. It is also no secret or surprise that these disparities are prevalent in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths). Despite the big push for women to build careers in STEM, there are still multiple examples of where women have not been accredited for their contribution and accomplishments. A recent report by UNESCO showed that women make up 30% of researchers worldwide and only 24% of the STEM workforce, therefore, in honour of Women’s History Month, I have chosen to use this space to celebrate women in science.

The first woman I want to discuss, is Rosalind Franklin. Franklin graduated from the University of Cambridge in 1941 with a degree in physical chemistry, before receiving a research fellowship and graduating with a doctorate from Cambridge in 1945. After this, she became a postdoctoral researcher, where she used X-ray diffraction technology to study the physical and chemical composition of DNA. Around the same time, scientists Watson and Crick, were investigating the structure of DNA, and had a breakthrough discovery in 1953, which showed DNA was a double helix with a twisted-ladder structure. This finding is praised as being a milestone in science, giving rise to modern molecular biology. However, it was the work of Rosalind Franklin, which involved generating clearer X-ray images of DNA molecules as well as her notes and X-ray crystallography data, which helped Watson and Crick correctly identify the double helical structure of DNA. It is unclear whether Franklin’s work was used with or without her permission. Her pivotal work did not receive proper accreditation in Watson and Crick’s paper, and she was not included in the Nobel Prize which was awarded to Watson and Crick for their work. However, her contribution was acknowledged posthumously in Watson’s memoir in 1968, although some say this is too little too late.

Female geneticist, Martha Chase, was another scientist who made incredible contributions to the field of genetics. Although the structure of DNA had been determined, its function remained largely unknown, and it was Chase, working closely with Alfred Hershey, who created the Hershey-Chase experiment. This experiment showed that DNA was the carrier of genetic information. This work awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology for medicine in 1969 to Hershey and other authors of the paper for the “discoveries concerning the genetic structure of viruses.” Chase was excluded from the prize. It is thought that this Nobel Prize snub is due to nothing more than the sexist attitudes at the time.

History is filled with countless tales of women’s scientific contributions being downplayed and overlooked. Between 2001 and 2020, a total of 2,011 men were awarded high prestigious research awards compared to only 262 women. Scientists Huerta-Sánchez and Rohlfs researched over eight hundred articles from the journal ‘Theoretical Population Biology’ and found that around 93% of the authors were men, whilst the women who had contributed to these studies were only receiving minor acknowledgements rather than authorship recognition.

However, the topic of women in science is not all doom and gloom. History is filled with a myriad of inspiring women, who have defied the odds and achieved significant breakthroughs despite the sexism they faced;  Nettie Stevens discovered the presence of sex chromosomes which have allowed us to study sex differences more closely; Charlotte Auerbach founded the study of mutagenesis which has been vital in understanding the contributions of mutations in disease; Margaret Oakley Dayhoof pioneered the application of mathematics and computational techniques which allowed for the sequencing of proteins and DNA; Marie Maynard Daly was the first Black American woman to earn a PhD in chemistry and contributed to research regarding how DNA coiling contributes to protein synthesis.

Furthermore, the number of women in STEM has increased over the years, with Women in Science & Engineering (WISE) estimating that women will make up 29% of the STEM workforce by 2030, based on trends of the last ten years. A huge achievement is that women now make up 46% of total science professionals. These increases in gender diversity have come alongside the increased recognition of women’s work in STEM. The number of awards won by women a year has increased to 19% in 2020 compared to 6% in 2016. Importantly, in 2020 Jennifer Anne Doudna and Marie Charpentier became the first women to share a Nobel Prize in chemistry for their revolutionary work of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system.

To conclude, we owe a world of thanks and recognitions for the amazing women who have contributed to our scientific understanding. Without their contributions, we would not have anywhere near the amount of knowledge, resources, and technologies that we have now. On a more personal note, I am not only incredibly proud to be a woman, but I am proud to be a woman in STEM. It is all the incredible women who have come before me, which have paved the way for my own current and future accomplishments.

References

https://www.stemwomen.com/blog/2021/01/women-in-stem-percentages-of-women-in-stem-statistics#:~:text=Women%20now%20make%20up%2046%25%20of%20the%20total%20science%20professional%20workforce.&text=Between%202017%20and%202018%2C%20roughly,science%20and%20engineering%20technician%20workforce.

https://frontlinegenomics.com/women-in-genetics/

https://blog.23andme.com/23andme-research/women-scientists/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/women-scientists-contributions-early-genetics-studies-relegated-footnotes-180971537/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8656421/

https://xtalks.com/women-in-science-who-have-paved-the-way-in-genetics-2587/

Disclaimer

The information in this blog is for information and entertainment purposes only. I am not a medical professional, so I have never and will never give medical advice in this blog. You should always speak to a healthcare professional about your unique health needs. My opinions are entirely my own and do not reflect the organisations or people I work for. I only discuss published literature in this blog which are referenced with links.

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