Meet five Southern Illinois women in science

Photo Credit: GrrlScientist / Flickr Creative Commons

The sciences have been a male-dominated field and there are many different reasons that are offered to explain why.

There are many women, including those featured here, who have found success in scientific fields despite the challenges. The women in these photographs are a small representation (or sample size, in scientific jargon) of women working in science in Southern Illinois, but they are positive examples of the opportunities that the sciences present.

Each of the featured scientists came to science in a different way and for a different reason. Some were influenced early on by teachers or guidance counselors, such as Dawn Grisley, who credits her high school science teacher, Pete Moake, who taught at Johnston City High School. She says Moake “let me dissect anything.” Grisley also had a mentor in her colleague Maureen Doran who recruited her to work in histology — the study of animal and plant tissues — at Saffron Scientific Histology Services. Read more.

How Hiring Women Other Businesses Won't Has Made 'All The Difference'

Robert Frost suggested that taking the road less traveled made all the difference. The Women's Bean Project, a nonprofit in Denver, Colorado, employs only women generally considered unemployable. For nearly 30 years, the social enterprise has worked to help women learn to work by giving them jobs; that is how they make a difference.

The "Bean," as insiders know it, was recently selected by REDF, a national organization that supports social enterprises like the Bean, that "provide jobs, support, and training to people who would otherwise have a tough time getting into the workforce," for a growth investment, according to Carla Javits, President and CEO of REDF.

The Bean, according to CEO Tamra Ryan, generates $2.2 million in revenue and employs 75 women. The business generates a modest gross margin on sales of gourmet dried food products of just 8 percent. The organization's other costs are funded by grants and donations. Read the story in Forbes.

The futures industry's surprisingly good record of promoting women

Kim Taylor is one of the highest-ranking women in Chicago finance, a realm so monopolized by men that a female face in the C-suite still stands out. When she fields what she calls the ultimate chick question—”How did you succeed in a male-dominated industry?”—the CME Group president points to the women who came before her. Catherine Munn headed the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's clearing operation in the mid-1980s, and Kate Meyer, a former trader, became the first president of the clearing house in the mid-1990s. 

At a time when many corners of finance have been criticized for lack of progress in recruiting and promoting women, the futures industry has been a surprising bright spot. Today, six of CME's 16senior leaders are women—a bigger share than the quarter at most Fortune 500 companies. The goal, says CME CEO Phupinder Gill, is to hire “a diverse group of people to serve our diverse group of customers.” Read the story in Crains.

VA aggressively implementing measures to prevent suicide among women Veterans

When I came home from Iraq in 2004, I struggled to control intrusive memories about awful things I’d seen in the war — and the intense emotions those memories triggered. At the same time, I felt overwhelmed by the pressure of trying to help my then-boyfriend recover from the traumatic brain injury he sustained during the deployment. One night, it seemed as if the only thing I would be able to control was how my life ended, and I sat staring a gun for what felt like an eternity. Luckily, I got help, and today I’m thriving.

The recent VA report on suicide shows that my experience with these challenges was not unique. In 2014, after adjusting for differences in age, the risk for suicide was 2.4 times higher among women Veterans when compared with their civilian counterparts. That year, the rate of suicide among civilian adult women was 7.2 per 100,000; their age-adjusted rate of suicide had increased by 39.7 percent since 2001. Meanwhile, the rate of suicide among women Veterans was 18.9 per 100,000, and our age-adjusted rate of suicide increased by 85.2 percent over the same time period. Read the rest of the story.

Female Staffers Came Up With a Genius Strategy to Make Sure Their Voices Were Heard

When President Obama first took office, the White House wasn’t exactly the friendliest place for female staffers. Most of Obama’s senior staffers — such as former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and former economic adviser Lawrence Summers — were men who’d worked on his campaign and subsequently filled his cabinet.

“If you didn’t come in from the campaign, it was a tough circle to break into,” Anita Dunn, who served as White House communications director until November 2009, told the Washington Post. “Given the makeup of the campaign, there were just more men than women.”

Susan Rice, who’s currently the national security adviser, said she (and other women) had to shoulder their way into important conversations: “It’s not pleasant to have to appeal to a man to say, ‘Include me in that meeting.’”

And even when they’d made it into the room, female staffers were sometimes overlooked. So they banded together (shine theory!) and came up with a system to make sure they were heard...Read the story in New York Magazine.

A New Project Tells the Stories of the Women of Route 66

Perhaps no single road is more significant to modern American folklore than the fabled Route 66. Once stretching almost all the way across the country, the highway that John Steinbeck called “the Mother Road” has been memorialized in songs and stories over the decades. But while many of these stories center on the experience of the travelers and road trippers who rode down the highway, Route 66 was central to the lives of many people along its path. Now, an oral history project sponsored by the National Park Service is seeking to tell the stories of the women who lived and worked along the famous highway.

Titled “The Women on the Mother Road,” the project is supported by the National Park Service and Cinefemme, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting women filmmakers and documentarians. Founded by filmmaker Katrina Parks, the oral history project seeks to gather the stories of the females who lived and worked along Route 66, just like the many male travelers whose stories have dominated the narratives set along the highway. Read more by the Smithsonian.

Read about the Illinois women of Route 66:
Hazel Funk
Loretta Marten
Sally Rand
Heleen & Kathryn Thanas

Half of NASA's Newest Astronaut Class Are Women

Photo credit: NASA

In January 1978, NASA announced that it had offically hired its very first female astronauts. Now, almost 40 years later, NASA’s latest batch of future astronauts is half women, and in a few years they could be among the first people to set foot on Mars.

Getting accepted into NASA’s astronaut training program is no small feat. NASA only accepts new astronaut trainees every four or five years after putting candidates through a year-and-a-half-long application process, including intensive physical and psychological tests, Fiona MacDonald writes for ScienceAlert. Out of around 6,100 applicants for the 2013 class, NASA only selected eight to join their astronaut training program—four of whom are women.

"We never determine how many people of each gender we're going to take, but these were the most qualified people of the ones that we interviewed," NASA’s Glenn Research Center deputy director Janet Kavandi said in 2013. Read the story in the Smithsonian.