Celebrating 'Cool' Women
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Help support our Celebration of Women in Antarctic Science!
It may come as a surprise to learn that female scientists were initially prevented from working in Antarctica. A internationally recognized palaeobotanist, Dr Marie Stopes, is known to have applied to Scott’s Terra Nova expedition to search for fossilized leaves in order to prove that Antarctic was part of Gondwana [1]. Scott rejected her application. Shortly after 1,300 women applied to participate in the proposed British Antarctic Expedition in 1937 [1]. Again, none were accepted. Thankfully for us these dark times are now well behind us!
Today female scientists are driving high impact science across all Antarctic disciplines. Unfortunately, Antarctic women scientists still tend to comprise a very small proportion of polar medalists in many countries and aren’t often as visible and celebrated as they should be. We think our community needs to do more to celebrate and elevate our influential female Antarctic scientists to provide visible role models for the next generation of female scientists.
The Antarctic Women Wikibomb proposes to do just that by creating Wikipedia pages about female Antarctic scientists. In order to achieve this we called on the Antarctic community to nominate women and also to volunteer to help create pages. At the time of press well over 50 new Wikipedia pages had been created, mostly by female early and mid career researchers, which highlight Antarctic women scientists and their impressive careers. This makes it one of the most successful female scientist wikibombs ever!
This GoFundMe Campaign is to help raise money for the "Celebration of Women in Antarctic Research" to be held during the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Conference (SCAR) in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia, on 23 August 2016. Any extra funds will go to help continue our outreach efforts in addressing systematic gender bias into the future.
For more information on the Wikibomb, including links the profiles of the many amazing women, please visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/SCAR_2016
Finally a big thanks must go to our team of volunteers who have helped create and upload these pages. They are Morgan Seag, Gisela Gacitua, Christel Hansen, Tristy Vick Majors, Nor Radziah Jusoh, Siti Musalmah MD Ibrahim, Nur Sakinah, Allison Lee, Tammy Russell, Alix Post, Aitana Forcen, Nicole Hill, Hanne Nielsen, Carol Devine, Katya Uyupova, Bryn Dhir, Jesse Blackadder, Jenna Knox, Sharon Robinson, Tebogo Masebe, Jessica Rosenfels, Nicola Wilmot and Nicole Dakin.
The Wikibomb committee is comprised of Jan Strugnell, Thomas Shafee, Nerida Wilson, Justine Shaw, Craig Stevens, Rachel Downey & Jenny Baeseman.
[1] http://www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine/2011-2015/issue-23-december-2012/antarctic-arts-fellowship/the-first-woman-in-antarctica
It may come as a surprise to learn that female scientists were initially prevented from working in Antarctica. A internationally recognized palaeobotanist, Dr Marie Stopes, is known to have applied to Scott’s Terra Nova expedition to search for fossilized leaves in order to prove that Antarctic was part of Gondwana [1]. Scott rejected her application. Shortly after 1,300 women applied to participate in the proposed British Antarctic Expedition in 1937 [1]. Again, none were accepted. Thankfully for us these dark times are now well behind us!
Today female scientists are driving high impact science across all Antarctic disciplines. Unfortunately, Antarctic women scientists still tend to comprise a very small proportion of polar medalists in many countries and aren’t often as visible and celebrated as they should be. We think our community needs to do more to celebrate and elevate our influential female Antarctic scientists to provide visible role models for the next generation of female scientists.
The Antarctic Women Wikibomb proposes to do just that by creating Wikipedia pages about female Antarctic scientists. In order to achieve this we called on the Antarctic community to nominate women and also to volunteer to help create pages. At the time of press well over 50 new Wikipedia pages had been created, mostly by female early and mid career researchers, which highlight Antarctic women scientists and their impressive careers. This makes it one of the most successful female scientist wikibombs ever!
This GoFundMe Campaign is to help raise money for the "Celebration of Women in Antarctic Research" to be held during the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research Conference (SCAR) in Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia, on 23 August 2016. Any extra funds will go to help continue our outreach efforts in addressing systematic gender bias into the future.
For more information on the Wikibomb, including links the profiles of the many amazing women, please visit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/SCAR_2016
Finally a big thanks must go to our team of volunteers who have helped create and upload these pages. They are Morgan Seag, Gisela Gacitua, Christel Hansen, Tristy Vick Majors, Nor Radziah Jusoh, Siti Musalmah MD Ibrahim, Nur Sakinah, Allison Lee, Tammy Russell, Alix Post, Aitana Forcen, Nicole Hill, Hanne Nielsen, Carol Devine, Katya Uyupova, Bryn Dhir, Jesse Blackadder, Jenna Knox, Sharon Robinson, Tebogo Masebe, Jessica Rosenfels, Nicola Wilmot and Nicole Dakin.
The Wikibomb committee is comprised of Jan Strugnell, Thomas Shafee, Nerida Wilson, Justine Shaw, Craig Stevens, Rachel Downey & Jenny Baeseman.
[1] http://www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine/2011-2015/issue-23-december-2012/antarctic-arts-fellowship/the-first-woman-in-antarctica
Organizer
Jenny Baeseman
Organizer
