I found out almost by accident that I was one of the five women in STEM, on the Society of Women Engineers‘ blog, as part of their Pride Month feature.
Researchers working on water treatment, genome engineering, optics, multi-omics data, agrivoltaics. Different fields entirely, but the same thread running through all of it: people building careers in STEM while also being visibly, unapologetically themselves. Proud to be one of them in this list!
SWE, the Society of Women Engineers is one of the largest organisations in the world supporting women in engineering and technology. They run scholarships, mentorship programmes, an annual conference, and a fair amount of advocacy work on top of that. Every June, they use their platform to highlight LGBTQ+ professionals across STEM fields, partly to celebrate, partly to make the point that this community exists at every level of academia and industry, not just in headlines.
I think that second part matters more than the celebration itself. When I was earlier in my career, I did not have many visible examples of what it looks like to be openly lesbian and running a lab, editing a journal, writing proposals, failing and trying again and again, doing all the ordinary unglamorous work of academia. You piece it together from fragments, if you’re lucky you have some incredible women around you who shows you the true colors of resilience. So if a small feature like this does anything, I hope it is that, one more data point for someone who is still piecing it together.
Other than that, it was a nice reminder that the things you build (your research, your papers, your grants) are not the only things that end up mattering to people. Sometimes it is just showing up as yourself.
If you want to read the full piece, you can find it here: SWE Celebrates LGBTQ+ STEM Professionals This Pride Month
#Pride #STEM #WomenInEngineering #LGBTQinSTEM #Academia
Didem Gürdür Broo 