If I asked you to think of a famous scientist, who comes to mind?
Um, I think like Isaac Newton comes to mind for me ‘cause I really like physics.
At the moment, probably Charles Darwin.
Ah, Rosalind Franklin or also Abraham Maslo for psychology.
For me, um Sir David Attenborough because he’s probably my favourite scientist.
If you also answered with the name of a male scientist, you're clearly not alone.
Some Aussie researchers reckon they've found a reason why female scientists are way less
likely to come to mind.
Well, except...
Ah, Rosalind Franklin.
But, I'll come back to her.
They say it's because they're hardly mentioned in the Australian Curriculum.
So our team looked at all the four core science subjects, so Biology, Chemistry, Physics,
and Environmental Science.
And we found across Australia, there are 145 scientists that are mentioned and of those
145, only one was a woman.
And yep, that woman was Rosalind Franklin, who discovered the double-helix structure
of DNA.
But the famous British chemist was only mentioned in the senior curriculum in South Australia,
Queensland and the NT.
Were you surprised by those results?
I think when I first discovered this, I was really surprised.
It was actually with Marie Curie that I made this initial discovery.
She discovered radioactivity and won two Nobel Prizes in both Physics and Chemistry, one
of the only scientists to have learned it, ah to have won a Nobel Prize in different
fields and yet, even though pretty much every state is teaching of radioactivity, Marie
Curie isn't mentioned anywhere.
We’re being taught of a lot of male scientists but the incredible work of women, and the
incredible work of Australians is being left out.
Well I think a lot of the content we do, a lot of the evidence that supports it is, comes
from male scientists.
Probably male, just for the most part, just because I feel like in the past with recognition,
it's been heavily male based.
Definitely in Physics, more about male.
And I think in Biology, more male too actually.
But I think back in the past, it was a lot of focus on like, men and women who did things
didn't get recognised for it.
I think it comes down to an unconscious bias, in that it's just taken someone to point it
out that you have not mentioned women in your curriculum.
And that unconscious bias has been shaped by history.
The belief that women really didn't deserve to be in these fields of science, it was considered
hard and only for a man to do.
So that was often why, even when a woman achieved something great and made a breakthrough, you
know their supervisor, who was often a men, man, because there weren't other women in
the field as well, were awarded their achievements.
Despite that, history is full of incredible female scientists who have helped shape the
world today.
Yeah so I’m actually really obsessed with Hedy Lamarr.
Yeah, being a famous Hollywood actor and an incredible scientist too.
Exactly, and she like paved the way for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi technology.
You know, I’m going to be jealous.
Jealous of what?
Oh I don’t know.
Personally, a role model is Ruby Payne Scott.
She was an Australian radio astronomer and helped to establish Australia as one of the
best places in the world to be studying radio astronomy.
Fiona Wood, who's a plastic surgeon, and she developed this technology, essentially called
a spray on skin.
And it now gets used to treat like burns in hospitals across the world.
There’s just almost too many women to mention and at the moment, we have a list of over
300 women that can easily be included in school classrooms.
Off the back of this research, some states say they're making changes to their curriculums
to include more women in science, including New South Wales and Queensland.
We've added a lot more references to where women have contributed to science over
the years both historic representations and more current researchers as well.
So look as a former science teacher and a mum of two little girls, it's really important
to me that young women can actually see themselves in the science curriculum.
And researchers say learning or not learning about female scientists, both past and present,
can have a big impact in STEM classes, Uni courses and jobs, where stats show women are
still underrepresented.
This is a really big focus of our research too, and it turns out this can have a really
detrimental effect, not just on women, but on all students not just in the classroom
but also beyond the classroom.
We went through this education system and we can see the damage that it’s had on us
and we don’t want the same for the next generation of scientists.
Science is all about collaboration.
We need everybody to be participating in that because otherwise we aren't going to have
these great discoveries and face these massive challenges that, you know,
the world is currently facing.
I mean, I'm hoping to, you know, go into the STEM field so I think it'd be good to see
more examples of women working in that field.
Everyone should learn about female scientists to like, show them that anyone can do science,
anyone can invent anything, can go further in science, they can do whatever they'd like.
I love learning about women, because I relate to it.
I think more and more girls would want to do STEM if they knew about, like women in
STEM, who they looked up to.
I think they definitely want to do more jobs in that and be, feel encouraged to do that.