Ooh, look! I did a newsletter again! This time: How do male professors explain the gender disparity in academia? Even though the Nordics are considered leaders in gender equality, only 26% of full profs in Danish social sciences are women. This skew is so obvious it's hard to imagine...

Ooh, look! I did a newsletter again! This time: How do male professors explain the gender disparity in academia? Even though the Nordics are considered leaders in gender equality, only 26% of full profs in Danish social sciences are women. This skew is so obvious it's hard to imagine...

The Ada Lovelace Day website at findingada.com is currently under attack, so is only intermittently available. Trying to find a fix, but it might take a while.

I was taken aback by how Helen Sharman was memory-holed by the British media when *Major* Tim Peake appeared. At the time, The Guardian described him as "Britain's first official astronaut". What does that even mean?!

I'm compiling a list of real or suggested gender equity interventions across a set of eight categories, and it strikes me that we have an awful lot of them to choose from. I've got 40 so far, and I'm not done yet. With so many suggestions for how to change things, why isn't change happening?

Last week, I read four systematic reviews of the research on interventions to promote gender equity in the workplace and elsewhere. The results were... not good. All four reviews are new – 2022 or newer – but they all had problems finding relevant published work. One found only 22...

How big is the problem of women leaving STEM? And how do we fix it? Today I look at the findings of the 2025 Lovelace Report (no relation) which details the UK's tech industry financial losses due to the loss of female talent, and outlines solutions. adalovelaceday.substack.com/p/ald-report...

Meet Annie Maunder! The eclipse-chasing, sun-photographing astronomer and "Lady Computer" of @firebrigademusical.bsky.social Come see Annie and the rest of The Cambridge First All-Ladies Fire Brigade this summer in Cheltenham, London, Oxfordshire and Lincoln! firebrigademusical.com/about/

How big is the problem of women leaving STEM? And how do we fix it? Today I look at the findings of the 2025 Lovelace Report (no relation) which details the UK's tech industry financial losses due to the loss of female talent, and outlines solutions. adalovelaceday.substack.com/p/ald-report...

Our first "Meet The Characters" post for The Cambridge First All-Ladies Fire Brigade Musical, and it's HERTHA AYRTON - on her actual birthday! 172 years young, she's the real founder of @girtoncollege.bsky.social Fire Brigade in firebrigademusical.bsky.social Share her story today! #makingmarks

Oh, would you look at that: Men are perceived as more creative than women even when competency is controlled for, and more deserving of rewards. Five studies shows men are routinely seen having more 'out of the box' creativity. But not only are women... adalovelaceday.substack.com/p/gender-ste...

The ban on grants about woman’s health & science was highly effective at NIH it seems. 😢 (Number of competitive grants mentioning women declined in 2025; data reflects any grant that had the words "women" or "woman" in the title, abstract, public health relevance and/or keyword fields.)

Today is the last day for Brits to respond to the gov't's call for evidence on the "impact of emerging technologies on women’s participation, progression, and leadership in tech". They obviously mean AI, but it's worth answering more broadly imho. www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/ZNQMV1/

Hooray for Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin who now has her own blue plaque in London. 🔭 www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-p... (Thanks to @helenarney.bsky.social for reminding me)

I've stopped the automatic posts for a bit, because I haven't had time to update the pool of posts it draws from and I'm sure we'll all seen them way too many times already. So this account will be a bit quieter for a while. I will try to post more stuff about the report instead.

The glass ceiling is made of small biases frequently applied. That's the conclusion of a team of researchers who modelled how six biases against women would cumulatively affect their chances of promotion over time. They found that it wasn't... adalovelaceday.substack.com/p/ald-report...

Maria Vasilievna Pavlova, Мария Павлова, was a palaeontologist who discovered several hoofed mammals & proved Hipparion was not the direct ancestor of modern horses, changing our understanding Eurasian horse ancestry. adalovelaceday.subst...

Rita Levi-Montalcini was a neurobiologist who co-discovered nerve growth factor with Stanley Cohen. They both won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1986. She was only the 4th woman to receive it. adalovelaceday.subst...

Biologist Danielle N Lee studies the connections between ecology, evolution and animal behaviour. She studies the African giant pouched rat's behavioural syndromes and the potential role of genetics in these behaviours. adalovelaceday.subst...

Irene C Peden is an electrical engineer & was the first woman scientist to live and work in the interior of the Antarctic, developing techniques for studying deep glacial ice using radio waves. adalovelaceday.subst...

Sarah Al Amiri is the Chair of the UAE Space Agency and the UAE Council of Scientists. She played a key role in the Emirates Mars Mission and is currently overseeing a Venus flyby. adalovelaceday.subst...

Phyllis Kerridge was a pioneering chemist and physiologist whose research laid the foundation for the creation of standardised hearing aids. She is also known for her invention of the miniature pH electrode and her work on artificial respiration. adalovelaceday.subst...

Noor Shaker is a computer scientist and biotech entrepreneur who aims to make drug discovery faster and more effective by blending experts’ chemistry knowledge with advanced machine learning techniques. adalovelaceday.subst...

Haleema Alamri is a materials scientist who is developing degradable polymers that can be used as functional, cost-effective and sustainable replacements for traditional plastic materials. adalovelaceday.subst...

Fatemah Alharbi is a computer scientist who works to detect and analyse weak spots in security networks. She discovered a significant flaw in the Apple macOS, Linux Ubuntu, and Microsoft Windows security systems. adalovelaceday.subst...

Abla Mehio Sibai researches healthy ageing and non-communicable diseases, such as cancer, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, among older adults in underprivileged communities, including refugees. adalovelaceday.subst...

Rajeshwari Chatterjee was the first female engineer from Karnataka, India. She set up India's first microwave engineering lab, and her work on satellite comms and spacecraft & aircraft antennae is still influential today. adalovelaceday.subst...

Tasneem Zehra Husain is a theoretical physicist, science writer, educator and the first Pakistani woman to earn a PhD in string theory. She also works to make theoretical physics more accessible. adalovelaceday.subst...

Asima Chatterjee was a pioneering organic chemist and India's first female scientist to be awarded a doctor of science degree. She helped develop drugs to treat epilepsy and malaria based on biologically active compounds in plants. adalovelaceday.subst...

Hao Yichun was a pioneer in the fields of stratigraphy, micropaleontology and paleoceanography. She co-authored Paleontology, China’s first textbook on the subject, and expanded our understanding of foraminifera. adalovelaceday.subst...

Tsai-Fan Yu's pioneering research helped make gout a curable disease, linked gout to hypertension and diabetes, and established one of the first systematised lab tests for diagnosing rheumatoid arthritis. adalovelaceday.subst...

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I'm working on a new report looking at how we can create gender equality in the workplace. I've started reading a bunch of reports and papers as background. Most of it won't make it into the report, so I thought I'd write up the most... bsky.app/profile/adal...

Lina Stern, a biochemist and neurophysiologist, was one of the first researchers to identify what is now known as the blood-brain barrier, and conducted pioneering research on the central nervous system. adalovelaceday.subst...

Lin Lanying was an engineer and physicist who developed semiconductor and aerospace materials, particularly monocrystalline silicon, a key semiconductor used as a component in virtually all modern electronic equipment. adalovelaceday.subst...

Michiyo Tsujimura was an agricultural scientist, biochemist and the first woman to earn a doctoral degree in agriculture in Japan. She discovered that green tea contains vitamin C. adalovelaceday.subst...

Helen Quinn co-developed a theory to explain why the symmetry between matter and antimatter breaks in weak interactions, which drive nuclear decay, but not in strong interactions, which hold matter together. adalovelaceday.subst...

Susan Krumdieck is a mechanical and energy systems engineer. She co-founded the transition engineering movement, which develops innovative methods and technologies to help reduce reliance on fossil fuels. adalovelaceday.subst...

Leone Norwood Farrell invented the Toronto Method for large-scale vaccine production, making childhood immunisation programmes more affordable and facilitating the mass production of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine in the 1950s. adalovelaceday.subst...

One of NASA’s first African-American employees, Annie Easley helped develop software for the Centaur rocket stage, enabling several later landmark spaceflights, and helped develop early battery powered vehicles. adalovelaceday.subst...

Idelisa Bonnelly de Calventi was a marine biologist who pioneered the study of marine sciences in the Dominican Republic. She worked to protect ocean biodiversity and created one of the first sanctuaries for humpback whales. adalovelaceday.subst...

Valeria Correa Vaz de Paiva is a Brazilian mathematician, logician, computer scientist and computational linguist who introduced new ways to model linear logic in advanced programming languages. adalovelaceday.subst...

Isabella Aiona Abbott was the first Native Hawaiian woman to receive a PhD in science and a leading expert on Pacific marine algae. She discovered over 200 seaweed species and her work is still influential today. adalovelaceday.subst...

Frances Wagner was one of the first women to carry out field research for the Geological Survey of Canada and became a distinguished expert in the use of micropaleontology to study marine geology. adalovelaceday.subst...

Nadine Caron is the first Canadian/First Nations (Ojibway) female medicine graduate from BCU and first to become a general endocrine surgeon. She advocates for improved public health for First Nations communities. adalovelaceday.subst...

Jewel Plummer Cobb discovered how skin cells produce melanin and how they become cancerous. She also discovered that methotrexate was an effective treatment for some skin and lung cancers and childhood leukaemia. adalovelaceday.subst...

Marie Maynard Daly co-discovered the link between high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and the clogged arteries that can cause heart disease and strokes. She also studied the damage that cigarettes have on the heart & lungs. adalovelaceday.subst...

V Narry Kim is a biochemist and microbiologist who has developed new technology to reduce cancer cell proliferation by eliminating specific microRNAs. Her work may lead to new gene therapies. adalovelaceday.subst...

Fumiko Yonezawa was a theoretical physicist who studied amorphous materials, semiconductors and liquid metals. She used computational models to show how, at an atomic level, liquids become crystals or amorphous solids. adalovelaceday.subst...

Janaki Ammal crossbred sugarcane species to create a hybrid with a higher sucrose yield that could flourish in India's tropical climate. She was instrumental in saving the botanically diverse Silent Valley in India. adalovelaceday.subst...

Firdausi Qadri is a Bangladeshi immunologist and infectious disease researcher. She developed an affordable oral cholera vaccine and the typhoid conjugate vaccine, and led mass vaccinations to prevent cholera outbreaks. adalovelaceday.subst...