Book Recs: Women in STEM
Hi everyone,
February 11th marked the 8th International Day of Girls and Women in Science, an observance introduced by the United Nations General Assembly to promote equal opportunities for girls and women around the world to generally under-represented fields like science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
As a (young-ish) woman who studied engineering at university and continued down an academic path, I remember clearly that women made up less than 10% of my class and there were only 3 female lecturers in our department at the time. A quick look at the university’s website tells me there are now 11 female academics … out of 47.
Progress has certainly been made, but clearly there is still a way to go until there is equal representation. Which is why it is so important for girls and young women who are interested in STEM to have role-models and to see themselves in popular media. I don’t remember reading any books when I was younger that featured a female character interested in science - at most they liked to read and were good students, traits that generally set them apart from the other girls.
I feel like books featuring women in STEM have become very popular recently, helped in great part to Ali Hazelwood’s debut novel The Love Hypothesis, which became a TikTok sensation back in 2021. Ali is obviously not the first person to write about female researchers, but as an academic herself her books feel very grounded in reality in terms of the treatment of women at universities.
I’ve read all of her books so far and am really looking forward to her next one, but I wanted to highlight some other authors for this post - so here are 3 books to check out if you like reading about Women in STEM.
I realize that this is less of a trope and perhaps more of a genre in and of itself, but I hope you will enjoy them if you do read them. Representation matters and I think it’s wonderful that nowadays there are more and more books being published with female main characters working in STEM - hopefully it will inspire the younger generation to pursue degrees and careers in these fields!
What are some of your favourite books in this genre? Let me know in the comments or send me a DM on our Instagram page.
Until next time, keep reading.
~Lucia