Women in science explore harrowing issues and promising insights revealed in a documentary charting three tough journeys toward gender equity and justice
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Through much of the history of science, women have faced outsize hurdles and risks in pursuing careers in research and academia -- ranging from denied credit and advancement to physical and emotional abuse. Sadly, many of those impediments to equitable and productive participation in work advancing human knowledge persist to this day.
In this special episode of the Earth Institute’s Sustain What webcast, leading and emerging female researchers discuss circumstances and lessons revealed in the piercing and invaluable documentary “Picture a Scientist,” a vivid exploration of the hard-won gains of three women working in different fields.
The guests are:
- Jane Willenbring, associate professor of geosciences at Stanford University whose harrowing undergraduate experience in the field in Antarctica and subsequent pursuit of justice is one of three story lines in the film. (The film also traces the fights of the biologist Nancy Hopkins and the chemist Raychelle Burks.)
- Angelica Patterson, a doctoral candidate at the Earth Institute focused on the interaction of climate change and changes in forests and an enthusiastic science communicator who has helped encourage Black engagement in botany.
- Marcia McNutt, a geophysicist who is president of the National Academy of Sciences and, among many other past positions, was editor-in-chief of the Science family of journals and director of the U.S. Geological Survey.
- Sharon Shattuck, who co-directed and co-produced the film with Ian Cheney.
The webcast will be hosted by Andrew Revkin, the founding director of the Earth Institute Initiative on Communication and Sustainability, and Kuheli Dutt, Assistant Director for Academic Affairs & Diversity at the Earth Institute’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.
The webcast, which streams on Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube and Periscope, will be open to the general public, and open for questions.
The film was made available for viewing by the Lamont and Earth Institute community through the generosity of the Heising-Smons Foundation, which also was the principal funder of the documentary.
Learn more about the film here: http://pictureascientist.com
Learn about the Earth Institute’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion here:
https://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/3369
This is a production of the Initiative on Communication and Sustainability:
http://sustcomm.ei.columbia.edu
