In 1952, Rosalind Franklin took Photograph 51, an image taken using X-ray crystallography that would one day be reckoned as the “philosopher’s stone of molecular biology.” Why is that? It began with the narrative that researchers James Watson and Francis Crick, who are said to have discovered DNA’s helical structure, had used the photo as a piece of puzzle, a step to determining the true structure of DNA. However, recent research conducted on the work of Franklin and the work of Watson and Crick has revealed a new narrative: Rosalind Franklin was more directly involved in the crucial discovery than previously thought. It was not until 1962 that she received any recognition for her part in this turning point for science, years after her death in 1958 much in part due to her work as a scientist. Franklin is a prime example of the lack of recognition and credit women often face within the field of STEM.
There are numerous factors that contribute to the difference in the number of men and women within the fields of science, technology, engineering and math — pay gaps, workplace cultures and so forth. Indeed, as it stands roughly 28% of STEM fields are women with variations existing between specific fields. However, recent scholarship has found that a lack of recognition from peers plays a considerable role in the discrepancy between these gendered discrepancies. Franklin’s story is but a snippet of what women sometimes face within the STEM field. In a 2022 study published by Nature Magazine, researchers found that women were less likely to be cited for discoveries compared to their male peers, less likely to be recognized and less likely to be credited in general. This creates an environment that is not conducive to promoting STEM to women. Worse, women can only face this within the workplace if they are first successfully able to complete their undergraduate and graduate degrees in the first place.
In a separate Nature study from 2023, researchers found that the STEM field retains less women than it does men; when surveying those who dropped out, “self perception” and the culture of the STEM field were cited as being a causal factor. And when we observe the contents of the previous article we see what women would see, graduating yielded entry into a field that sometimes did not give women credit nor did it give them recognition. Indeed, women are often left off of Works Cited or acknowledgments. And with that mentality it is not hard to see why women can become apathetic to STEM related fields which results in the field itself losing great minds and perspectives that could contribute heavily to numerous fields.
Of course, there are numerous factors at play in the retention of women in STEM fields and the culture they face within it, but proper recognition of women’s contributions and scholarship is an outsized but understated one. When we begin to show children at a young age that women have and do make crucial contributions to the world of science, more women will join and be driven to keep going knowing that they can succeed in these fields. It would allow for stories that have the potential to inspire new generations.
This starts with adding Franklin’s name alongside Watson and Crick in textbooks and holding their discoveries in equal regard. Additionally, it requires creating proper systems surrounding citations and acknowledgments to ensure every person is acknowledged fairly for their work. And hopefully, it ends in what happened to Franklin never occurring again, thus engendering an increase in women in the field of STEM.