Blog – The Binary of Science & Femininity

It was a privilege recently to attend the inaugural Women in Neuroscience UK Awards in Cambridge. It was an evening of celebrating some incredibly inspiring scientists, mentors, and activists. An evening of celebrating some incredibly inspiring women. Women in cerebral ear-rings and hot pink suits, neuron necklaces, and Purkinje dresses. Women whose innovation and impact were in no way diminished by their high heels.

It wasn’t until I reached university that I realised just how much I’d internalised the binary of women and science. Wearing make-up or doing my nails wasn’t ever something I was interested in as a teenager because I feared that people would stop taking me seriously as a nerd. If I wanted them to respect my mind, then I couldn’t be seen engaging in the frivolous pursuit of femininity. I had to be analytical and rational, never emotional. Decisive and confident, never passive and soft. Because to be a scientist is to be independent, assertive, and logical. It’s a strange coincidence of fate that these are also traits typically ascribed to masculinity. And so, at a young age, and entirely subconsciously, I had to choose between being perceived as intelligent and being perceived as feminine.

And there was reason behind that – it transpires that even the school textbooks were against me. Studies show that women in textbooks across the world are often portrayed in more passive roles and are linked less with work and achievement (Blumberg, 2008; Crawfurd et al., 2024).  Even on TV we see a renaissance of science with the likes of David Attenborough, Brian Cox, and Neil Degrasse-Tyson, but no women. When I show groups of school children famous scientists, it is nearly always Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking they recognise, rarely Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace or Katherine Johnson. We see the Watson’s and Crick’s, rarely the Rosalind Franklin’s. The Oppenheimer’s, not the Chien-Shiung Wu’s. This is perhaps unsurprising given that of the 688 Nobel laureates awarded since 1901 in the scientific fields, only 20 are women (Lunnemann et al., 2019). And if you think this is a problem of the past then I encourage you to have a look at this year’s Nobel roster – of the 10 Nobel prizes awarded across physics, chemistry, economics, and medicine, not a single one was awarded to a woman.

I’m fortunate enough to work in an environment filled with supportive and inspiring women. Sometimes it’s easy to forget in offices dominated by female PhD students, that the odds at times are so stacked against us. As I walk down the corridor to the offices of programme leaders it gets easier to remember.

“Femininity should not undermine credibility.” – Women in Neuroscience Awards, 2024

There has never been a better time to be a woman in science: I can never decide if this thought is comforting or terrifying. There is more awareness than ever about the challenges that women face in the workplace, more research being done for women and by women, and more organisations being set up with the goal of creating female-centred communities to foster discussion and uplift each other. Women in Neuroscience UK is one such community that I can highly encourage getting involved with, and the Black Women in Science community does some similarly fantastic work. Working to keep these organisations moving forward and including more women and women’s issues within our research are broad goals for the future, but I’m also an advocate for some smaller acts of defiance.

It transpires that I never had to choose between being a scientist and being a woman. I painted my nails with a different design before every single one of my undergraduate exams and still wrote some killer essays. I make sure that whenever I do talks, particularly to other young women, that I wear what makes me feel the most confident. I wear the dress. I wear the suit. I wear the bold red lipstick and the neuron necklace. It makes me smile to see the female scientists I work with bring their femininity to work. Embroidered brains on pencil cases, cute stickers for ‘synapse sisters’, and neuron plushies. There’s a lot of big work that we need to do to make science an even more welcoming place for women, but there’s a lot of small work we can do too.

Femininity is not, and has never been, a determiner of credibility, because the lie that sits beneath that thought is that being womanly is the antithesis to being a scientist. The more women I meet, the more I know this to be untrue.

So if you identify as one of these mysterious women in science, my challenge for you is this: ask yourself why looking or speaking a certain way makes you feel less ‘science-y’. It’s still something I struggle with. I still work hard to try and hide any emotions from my interactions with senior scientists for fear of it undermining the credibility of my work. I still worry about wearing that fancy dress to conference dinners. I still worry that men in the audience will dismiss me when they see me wearing that red lipstick. Let’s try and fight the everyday battles to build each other up, while tearing down the binary that has been invented by textbooks, TV shows, and yes, even the Nobel awards. Let’s open up the doors in the big ways and small, so that the next time a young woman googles ‘famous scientists’, the first person she sees is someone who looks like her.

Rebecca Williams

Author

Rebecca Williams is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. Though originally from ‘up North’ in a small town called Leigh, she did her undergraduate and masters at the University of Oxford before defecting to Cambridge for her doctorate researching Frontotemporal dementia and Apathy. She now spends her days collecting data from wonderful volunteers, and coding. Outside work, she plays board games, and is very crafty.

Follow @beccasue99