{"id":6989,"date":"2026-03-02T10:48:51","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T10:48:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=6989"},"modified":"2026-03-02T10:48:51","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T10:48:51","slug":"looking-back-moving-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2026\/03\/02\/looking-back-moving-forward\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking Back, Moving Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is crossposted from the Royal Society’s own blog<\/a>, appearing on March 2nd 2026.<\/p>\n

From March 2025 to March 2026, The Royal Society has been commemorating the 80th anniversary of the election of the first women Fellows and honouring the achievements of women in STEM. <\/em><\/p>\n

In 1945 the Royal Society finally admitted its first female Fellows: the crystallographer Kathleen Lonsdale and the biochemist Marjory Stephenson. It had taken quite a while to reach this point after the first woman was nominated in 1902.\u00a0 That was Hertha Ayrton, whose nomination was thrown out on the grounds that she was a married woman and therefore had no standing under the legal system of the time. However, even after the passing of the 1919 Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act, there was no immediate move to nominate other women. It took until 1943 for this subject to be seriously revisited, leading (after the Fellowship had been consulted, of course all men) to the election of these first two trail-blazing women in 1945.<\/p>\n

Since then, the number of women in the Fellowship has slowly grown to its present percentage of around 14%. That is still a disappointingly low proportion, but looking at the rate of recent elections it can be seen that, averaging over the past five years, the percentage of women elected each year has been 27.6% to the Fellowship and 29.4% to Foreign Membership. Not yet good, not yet anywhere near parity, but a healthy increase. Sadly, these things take time and in many of the disciplines within the Royal Society\u2019s remit, the pool of senior women who could be nominated also remains stubbornly low and well below 50%.<\/p>\n

So, what needs to be done now, after 80 years of slow progression? There is a fundamental problem about the pipeline of female talent starting out. This is particularly acute in my field of the physical sciences.<\/p>\n

The message conveyed to too many girls and young women is that subjects like computing, engineering or physics are not for them. \u00a0We need to counter this at all levels of society, but change has to start within the school environment. \u00a0. Everyone has a part to play in countering such unhelpful stereotypes, and demonstrating that everyone is welcome within the scientific community across all disciplines.<\/p>\n

Talent needs to be celebrated wherever it is found, regardless of sex, skin colour or socioeconomic status. \u00a0The Royal Society, as an institutionhas to ensure it that principle: be it in the portraiture on its walls or the prizes it awards; the composition of its committees or its fellowships at every stage. .<\/p>\n

Only then will the Royal Society be fully representative of the scientific population, ready to do its best for the future of science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is crossposted from the Royal Society’s own blog, appearing on March 2nd 2026. From March 2025 to March 2026, The Royal Society has been commemorating the 80th anniversary of the election of the first women Fellows and honouring … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[885,1744,1745,188],"class_list":["post-6989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-women-in-science","tag-hertha-ayrton","tag-kathleen-lonsdale-margery-stephenson","tag-portraits","tag-royal-society"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6989"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6991,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6989\/revisions\/6991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}