University of Toronto is holding a Wikipedia Editathon to make the 2019 International Day of Women and Girls in Science. Here is my keynote talk from the event on Thursday, February 7th, 2019.

1. Writing women back into the
of history STEM
Gerstein Science Library
University of Toronto
4 pm, Thursday February 7th, 2019
Dawn Bazely, Faculty of Science, York University, Toronto, Canada
with many thanks to Professor Kate McPherson
Department of History, York University
Marking the International Day of Women & Girls in Science
Monday February 11th, 2019

2. I’m not doing this alone
Prof. Kate McPherson (L) & former Dean of Science,
Ryerson U, Imogen Coe (R)

3. 🗣A timeline for my talk⏳
1. Women Nobel Laureates
• the case of Donna Strickland’s Wikipedia
page
2. My mini-timeline in STEM
3. Women have always done STEM
4. 1970-90s: policy & feminist history
5. Why those policies failed
6. Current actions for countering this
7. Strategies for the future October 4, 2018 at an NSERC consultation on
developing an Athena SWAN programme for
Canada, I met Donna Strickland who asked me
to add her children to her Wikipedia page.
Photo credit: Naomi Adelson

4. Women Nobel Laureates
853 men, 51 women & 24 unique organizations (Wikipedia)
Figure screen capped from the Nobel Org. webpage

5. I wrote a WaPo oped about Women in STEM in Wikipedia
after Donna Strickland was awarded the Nobel Prize in
Physics
• her wikipedia page was originally
rejected for “technical” reasons
• even though she clearly met the
notability criteria
• read my oped here:
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/
outlook/2018/10/08/why-nobel-
winner-donna-strickland-didnt-
have-wikipedia-page/?utm_term=.
10fe2d3c8fce

6. 🗣A timeline for my talk⏳
1. Women Nobel Laureates
• the case of Donna Strickland’s Wikipedia
page
2. My mini-timeline in STEM
3. Women have always done STEM
4. 1970-90s: policy & feminist history
5. Why those policies failed
6. Current actions for countering this
7. Strategies for the future October 4, 2018 at an NSERC consultation on
developing an Athena SWAN programme for
Canada, I met Donna Strickland who asked me
to add her children to her Wikipedia page.
Photo credit: Naomi Adelson

7. 1980-84 field work on Hudson Bay, Canada

8. About 2,000 km or > 1,200 miles from U of T!
I did my BSc (Biogeography
& Environmental Studies)
& MSc (Botany) here, at U of T

9. 1990 — Back to Canada
• I joined York University, Toronto, in
1990, after doing a doctorate
(1988) at Oxford University, and
post-docs at Oxford & Cambridge
Universities
• I became a member of the
committee supporting the Advisor
on the Status of Women to the
York U president
• I read this 1992 report from York
University Faculty of Graduate
Studies ➡➡➡
• I thought we were on the right
track 🚊
• But, like the students back in
1992, in 2019, I’m not satisfied yet

10. 2017: Receiving the title of University Professor, York University
With Faculty of Science
Dean Ray Jayawardhana

11. 🗣A timeline for my talk⏳
1. Women Nobel Laureates
• the case of Donna Strickland’s Wikipedia
page
2. My mini-timeline in STEM
3. Women have always done STEM
4. 1970-90s: policy & feminist history
5. Why those policies failed
6. Current actions for countering this
7. Strategies for the future October 4, 2018 at an NSERC consultation on
developing an Athena SWAN programme for
Canada, I met Donna Strickland who asked me
to add her children to her Wikipedia page.
Photo credit: Naomi Adelson

12. 2016: Prof. Emerita Rusty Shteir invited me to
participate in a history of botany conference!
• Rusty was interested in Wikipedia
editathons for Women in STEM
• I was: 🤩
• Then: 🤔
• Then: 🥵😱
• So I enlisted a history professor’s
help
• Kate is the former chair of Women’s
Studies (now Gender, Sexuality &
Women’s Studies) YorkU
• She is my co-author and has been
invaluable in helping me to situate
my advocacy in a scholarly
framework

13. Expert women’s
botany in the de-
feminized post-Flora’s
Daughters’ World
Ontario
1870-1915
Dawn R. Bazely
Biology
with
Kate McPherson
History
A huge HT to Erin Aults &
Stephanie Bellissimo RBG
Library & Archives
Dr. Janet Friskney, LAPS

14. With help from #ActualLivingHistorians
& librarians, we explored:
• how disruptive technologies in Ontario (1870-1915)
enabled women’s participation in public & professional
(paid) botanical activities — natural history and
horticulture
• inexpensive (colour) print technology
• free public education, which is a kind of social
technology that increased literacy
• I hypothesized that they were a key driver of women
participating in public botany

15. Why 1870-1915?
• 1871 Ontario
Comprehensive School
Act for free schools
(Egerton Ryerson)
• 1912 Canada’s first
female science professor
(Carrie Derick appointed
Professor in Botany at
McGill)
• I rounded up and down to the
nearest 0 or 5 years!
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6937887

16. (White) women…1870-1915… were
• writing & illustrating:
• field guides
• gardening books
• for horticultural magazines
• participating in “professional”
horticultural societies
• breeding new varieties of plants
• running profitable garden businesses
• advocating for public education about
botany

19. 1895

20. 1895

21. 1895

22. 1895

23. still in print in 1973
Methodist & Steward of
Methodist Book &
Publishing House,
later Ryerson Press
1899
1894
1885

24. The Canadian Horticulturalist Mags; 1904
Recommended Book List
•Only 1 of 18 popular
gardening books on the
list was ), the others *
+
•Mrs. Annie L. Jack
•Pocket Help for the
“Amateur” 1903
•free with a subscription to
The Canadian
Horiculturalist magazine

25. 🗣A timeline for my talk⏳
1. Women Nobel Laureates
• the case of Donna Strickland’s Wikipedia
page
2. My mini-timeline in STEM
3. Women have always done STEM
4. 1970-90s: policy & feminist history
5. Why those policies failed
6. Current actions for countering this
7. Strategies for the future October 5, 2018 at an NSERC consultation on
developing an Athena SWAN programme for
Canada, I met Donna Strickland who asked me
to add her children to her Wikipedia page.
Photo credit: Naomi Adelson

26. I knew, from being a student in the 1970s-80s…
• That awareness of gender gaps in
STEM advocacy had led to many
policies
• in1970s-90s the policies aimed to
increase female intake to STEM
programmes
• science was gendered as being
male, and simply needed to
switch to being gender neutral
• there were pushes for more
publicly-funded daycare, for
example
UBC Prof. Judy Myers

27. Biology programmes have been 50:50
undergraduates since my day
the policies didn’t bring the expected results of more women
at all STEM levels (i.e. a reversal of the leaky pipeline)

28. In the 1980s & 1990s feminist historians were re-writing women
back into the historical timeline… what happened?

29. 🗣A timeline for my talk⏳
1. Women Nobel Laureates
• the case of Donna Strickland’s Wikipedia
page
2. My mini-timeline in STEM
3. Women have always done STEM
4. 1970-90s: policy & history
5. Why those policies failed
6. Current actions for countering this
7. Strategies for the future October 5, 2018 at an NSERC consultation on
developing an Athena SWAN programme for
Canada, I met Donna Strickland who asked me
to add her children to her Wikipedia page.
Photo credit: Naomi Adelson

30. Here’s what brings
me here today

31. A 2013 Council of Ontario Universities Invited
Sustainability Symposium at YorkU was 100% male
I emailed & spoke with the Ontario Research Chair organizers, and speakers about the unacceptability of this
2015, 2 of them did it again (above, starred)
http://dawnbazely.lab.yorku.ca/2015/09/open-letter-asking-the-canadian-academic-stem-community-to-
improve-gender-balance-in-speaker-line-ups/
http://sciencepolicy.ca/simple-policy-will-shift-social-norms-right-direction-canadian-women-stem
Another proximate cause of what brought me here today

32. –Mildred Dresselhaus, physicist, MIT, b.1930
Reflections of a woman pioneer, by Vijaysree Venkataraman, Nov. 11, 2014,
Science
“Q: Are there hidden barriers to women’s advancement?
A: Yes. I was a great believer in the idea of a critical mass of female
students. With a minimum of 15% in each class, I thought the lack of
isolation would be enough. The guys would get it and everything would
change automatically.
In the 1980s, we were coasting toward these numbers. At the faculty level,
men and women seemed to have equal chance of attaining tenure. In 1984,
I became president of the American Physical Society and focused less on
these women’s liberation-related issues. I genuinely believed I had done
something towards bringing us closer to parity in over 15 years.
A decade later, Nancy Hopkins initiated her eye-opening study on the
status of women at MIT. The data on pay scales, lab space, and other
resources allotted to women showed how wrong I was. I thought numbers
alone could stimulate a change in attitudes.
Nancy said that we’d have to beat on these guys to change things..”
Wow!

33. 2014-15: #YorkUSci50 anniversary celebrations
• the organizing committee selected a
keynote alumni speaker who was a white
man
• I proposed that they add a more diverse
speaker line-up who reflect our student
demographics
•
no luck — 🙉🙈🙊
• so, with science profs, Sampa Bhadra and
Michael de Robertis, I organized an
alternative conference
• it featured women alumni & the retired
Dean of Science & Engineering (right),
Professor Gillian Wu
• ps I recently met the author of her
Wikipedia page
Another proximate cause of what brought me here today

34. Why did the 1970s-90s project to increase
female intake fail to shift cultural norms?
A. Research from the Social Sciences has
demonstrated the systemic impacts of implicit or
unconscious bias.
B. Social media has led to increasing awareness
that…
… STEM #BoysWithToys can be sexual harassers,
just like in every other segment of society
… Clancy et al. 2014
New Stuff

35. An essential read for all in STEM
Published: July 16, 2014
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0102172
New Stuff

36. Take the Harvard Implicit
Bias Test
• To help you to overcome your
confirmation bias
• I did
• I discovered that I’m racist &
sexist
• I unconsciously defer to white
males as authority figures
• YES, ME 😟😳😱😤🤔
New Stuff

37. Unconscious Bias is Everywhere
• Prof. Ben Schmidt,
Northeastern University
studies the history of #BigData
• Interactive tool that analyzes
how students use descriptive
words to describe professors’
teaching
• By discipline, gender, and
whether rating was positive or
negative

38. Gendered Language in Student Evaluations of Teachers
Positive Reviews Negative Reviews

39. Gendered Language in Student Evaluations of Teachers
Positive Reviews Negative Reviews

40. Women whose contributions are known to STEM
are continuously being written out of history
• Lorrie Dunington-Grubb’s contribution
to Canadian landscape architecture is
know, but her husband is featured
prominently in a recent history book &
she’s not there
• the major contribution of maps, by
Virginia Marie Peterson, to the iconic
field guides (a genre pioneered by
women) is all but forgotten — the
significance of her work is not
mentioned on the Peterson’s Field
Guide Wikipedia page
• women in STEM whose Wikipedia
pages are being flagged for deletions
• … Prof. Donna Strickland is not alone…

41. 🗣A timeline for my talk⏳
1. Women Nobel Laureates
• the case of Donna Strickland’s Wikipedia
page
2. My mini-timeline in STEM
3. Women have always done STEM
4. 1970-90s: policy & history
5. Why those policies failed
6. Current actions for countering this
7. Strategies for the future October 5, 2018 at an NSERC consultation on
developing an Athena SWAN programme for
Canada, I met Donna Strickland who asked me
to add her children to her Wikipedia page.
Photo credit: Naomi Adelson

42. The Social Media Game-Changer
• creates the critical mass of
women in STEM and allies
imagined by Mildred
Dresselhaus
• overcomes isolation
• allows networking and the
sharing of stories
• leverages & magnifies
local, individual action
Take action

43. Bringing regular, annual International
Ada Lovelace Day events to Canada
• In 2013 I started discussing the idea of
Ada Lovelace Day with Science &
Engineering Librarian, John Dupuis
(right, centre)
• In 2015 we held our first event at YorkU
in October
• Lassonde School of Engineering had
just hired an Assistant Dean of Inclusivity
& Diversity, Marisa Sterling P. Eng.
• John & I invited Marisa to help us
• http://dawnbazely.lab.yorku.ca/2016/07/
six-steps-to-making-your-very-own-ada-
lovelace-day-in-fall-2016/
Take action

44. About Ada Lovelace Day #ALD
• An International celebration of
Women in STEM
• Named for the first computer
programmer, Countess Ada
Lovelace (1815 —1852)
• Founded in 2009 by Suw
Charman-Anderson
• YorkU inaugural ALD speaker,
Prof. Imogen Coe, Dean of
Science, Ryerson University
(right)
Take action

45. #ALD2016 #YorkU: U of T Astrophysicist & Canada
Research Chair, Professor Bryan Gaensler
Bryan’s talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JB9BMIE6WI
Take action

46. #ALD2017 #YorkU: Science communicator & social
justice activist, Elly Zupko
#WomenAreAllOverIt T-shirt
Elly’s talk on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-JWLsaXp2g&t=311s
ps her Wikipedia page was rejected “not notable” “a one-off” yet another “one-
off” got to keep HIS wikipedia page 🤔 Take action

47. Wikipedia Edit-a-thons
• A popular Ada Lovelace Day
activity
• Recognizes that women are
under-represented in
Wikipedia
• Edit-a-thons edit and create
Wikipedia pages for notable
women in STEM and are
Open Access
• Judy Myers’ page https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Judith_H._Myers
Take action

48. Wikipedia Edit-a-thon:
Visva Bharati, March 20, 2018
• There’s lots of “how-to” advice
• It’s easier than it looks
• PROOF: I learned to do it
• Find a friendly STEM librarian
to help you
• My Prof. Kathy Martin page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Kathy_Martin_(scientist)
• But, be prepared for push-
back and drive-by deletions
Take action

49. Thank you!
to staff of the Visva Bharati Computer Science Office for
giving us access to this excellent computer workspace!

50. Networking uncovers allies
• nearer home: Dr. Eden
Hennessey did her Phd at
Laurier University in social
psychology
• her research examined
barriers faced by Women in
STEM through a photographic
and art lens
• #DistractinglyHonest &
#DistractinglySexist are
travelling exhibits
Take action

53. 🗣A timeline for my talk⏳
1. Women Nobel Laureates
• the case of Donna Strickland’s Wikipedia
page
2. My mini-timeline in STEM
3. Women have always done STEM
4. 1970-90s: policy & history
5. Why those policies failed
6. Current actions for countering this
7. Strategies for the future October 5, 2018 at an NSERC consultation on
developing an Athena SWAN programme for
Canada, I met Donna Strickland who asked me
to add her children to her Wikipedia page.
Photo credit: Naomi Adelson

54. There are calls for more films by women, about women, including women of
colour, and men.
E.g. Hidden Figures is about the black women mathematicians who were
integral to NASA’s space race.
INTERSECTIONALITY is a vital concept.
We need to write them BACK into the historical record, where they WERE
previously known!

55. Diann Jordan’s
2006 book
Take action

56. Keep Networking to find allies
• Some women in STEM
advocates that I have
met via Twitter:
• Dr. Mel Thomson & Dr.
Jenny Martin in Australia
• Dr. Victoria Metcalf in
New Zealand
• Dr. Hilary Lappin-Scott in
Wales, UK
Take action

57. Keep Networking to find allies
• In 2015, we learned that Dr.
Melanie Thomson, @DrMel_T,
was visiting New York City
from Australia
• We invited her to take a side
trip to Toronto
• She spoke about SAGE Pilot
Australia, which was modelled
on Athena SWAN
• We are now having a national
conversation about this
Take action

58. Educate senior STEM academics &
get them to be Active Bystanders
• students cannot be expected to bear the burden of change
• senior academics must create the space for the conversation & be held accountable for
not taking appropriate action
• https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/academic-gossip-network-fails-punish-
senior-scientists
Take action

59. Prof. Michael Kimmel TED talk

60. Nominate women for prestigious awards
This helps them to meet the Wikipedia page notability criteria
— which will probably STILL be challenged for deletion
— see Jess Wade’s recent tweets
In 2016, Prof. Imogen Coe, Dean of Science at Ryerson University, Toronto,
was named one of:
Take action

61. In 2017, Imogen brought Soapbox Science to Canada
Since giving the Inaugural Ada Lovelace Day lecture in 2015, Imogen has given
100s of talks advocating for Equity, Diversity & Inclusivity and Women in STEM

62. In 2017, Dean
Imogen Coe co-
hosted a
roundtable: EDI in
STEM — forging
paths to enhanced
innovation
Ass’t Dean Marisa
Sterling, P. Eng.
organized the
annual Dec. 4th
remembrance of the
1989 Montreal
Massacre at YorkU

63. Advocate for diverse, inclusive speaker line-ups: as when I co-
organized Toronto’s March for Science, 2017

64. Toronto’s March for Science 2017: everyone turned out

65. October 2017 #TimesUp
#MeToo
Take action

66. Recognition for Dr. Rosalind Franklin
• Involves putting a woman
back into her rightful place in
the historical record, even
though she didn’t win the
Nobel Prize:
• see Dr. Mark Lawler’s article in
The Conversation
• and also, re-evaluating the
actions, including, those up to
the present, of Dr. James
Watson

67. TAKE HOMES
1. The focus of activism by women in STEM has changed
from increasing intake to the pipeline, to actions aimed
at increasing retention (Clancy et al. address this)
2. The role that systemic biases play in driving out and
erasing the contributions of Women in STEM is being
analyzed by social sciences colleagues
3. Social Media continues to connect previously isolated
Women in STEM and their allies.
4. Open Access platforms such as Wikipedia, despite the
hostility of some segments of the community, are key to
the re-writing of women in STEM back into history.

68. “Thank you for inviting me, Farah and Heather!”