by, for, and about women in science, technology, engineering, & math

• Geek Feminism has started a new series, Wednesday Geek Woman, highlighting technical and scientific women both historical and current (it’s like Ada Lovelace Day every week!); today’s featured woman is biologist Rosalind Franklin.
• The Anita Borg Institute also has a series of profiles, Senior Technical Women; this month’s is Nora Denzel, a vice president at Intuit.
• There’s been a Twitter discussion about Silicon Alley Insider’s “New York’s Coolest People in Tech”. The conversation pretty much goes as per usual whenever a list comes out — someone points out that there’s an unrepresentatively small number of women on the list, and then a man involved in making the list complains that it’s because he couldn’t find any women or that they didn’t come to him asking to be included in the list. Sigh.
• Meanwhile, this Field Guide to Female Entrepreneurs managed to find plenty of women involved in the New York tech scene!
• Via the Systers mailing list, a cartoon drawn in honor of Ada Lovelace Day.
• Under the Microscope shares six things to inspire women in science.
• There’s still plenty of time to apply for Google’s Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship — which awards $10,000 each to qualified women who are full-time students in Computer Science or Engineering.

Posting links from the air conditioned library, as we’re having a heat wave this week…

• I just discovered ScienceWoman at ScienceBlogs; she shares a great blogroll of blogs by/for women in science, and I also found some interesting posts in her archive (Who is your favorite woman scientist? [answer in comments here!], and a discussion of what name to publish under for a woman starting her academic career but also about to change her name upon marriage).

• A post about the expectations of chemistry grad students at CalTech. A bit outdated, but sparks an interesting discussion about unrealistic expectations in academia. Women, of course, are disproportionately affected by these expectations because we’re more likely to have household or childrearing responsibilities that are incompatible with being in a lab 24/7.

• Geek Feminism commenters respond to a question about how to respond to women who think there’s no more oppression in the western world.

• Feministe points out that women haven’t been honored very frequently by the “Google Doodle”, and asks commenters to suggest accomplished women who deserve recognition there.

• There have been a few different posts on Geek Feminism recently about fashion and clothing issues for female geeks — a subject we’ve also discussed here.

• New on our blogroll:

Inkling (tagline: “life in the girl nerd world”), an online science mag that also features great ladygeek content like a gallery of geeky women and the geek perspective on birth control

Skepchick, where a group of mostly female bloggers write about science and skepticism (and recently, what most people won’t tell you about pregnancy (kind of terrifying!))

• ReadWriteWeb posts about why we need tech events for women
• Girl-wonder.org has a page up about the Con Anti-Harassment Project
• Bao Phi blogs at Racialicious about being a nerd of color
• Restructure! blogs about male IT geeks thinking they are low-status and venture capitalists consciously rewarding candidates for being white and male
• There’s been a lot of buzz about Google Buzz, and [trigger warning] its potentially serious privacy concerns. Are you using it? Do the privacy issues affect whether you’re using it?
• Notes from a mini-conference on how to make women welcome in tech at Agile Open Northwest
• As was mentioned here before, “computer engineer” was in the running for Barbie’s next career — and it turns out computer engineering Barbie will be produced!
• PhDork at The Pursuit of Harpyness writes about feminism in the classroom and her experiences teaching a class where male students volunteer to talk more often
• Nadya Fouad, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, studies the reasons girls don’t stick with math and science
• At Salon, Kate Harding writes about Christine Alvarado and Linda Geddes, women who’ve developed or expressed their scientific leanings through “girly” means (My Little Pony and weddings)!
• And for your Friday dose of science+cuteness=win, a neuroscience study guide… with cats!

• Latoya on Jezebel posts about girls, geekdom, and sexism in gaming, scifi and programming — as usual, the comments are worth a look from the variety of perspectives from geeky girls and the guys who like them
• The New York Times writes about reforming computer science education at the high school level; the Washington Post talks about declining enrollment in high school CS classes, and Fred Wilson responds to the NYT article, asking schools to bring computer science into middle schools as well!
• Sally Ride discusses the gender gap
• A Pew Survey shows people’s attitudes about technology compared with their attitudes about society in general in the ’00s
• Google’s Anita Borg scholarship for college women majoring in CS or related fields has an upcoming deadline — 2/1/10. (It’s also interesting to note that according to Dr. Borg’s bio, she didn’t start programming until her 20s, and yet still had a successful research career — yet more evidence that we should be reminding people who didn’t start their engineering education in their teens that it’s not too late!)
• Under the Microscope posts their top 8 summer internships for women in STEM!
• CareerWISE, another website supporting women in STEM (though focused more tightly on academia), is soon to launch
• And already in existence: Braincake, a website for girls aged 11-17 interested in STEM. They even have a Gender Equity Toolkit for parents and teachers!

• Shakesville takes down a Kotaku post called “Five Steps to Total Pwnage of a Gamer Girl’s Heart.”
• An interview with Ada Yonath, Nobel laureate in chemistry
• Geek Feminism posts an open letter to Motorola about the for-macho-men-only ad they’ve been running for the Droid, and Ruby developer Mislav weighs in on the ads’ ineffectiveness
• And on the subject of smartphones, the big news is Google’s upcoming new unlocked smartphone, the Nexus One. There’s an interesting discussion in the Lifehacker comments about the possible impact on phone prices of having a popular unlocked phone available. (Any thoughts on either the Droid or the Nexus? I’m a woefully late adopter of smartphone technology — I’m getting a G1 in the mail this week, on the grounds that it’s free software [at least compared to the ultraproprietary iPhone!] and came free with plan!)

There are also always more links to blogs we like on the main posts page.

What have you been reading lately? Post your links in the comments, or in a new post!