“Our research suggests that American children are picking up on cultural stereotypes about brilliance at an early age. Girls as young as 6 start to believe that specific activities are “not for them” simply because they think they’re not smart enough. They found that by the age of 6, young girls are less likely than boys to view their own gender as “brilliant.” Reaching girls when they are young is going to be key to this effort, as a new study by Andrei Cimpian and Sarah-Jane Leslie, published in the journal Science, shows. And we’ll need many more female astronauts. For the space program, in particular, we’ll need many more women to become mathematicians, engineers, coders, and project managers. In addition to Margaret Hamilton and Katherine Johnson, the new “Women of NASA” LEGO toy set will include Sally Ride, the first American woman to go to space Nancy Grace Roman, an astronomer who helped plan the Hubble Space Telescope and Mae Jemison, an astronaut who became the first African-American woman in space in 1992 (pictured below).Ĭlearly more needs to be done to encourage girls to study the academic subjects and pursue the career paths that will take them into science and technology-related fields. LEGO, the Danish toy company and a brand known to millions of children and parents around the world, took one small step forward recently in bringing these remarkable women to greater awareness when it chose to feature five women who helped build America’s space program as LEGO toy figures. That’s why we’ll need to rely on other channels and formats to spread the word. Schools trumpet the accomplishments of men like Neil Armstrong and John Glenn as the heroes of the space age, yet overlook the contributions of the many women who played instrumental roles in the realization of our dream to conquer space. The fact that these and other notable women in the sciences are largely unknown to young girls like my 11-year-old daughter is a glaring problem, the responsibility for which lies largely in the hands of our education system. It took a Presidential award, and a Hollywood movie production, to make the names of these women known to me and millions of other people around the world. But what really struck me was the fact that I had never heard of them before. Like many people, I was inspired by the stories of these remarkable women who shaped America’s space program. The film tells the previously untold story of how three African-American mathematicians, Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, helped launch astronaut John Glenn into orbit, among other space missions. In early January, the movie Hidden Figures hit movie theaters. Hamilton led the software engineering team that developed the computer code that powered the capsule that put the first men on the moon. space program…yet in many cases, their contributions are unknown or under-appreciated - especially as women have historically struggled to gain acceptance in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)," Weinstock wrote in her Lego Ideas proposal.Last November, President Obama bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom award on Margaret Hamilton for her contributions to the Apollo 11 space mission. "Women have played critical roles throughout the history of the U.S. The set would feature five figurines representing five important NASA pioneers: Margaret Hamilton, Katherine Johnson, Nancy Grace Roman, Mae Jemison and Sally Ride. Maia Weinstock, deputy editor of MIT News and a self-proclaimed "Lego tinkerer," has proposed a new Lego set that celebrates the women of NASA. Unfortunately, some of them aren't household names like Aldrin, Armstrong or Sagan. The history of American space exploration is often centered around the following names: Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Carl Sagan, Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom and James Lovell.īut a handful of women also contributed to our understanding of the universe, serving as cosmonauts, analysts, researchers and engineers. The set features Hidden Figures inspiration Katherine Johnson, as well as Margaret Hamilton, Nancy Grace Roman, Mae Jemison and Sally Ride. UPDATE: The "Women of NASA" Lego set is officially a go, with the set's creator Maia Weinstock announcing the news this week.
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