International Womens Day March 8th

Much like declining to wish people a “Happy Veterans Day”, I will also be declining to wish women a “Happy International Women’s Day”. This is for many of the same reasons.

There is nothing happy about this.

Google and Apple took it off of their calendars.

In an obvious sop to more than half of the country, Google did incorporate 5 images into its search page. An atom, a double helix strand of DNA, an Erlenmeyer flask, a dinosaur skull, and an astronaut in full gear.

And that’s it.

It is up to us to decipher which scientist or woman matches up with each image.

The atom is a bit of a head thumper to start us off. I imagine that it is supposed to represent Marie Curie. I guess. One of her TWO Nobel prizes is in physics.

The double helix of DNA is much easier to parse. Rosalind Franklin was the woman who took Photo 51, the first x-ray picture that clearly showed the double strands. Her work was stolen by the heralded discoverers of DNA, without her permission. She was robbed of the Nobel prize when the two men who had taken her data did not credit her. Worse, they tried to cover up this fact by saying that she couldn’t grasp the concept of DNA.

Bitch, please.

The Erlenmeyer flask is meant to be the contributions of all women in chemistry? I guess. It’s not really clear. There have been a lot of women in chemistry, after all.

The dinosaur skull could represent Dorothy Garrod. She was the one who first explained that the First Mesozoic era encompassed the history of man. Or perhaps it is representing the first woman archeologist, Margaret Murray, who worked in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There have also been a lot of women in archeology.

The astronaut could be any number of women. The first woman in space was Valentina Tereshkova. She orbited the Earth for 3 days in June 1963.

If you click through the Google doodle, it is just a celebration of women in STEM. No woman is named specifically by name.

But we know or can guess at the inspiration for each doodle image.

Women in science and STEM is an international effort.

One that we have to give all respect for and homage to.

But it isn’t enough. What other woman has had her data stolen or was forced to give her work to a man for recognition? There remains a lot of work to do.

One thing that must be acknowledged is the contributions that are not STEM related. Because the entire world and all of its discoveries are not solely STEM related. To act as if it is devalues the woman writers and thinkers and philosophers who have fought and bled and died and were forgotten for their contribution to the current world.

Despite the men. Not because of them.

But we still have to recognize that all these women were once girls. And these girls had books.