A 2011 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce estimated that women occupy only 24% of STEM jobs, despite making up 48% of the national workforce. Female role models can aid retention of women in STEM careers. Communicating the significant contributions and careers of women in science over the past century can not only provide positive role models but also raise awareness about the obstacles often faced by female scientists. As part of a broader historical investigation into the foundations of contemporary evolutionary population ecology, we have created an online exhibit focused on women who made major theoretical and empirical contributions to ecological genetics around the middle of the 20th century.
The decades following WWII were a period of transformation in ecological research. Arguments about the nature and study of intraspecific variation and adaptation in plants led to new models and investigations of population structure and differentiation in heterogeneous environments, setting the stage for fields like ecological genetics and evolutionary population ecology around the 1960s. Our objective is to showcase crucial scientific work by women that changed the way we think about genetic variation and evolutionary processes in ecological contexts, through short biographical and expository articles and interactive visualizations.
Results/Conclusions
The resulting online exhibit documents how women working in Britain, Russia, and the United States helped change the way that ecologists think about genetic variation and adaptive evolution in natural populations. Visitors to the web site can learn how Russian scientist Evgeniya Sinskaya’s theory of genetic differentiation in heterogenous environments influenced British genecologists in the 1950s; how Patricia Watson’s meticulous studies of genetic variation in pasture plants in Scotland provided crucial empirical support for rapid and localized adaptive differentiation theorized by Sinskaya; and how Scottish scientist Erna Bennet carried those insights and methods onto a global stage through her work at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, catalyzing the plant genetic resource conservation movement and challenging the way that scientists and policymakers thought about the relationship between ecology and agriculture in the age of the Green Revolution. The site leverages linked data and scholarly web services to bring together primary historical research, original publications, archival materials, and multimedia content. The online exhibit is a resource for students, educators, and interested scientists to explore the careers of these influential but previously under-appreciated women.