@Aoife_Hunt
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR AND MATHEMATICIAN.AT MOVEMENT STRATEGIES, WHICH.
IS A COMPANY THAT SPECIALISES.IN CROWD FLOW PLANNING..DR AOIFE HUNT
for all of us to stand there and
say, “Well actually, we have,
and you’re just like us, so
there’s no reason that you
shouldn’t do it.”
Jess Something nice that the
Institute of Physics did was
getting 14- or 15-year-olds,
so just-deciding-GCSE age, to
go into primary schools to be
ambassadors for their subject.
Because when you’re studying
these things, and then you go
and tell kids about it, you’re
the boss, right? You know way
more than them, so you get
really empowered on your
own confidence. They get to
find out about physics, which
they’ve never really found out
about before. It inspires both
sides. It got those people to
stay on and keep physics for
A-level.Jess, you’ve recently been in the
news because you started writing
up Wikipedia pages for female
scientists. What inspired you to do
that in the first place?
Jess Wikipedia is this
incredible educationalplatform. It’s the fifth most
accessed website in the world,
and while people are critical
about the level of referencing,
and there are rumours that
teachers say you shouldn’t use
it in schools, it’s actually a
phenomenally good source
for putting together different
points of view, and the
citations are really strict. But
on English-speaking
Wikipedia, only 17% of the
biographies are about women.
So it’s incredibly biased by
the people who create the
content. About eight to 16%
of editors are women.
So basically, men are editing
Wikipedia, and writing
content that they’re interested
in or familiar with. Women
are underrepresented in
science and engineering
anyway, and so are people of
colour and LGBTQ+
scientists. I want it to be a
neutral platform. And I think
obviously that’s going to take
a lot more than just me
editing it, but I decided at the
beginning of last year that if Imet awesome women or came
across them on the internet,
or awesome people of colour,
I would start to make their
Wikipedia pages. Then you
start to look them up and
learn about them and their
stories, and they’re so
inspiring.There have been stories recently
about women who’ve had some
nasty experiences – whether at
undergraduate or PhD level – where
they’ve been sexually harassed by
supervisors or lecturers. Do you
think this is particularly a problem
in STEM?
Jess I think it probably is,
historically, a bigger problem
in subjects where men have
dominated senior positions.
All these stories that are
coming out about sexual
harassment and bullying are
in industries where men are at
the top: in the film industry,
in academia, in subjects like
physics and engineering,
where men are largely in
positions of power. You have
laws and rules in universitiesthat are incredibly dated, that
are hundreds of years old.
There’s nothing transparent
about reporting the way that
someone behaves. There’s
nothing clear about what will
happen to that person if you
tell them off. And I think that
that’s coming to a head now.
Lots of these stories have
come out in astrophysics, and
that’s because women are
starting to get to about 30%,
and this is the kind of nominal
percentage where things start
to change. There’s kind of a
cultural shift, and the women
start speaking up.
Angela There have been some
high-profile astrophysics
sexual harassment cases. And
the question is, “Why now?”
Part of it is the #MeToo
Movement, and women
feeling braver to speak out.
But it’s also because they
have each other. And they
didn’t always have each other.
I think one of the reasons it’s
worse in STEM, and
particularly in lab research, is
because this is a small, closedAoife presented a BBC
documentary about the maths of
crowd in 2018.