Physicist Jessica Wade has become known to a wider audience for her tireless commitment to helping women and people of color (PoC) in engineering and natural sciences gain more visibility through biographies written on Wikipedia. In principle, she sees the system as having a duty to change the rules of the game in favor of the marginalized. “But first we have to educate people more about their prejudices,” the Brit told APA.
Wade, who will attend the Vienna Science Ball on Saturday, used to write about one Wikipedia entry a day; Today she writes three to four entries a week. This is less because, according to the approximately 2,100 Wikipedia biographies written since 2018, there are no longer enough deserving women and people overlooked in research, but rather because she has had a lot to do since the autumn: she has been a professor since October at Imperial College London and has also received a Royal Society Research Fellowship – his research focus is the development of new materials for optoelectronics and quantum technologies.
She has now also trained others in writing Wikipedia entries about marginalized researchers. Students also help translate biographies in order to make them globally accessible to the widest possible audience. “This has led to a kind of multiplier effect – many people around the world are now creating and translating them,” said the physicist, who has won many awards for her commitment to greater fairness in research.
Show the system your weaknesses
“I'm more interested in pointing out weaknesses in the scientific system than encouraging women to spend more time marketing themselves.” A good system should take everyone's contributions into account, Wade said. The reality looks different. “As a rule, only a small, homogeneous group, often dominated by white men, makes decisions about awarding awards, scholarships, funding of any kind – and this can bring with it a lot of unconscious bias and stereotypes,” Wade said. . She wants people to start thinking about how many are trying hard to have a chance too.
At the same time, support measures for young researchers are needed to bring more diversity and equality into the scientific system – even in universities that are not on the list of renowned institutions. Wade is now developing training programs and organizing “summer schools” for women and PoC.
Although Wade initially focused on women physicists in Britain in her Wikipedia entries, “it quickly becomes clear that the diversity in this group is very poor”: “Historically, it has been mostly white, affluent women.” This quickly led Wade to open up his research radius: “Obviously, it takes longer to read about work that isn't related to the subject, but it's also very exciting to learn something about a new topic or a new technique.”
Wade finds his protagonists, whom he sometimes nominates for awards, on the websites of institutions, award winners or in media articles. “But when writing about researchers from the Global South, it is sometimes difficult to meet English Wikipedia's comparatively rigorous standards for verifiable sources.” Blog entries and social media posts do not count as sources; Social media in the Global South is often considered less credible than Western media. “This hinders our ability to recognize their discoveries or celebrate their ideas,” she said.
Unpredictable impact
Once a biography is written and published, a sort of snowball effect occurs – others link to the article, the impact takes on a life of its own, and is ultimately not predictable, much less measurable. American mathematician Gladys West, born in 1930 into an African-American farming family in Virginia, introduced Wade on Wikipedia in 2018. “Growing up in times of racial segregation, she came to university as a teacher after finishing her studies and eventually worked for the US government.” Her mathematical work provided the basis for satellite technology. “A few months after I posted on Wikipedia, she appeared on the BBC series '100 Women' and was inducted into the United States Air Force Hall of Fame in 2018,” Wade said. These types of success stories inspire readers and listeners at events where Wade speaks and are passed along.
But how can you change the system toward more equality? “Before changing the rules of the game that only further anger naysayers, we need to make prevailing prejudice more visible.” Because: The prerequisite for visible careers is that there is “recognition at entry level”: “We need to raise awareness of the fact that many people are simply denied funding at an early stage”. However, Wade sees reason to hope that funding institutions will increasingly draw attention to the bias factor.
It is particularly difficult when there is a combination of “multiple identities”: “In physics it is more difficult for a woman than for a man, but it is ten times more difficult for a Muslim woman.” Of around 23,000 teachers in the UK, there are only around 60 black female teachers, says Wade.
Ultimately, it's also about rethinking the prevailing criteria of excellence – “but not in the sense of: women are less excellent than men, let's change the rules”. It is also important to be more aware that scientific achievements are based on the collaboration of many people: “Even today, only three researchers can win a Nobel Prize, even if hundreds or thousands of researchers have contributed to a discovery”. Greater recognition is needed, including for those who provide methodological and analytical work or who are committed to teaching, research culture and scientific dissemination.
Its goal is to tell stories of the invisible. But the researcher doesn’t see herself as a “role model”: “I’m just trying to help.”
Service: Vienna Science Ball on January 27th: https://www.wissensball.at/