Jess Wade: Plastics and the Patriarchy

Jess is a physicist and LED scientist and ‘Chief Trouble Maker’ at Imperial College London, whose personal mission it is to showcase balanced evidence of the female contribution to science. Whether it’s writing 270 Wikipedia pages in one year devoted to female scientists of note, or creating a kickstarter to put copies of ‘Inferior’ into the hands of female students across the country - she is leading the charge in educating girls about structural barriers to attract more girls into science.
Jess talks passionately about her fascinating field of research - Plastics, but goes on to observe the startling imbalance between male and female representation in both labs and literature, highlighting the many institutional biases that exist in science. Talking with passion, charm and wit she takes us on her incredible journey which aims to redress the balance - writing a Wikipedia entry every day for under-represented minority scientists, getting books in the hands of little girls and prizes in the hands of women shifting the dial. It is little wonder she’s won a legion of fans and supporters across the world. YES Jess!

[@skilstopaybils4014]

I wish I could talk as beautifully as Jess. A really great talk. :-)

[@skilstopaybils4014]

Also, wowzers. The comments below are unreal lol. "Men aren't the problem" - say men whilst being a problem.

[@alexlim1275]

jess wade is edna mode from the incredibles or edna mode is jess wade from london? HAHA

[@MindbodyMedic]

''they're mostly men and mostly all white men'' yeah, the guys who completely pioneered, refined, defined then redefined the boundaries and incredible breadth of scientific knowledge in the last 4 centuries are mostly european men. A real scientist might ask the next obvious question.....why is this? what the hell have Africas/Indians/Chinese been up to all this damn time, where is their similar record of work to compare? what the hell is going on within Europe to produce a constant paradigm shift within the sphere of physics /science in general? lady sounds on verge of nervous breakdown, completely missing the forest for the trees. The joy is in finding things out, most of these men would've died happily never becoming famous or known if they could simply get to the root explanation for a particular phenomenon.

[@BadBoyofScience]

I think Jess does good work documenting the work of unknown female scientists - that’s all great! But is the problem really that Wikipedia entry writers are “white men”? Isn’t it actually that they’re not writing entries about women? The two are not interchangeable. There could be many reasons for this. Presumably there are less women to write about. Perhaps a lot of people write about themselves or people close to them, that they have worked with/met. Perhaps men enjoy bragging about their accomplishments more. I don’t know the exact reasons, but I’m sure they are myriad. The place people like Wade lose me is when they invoke sexism and racism to make their point. White men are the issue. Why? Why can’t more women write entries? Wikipedia is open to all. It shows a simplistic and ideological thinking that lowers her impact with those whose minds she wants to change most imo.

[@MindbodyMedic]

the problem is the absolute opposite, men are far far too tolerant within science and wrongly assume these activist types are about equality/fairness. wrong. they're just going to stymie innovation via attempting to 'equalise' what cannot be equalised. there is no equal distribution of genius

[@devonmatthews6443]

Is Wade having a baby?

[@richardfmann]

Stick to science and drop the social justice warrior talk, you will get more respect. No one is stopping women learning science, it’s their choice