Women in Innovation

As we discussed feminism in morality, I couldn’t help but think; why is it that after so many years of societal, technological, industrial, and medical progression women are still thought to be “not as good as men?” So many years of innovation have gone by that women have played a large part in and yet it seems, we still don’t get the credit or praise we deserve (I say “we” like I’ve made some ground breaking contribution to research. For the record, I have not…yet. But I digress.) For example, in 1938 a German woman named Lise Meitner was the first person to develop the idea of nuclear fission, which would later lead to the atomic bomb (http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/10/ada-lovelace-eight-inventions-women-erasure-credit.) She and her Scandinavian partner Otto Hahn, worked together in creating this deadly reaction. However, when an award was to be presented for this discovery, Hahn left Meitner’s name off the paper and proceeded to reap the benefits. I think this instance begs the question; if this woman has proven to be just as intelligent and driven as her male counterpart, why did she not receive the credit she deserved? If Meitner had been a man, would her name have gotten published as well? I think not.

There are a bunch of accounts of women creating life changing products and ideas, but no one seems to know that it is in fact a woman who created it. It seems as though every invention we can think of was created by a man. While it’s great that people are using their creative and imaginative abilities, it would be nice if every now and then we celebrated women’s contribution to innovation. Why do you think that women don’t receive nearly as much praise as men when it comes to the category of innovation?

A couple instances of female innovative contributions to the world I can think of are Amelia Earhart’s aviation voyage and Marie Curie’s discovery of radium.