London (Commonwealth Union)_A strong woman is one who fixes another’s crown, and supports her through the best and the worst. This is women empowerment in its essence, and embodying the very idea of it is Jess Wade, a 33-year-old British physicist who met Kim Cobb, a climatologist at a science event 5 years ago, and was stunned to discover that there was no information online about her, even though there were multiple scientific accolades under her name.
Upon further investigation, Wade found multiple female scientists who should be known by the world for their work, yet were absent from Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia used by billions of people to discover people and ideas.
Wade believed that a proper established online presence meant more opportunities and recognition, and therefore took matters into her own hands. Since 2017, she has written over 1700 bios for female and minority scientists whose achievements were not acknowledged, let alone glorified on the site. She said that it’s bad enough that there is not much female representation in the male-dominated world of science, but it was worse yet that the few ones who stuck it out were not celebrated.
She herself is a scientist, primarily focusing on research work that revolves around the chemistry that is used to identify molecules. Her own Wikipedia page is filled with achievements of her scientific contributions. She is also an active advocate for women in STEM, who make up only 28 percent of the entire workforce.
Wade’s main concern and the purpose that fuels this extremely efficient pass time of hers is that it’s already too bad that there aren’t many female scientists, when there should be more, but the existing ones are not celebrated enough. She further continued that people speak a lot about underrepresentation of women and how there should be more inclusion, however there aren’t many people who are willing to do something about it.
