By: Tayida Phanich
Off the top of your head, how many female Asian scientists can you name? One? Two? None? I’m sure many answers exist in that range. But why is that? As an Asian myself, I’ve heard my fair share of “Aren’t you Asian, you’re supposed to be smart” and “Aren’t Asians good at math?” as well as the whole array of various other common stereotypes (which would be a perfect topic but maybe for some other day). With such a perception, you’d actually expect this to be helpful in fields like STEM which incorporates Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. And on the outside, this seems to be true, with 22% of doctoral recipients at US universities coming of Asian descent (Wu and Jing). However, despite all of these beliefs, Asians, Asian women, in particular, are heavily over-represented in the field of STEM. Based on a National Science Foundation study, they found that only 20.6% of employed scientists and engineer professors are Asian women, the lowest percentage of all the races and gender. Additionally, only 0.9% of scientists/engineers employed in a business or industry are Asian women, the percentage of which, is once again, the lowest (Wu and Jing).
But why is this? Asian women face a double bind, being both of a minority race, and being a woman. This dilemma challenges and sometimes discourages these women, as those who do work in this field often are appointed to lower positions and are offered less job stability. In Korea, only 19% of women are given a permanent contract for STEM jobs compared to the 81% of men. With such insecurity, many drop out to find more stable jobs for their families. Additionally, it is much harder for women to get into higher positions, with almost no women at the highest levels (Salmon).
Due to these challenges, there is little encouragement to enter the field of STEM, despite much interest. Because of this, it is important to empower Asian women in these departments, not only as a way to develop passion but to inspire many other youths who need someone to look up to. “We need more role models and more female teachers in STEM-related subjects, ” says Kayo Inaba, a Japanese professor and Vice President for Gender Equality. And that is absolutely true.
That is why we want to introduce three amazing Asian women scientists and engineers. With more recognition for the many Asian women who have powered through all the challenges to achieving their dreams, to reach the point they have now, we are not only celebrating them, but also the thousands of other young female Asians who are looking to achieve their dreams as well.
Tu Youyou
Born in 1930, in Ningbo, China, her father named her after a Chinese poem called Youyou. The simple poem follows a deer eating artemisia, but little did he know how important this plant would be in his daughter’s career. As her family valued education, she worked hard in school, but had to take a two year break when she had contracted tuberculosis. And through this experience, she found her passion.
Once she recovered, she knew exactly what she wanted to do: medicine. She wanted to help find cures for other diseases and conditions so that no one will have to suffer at the hands of them, like she once did. With this motivation, she enrolled herself into Beijing Medical College and chose to study pharmacology. Following her graduation in 1955, she ended up working at the Academy of Traditional Medicine where she studied ancient Han and Qing dynasty medical texts, and took courses to be trained in modern Western methods.
Her big break came in 1967 right in the middle of the Vietnam War. Due to many North Vietnamese soldiers dying of malaria in their camps, the Chinese government initiated Project 523 with the goal of finding a treatment for malaria, with Tu Youyou as the project lead. With her knowledge on Chinese medical texts, the team easily identified and tested possible remedies. However, an extract from the sweet wormwood plant, as once described in a Chinese text as used to treat “intermittent fevers” in 400 AD, seemed to be the most promising. In 1972, her team had isolated the compound, artemisinin, which had been found to eliminate the disease, and she was willing to be the first human subject for the testing of the compound. It worked! After some more tests, the treatments were administered to patients in the Hainan province, and all of them recovered.
Nowadays, this treatment is used all over the world to treat malaria patients and thousands of lives.
In 2015, she accepted the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her work, being the first mainland Chinese scientist to have received such an award in the scientific category and she did so without a medical degree.
Anousheh Ansari
Ever since Anasari was young, she loved space, and she wanted to space travel. She loved it so much, she was determined to make her dreams come true. Originally born on September 12th, 1966 in Iran, she later moved to America with her family when she was a teenager without knowing how to speak english. However, she pushed forward and there, she gained a bachelor’s degree in electronics and computer engineering from George Mason University.
In 1993, Ansari, along with her husband and brother, started their own company founded Telecom Technologies. And although she had her own company, her love for space never died. That’s why in 2002, her and her family contributed millions of dollars to X PRIZE foundation, an NGO that hosts competitions for innovative solutions to humanity’s problems. This money went to the Ansari X Prize, an award that would be given to the first private company to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks, which soon went to the Scaled Composites of Mojave company.
Ansari was arranged to be a part of the spaceflight as a “space tourist” and on September 18th, 2006, her dreams came true. She became the first female space tourist, the first Iranian, and the first female Muslim to go to space.
Now, Ansari works with many organizations like X Prize and ASHOKA to work to provide young generations with the right tools and role models to better the future of mankind.
Janaki Ammal
Known as the first Indian botanist, Janaki Ammal defied her society’s standards in order to pursue her own dreams and while she was at it discovered significant contributions to her country and the world.
Ammal was born in 1897 in Kerala, India to a family of 19 siblings. Her father was a judge, so he kept a garden in their backyard, and there is where she found her love for nature. Her father enjoyed nature, his library filled with books on nature and wildlife, and notes on developing his garden, which sparked Ammal’s curiosity. As the years passed, she watched as her other siblings were put into arranged marriages and although she was presented with a partner of her own, she decided to choose another path. She had accepted a scholarship to Queens Mary College in the USA instead, abandoning her expected life of matrimony to pursue her dream of higher education. At these times, this was very uncommon, but Ammal had done it.
She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in botany before moving back to India for a few years, but ending up at the University of Michigan where she studied plant cytology, the study of gene expression in plants. Being Asian, she had her fair share of struggles, including being detained until her immigration status was cleared, but in the end she did it, achieving a doctorate in botany in 1931, the first Indian woman in the US to do so.
From here, she returned back to India and joined the Sugarcane Breeding Institute where she made her first remarkable contribution. Before this, most of India’s sugarcane was imported from Java, as their species was the sweetest. However, with her help, they crossbred plant species that resulted in sugar canes with much higher sucrose content, boosting India’s indigenous sugarcane varieties and the industries surrounding it.
After bouncing around England, traveling a bit of Europe, having a few flowers named after her (particularly a magnolia species), Ammal returned to India in the 1950s, where she was faced with much dissatisfaction with the government projects. Because of this, she redirected her focus from improving commercial plants to preserving indeginous species. In 1955, she was the only woman to attend a conference called “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth” where she spoke about Indian tribal cultures, native plants, and traditions that were threatened by mass-production. Additionally, in the 1970s she advocated to stop a hydroelectric project to flood Silent Valley, preserving over 1,000 flowering plant species and entire acres of forests.
Although Ammal was a person full of “firsts” she never talked about herself, instead she always said “My work is what will survive” and it sure did, whether it be in the sweet sugarcanes, the magnolia flowers, or the forests that still exist in the Silent Valley, she lives on.
Works Cited:
Wu, Lilian, and Wei Jing. “Asian Women in STEM Careers: An Invisible Minority in a Double Bind.” Issues in Science and Technology 28, no. 1, 2011, https://issues.org/realnumbers-29/
Salmon, Aliénor. “10 Facts about Girls and Women in STEM in Asia.” UNESCO Bangkok, 31 July 2017, https://bangkok.unesco.org/content/10-facts-about-girls-and-women-stem-asia
Nobel Prize. “Tu Youyou.” The Nobel Prize, 2015, https://www.nobelprize.org/womenwhochangedscience/stories/tu-youyou
Liu, Wenxiu and Yue Liu. “Youyou Tu: significance of winning the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine” National Center for Biotechnology Information, 15 December 2015, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4731589/
Rogers, Kara. “Tu Youyou” Encyclopædia Britannica, 26 December 2019, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Tu-Youyou
Nobel Prize. “Tu Youyou Facts” The Nobel Prize, 2015,https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2015/tu/facts/
Pal, Sanchari. “Meet India’s First Woman PhD in Botany – She Is The Reason Your Sugar Tastes Sweeter!” The Better India, 16 November 2016, https://www.thebetterindia.com/75174/janaki-ammal-botanist-sugarcane-magnolia/
McNeill, Leila. “The Pioneering Female Botanist Who Sweetened a Nation and Saved a Valley” Smithsonian Magazine, 31 July 2019, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/pioneering-female-botanist-who-sweetened-nation-and-saved-valley-180972765/
Sci-illustrate. “Janaki Ammal.” Medium, 9 July 2019, https://medium.com/sci-illustrate-stories/janaki-ammal-466b644a4369
XPrize. “Anousheh Ansari.” XPrize, https://www.xprize.org/about/people/anousheh-ansari
Anousheh Ansari. “About Anousheh Anasari.” Anoushehansari.com, 2009, http://www.anoushehansari.com/about/
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Anousheh Ansari.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 8 September 2020, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anousheh-Ansari
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