There’s a lot to do about ‘us women’ in the STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering and Mathematics) area. We at Girl Geek Dinner NL will try to keep you in the loop on this and we will try it on a weekly basis too! So read on if you want to know what’s been happening this past week.

Internationally speaking, women in STEM are, well, multiplying so to speak. But how do you keep us in STEM jobs? That seemed to be the theme this past week. And a new book on gender bias emerged too.

• Eileen Pollack, one of the first women to graduate in Physics at Yale, released a new book: The Only Woman in the Room: Why Science is Still a Boys’ Club. She explains why she didn’t do anything with the degree, The Brown and White reports.
• The Australian reported on the very same topic: they wrote an article on how ‘the masculine culture’ is putting women off to even pursue a career in STEM. The researchers came up with three main factors on why that is the case. Futurity, a website that publishes studies, reports on this too.
• The Harvard Business Review even has tips on how to keep us from leaving STEM jobs.
• As you might know, Ada Lovelace Day happened at October 11th. Consequently, we wrote an article on 5 female tech scientists you should know. Do not know who Ada is? Well, CNET helps you out. They wrote an excellent piece about this controversial techie. And on why we still talk about her today.
• This also happened in the Netherlands: about 11.000+ kids broke the world record in programming! They did it on October 14, and a whopping 473 primary schools took part. It made the kids journal too. The articles mentioned is in Dutch.
• Worth mentioning is the report on a ‘talent watcher’ study. It has been published in September already, but I only saw it this week. One outcome: girls desperately need role models to guide them into the STEM fields. So, what are we waiting for?
• One role model has been given a well deserved pedestal: José van Dijck was given the award for most influential woman of 2016. She’s the director of KNAW, the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences. She got the award for actively pursuing diversity in STEM fields in the Netherlands.

So, quite a lot happened right? We’ll keep you posted on more!