“ WE NEED TO OVERCOME THIS HURDLE; WE NEED TO MAKE STEM MORE DIVERSE, BECAUSE IF IT’S ONLY DONE BY A SMALL DEMOGRAPHIC, WE ARE NOT SERVING HUMANITY WELL.” DAME DR MAGGIE ADERIN-POCOCK MBE
THE IMPORTANCE OF DIVERSE ROLE MODELS “One of the things we can do to get more kids into STEM is to make space more diverse,” said Dr Aderin- Pocock, who set up her company Science Innovation Ltd to help tackle the challenge. Science has an image problem as well as a diversity and inclusion issue. “This is what we need to get over, this idea of scientists and engineers being socially inept and other.” Statistics show the size of the opportunity for
increasing diversity, inclusion and belonging in STEM. Men from ethnic minorities are 28% less likely to work in these areas than white men. A similar number (29%) of people identifying as LGBTQ+ opt out of careers in STEM for fear of discrimination. Women comprise just over a fifth (22%) of the core STEM workforce. “We need to overcome this hurdle; we need to make
STEM more diverse, because if it’s only done by a small demographic, we are not serving humanity well,” said Dr Aderin-Pocock. Living the adage ‘you’ve got to see it to be it’, Dr Aderin-Pocock is a high-profile and visible space communicator and scientist. She presents children’s and adults’ factual TV, is an author and works with schools, as well as with academics around the world and policymakers. A core message Dr Aderin-Pocock is keen to communicate is that we are all role models. Our passions and imperfections are what young people will connect with. “Marie Curie was a mother of two kids who won two
Nobel prizes and a single mother because her husband died quite early. It’s nice to bring the characters out behind the stories like [vaccine pioneer] Alan Powell Goffe and Gladys West, whose work was seminal in the GPS we use today.” In 2023, Mattel launched a Barbie doll of Dr Aderin-
Pocock to mark International Women’s Day. This is another way of storytelling and helping young people and children to connect with science and technology.
8 “One of the biggest fears was the moment of
revelation,” she recalled when she described how the doll was brought into being. “They take lots of photographs, and this is actually one of my dresses as you can see, and then they create your Barbie. I remember there was going to be this big reveal in front of the press and I thought, what if I don’t like it? What if it doesn’t look like me? “But it looked like me on a really good day, which is
how a Barbie should look. Being a role model isn’t about being perfect. I look back to that picture of Marie Curie with her two daughters and think about being human and having something you are passionate about. Every one of us has that thing that burns inside of us brightly. When we get out there and share it with other people, that’s what makes us role models. I love it when I turn up to school with jam down my top and children say, ‘well, if she can do it, I can do it’.”
MAKE IT RELEVANT The second strand of Dr Aderin-Pocock’s work around making science and technology careers in the space sector accessible is making it relevant. This includes overcoming the idea that space and astronomy are the domains of “white guys in togas, because that’s all you hear about: the Greeks, the Romans”. “These are the guys that got astronomy sewed
up,” she said. “But as a Black kid growing up in London, I didn’t feel like I belonged in that world.” Yet through archeoastronomy, the field of looking back in astronomy’s history, there is now greater recognition and learning around how every culture has looked up and wondered and celebrated the night sky. Nabta Playa in Namibia, for example, pre-dates Stonehenge. “It’s something inherent in all of us. If we get a clear
night and we look up, it lifts our hearts and it lifts our souls. I talk about the moon for mindfulness. If I’ve had a rough day and I see the moon, I just feel peaceful. Every culture has looked up and I love to go out and tell people this.”
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