Women Excel in STEM

A medieval transcription of Euclid's Elements featuring a woman teaching geometry.

Science has the power to expand our horizons and helps us to see how great God is…Our response to what we see in the world is rational, emotional and active: worship as well as systematic theology. - Ruth Bancewicz

From Presidents and CEOs of organizations, to researchers, science writers, and journalists, Christian women in STEM are leaders in their fields and paving the way for others to follow. As Women’s History Month draws to a close, we highlight the work of ten Christian women in various STEM fields, including astrophysics, engineering, biology, and climate science. We also include science communicators who are doing the important work of sharing science with lay Christian audiences through writing and journalism. Of course this is not an all inclusive list of Christian women in STEM. There are countless others throughout history who have pioneered and unlocked discoveries in their fields. And there are many more contemporary Christian women in STEM fields like Mary Schweitzer who found the first evidence of soft tissue in a 68-million year dinosaur bone, Carol Hill whose research gave us a better understanding of the age and origin of the Grand Canyon, and Katherine Johnson, a NASA mathematician whose work helped send Apollo to the Moon.

Christian women are also leading important conversations on the intersection of faith and science, which has traditionally been dominated by white male voices. Faith and science organizations like the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) was previously led by rocket scientist Leslie Wickman, the Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Society (DoSER) program has been led by astrophysicist Jennifer Wiseman, and BioLogos is currently led by astronomer Deb Haarsma. Christian sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund has dedicated her career to understanding how scientists and religious people perceive each other, helping combat misconceptions and bridge the communication gap between faith and science communities on important topics like Climate Change, COVID-19, and evolution.

Despite numerous role-models, Christian women still remain underrepresented in STEM, and the numbers are even starker for Christian women of color. Being a woman in STEM comes with its own set of challenges, but there are also challenges that are unique to Christian women. In an interview with BioLogos, Loryn Phillips, a graduate student in biology and member of the Christian Women in Science (CWiS) leadership board shared: “On top of the challenges that already come with being a woman in science, Christian women in science carry additional burdens. We don’t want to lose the respect of our colleagues or jeopardize our careers because we identify as Christian, especially when we desire to be public and vocal about sharing God’s majesty in our work with others.” Sadly even in the Church, Loryn shared that Christian women in science face the challenge of, “feeling ashamed or not feeling safe to discuss their research for fear of ridicule or judgment, and feeling alone.” There is still work to be done, but thankfully there isn’t a shortage of Christian women role-models in STEM for the next generation of women and girls to look up to and see themselves represented.

Read more here: 10 Christian Women to Know: STEM Edition - Post - BioLogos; Sister Mary Celine Fasenmyer; Sister Mary Gervase; Agnes Giberne: A Lover of Science; Christian Women in Science, Technology and Engineering

Hidden Figures is a Must See!

By Lynn Billman

Chairman of the Board of the American Scientific Affiliation


If you haven’t yet, be sure to go see “Hidden Figures,” a wonderful true-story movie about the black women mathematicians who worked for NASA in the early 1960s. These women were key to the manual calculations for launches and orbits that had to be made in the early stages of the U.S. space program. They were also critical to the early programming of the first IBM computers used by NASA, and one featured in the movie was the first female black engineer in NASA. The movie is based on the book, “Hidden Figures – The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race,” by Margot Lee Shetterly, currently #1 on the New York Times best seller list (according to Amazon).

The movie highlights very clearly the biases these women had to work against, both because they were women and because they were black. As a couple scenes made clear, they were / are also Christians. The patience, perseverance, and resourcefulness of these phenomenally smart women was incredibly inspiring, as they forced changes to cultural norms and were true pioneers. As the epilogue showed at the end of the movie, their contributions were eventually recognized, praise God!

I went with the three young women millennials in my family, and we had good laughs and sharing over coffee afterward as I recounted my own experiences in that era (yes, the white hair is well earned!) -- fumbling with decks of computer cards while learning Fortran, the realities of Jim Crow in Virginia in the early 1960s, the excitement of the entire nation at every event in the early space program, the sense of fear from Soviet progress with rockets in their space program that could threaten America. Ah, the bad old days!

So grab a friend and head for the theater. I hope this movie will inspire you, and perhaps rekindle some sense of hope about America.

Related reading: Six NASA Women Who Made History