Danielle Whar­wood

danielle­whar­wood@gmail.com

Grow­ing up, I knew I could be what­ev­er I want­ed to be, from an ar­chi­tect to a sur­geon. See­ing dif­fer­ent women in my life in a va­ri­ety of work­places and rep­re­sent­ed on­screen in a pletho­ra of fields, I nev­er ques­tioned my abil­i­ty to achieve my as­pi­ra­tions. Now that I’m old­er, I re­alise how priv­i­leged I’ve been to be in an en­vi­ron­ment that al­lowed me to dream, striv­ing to­wards what­ev­er goals I set for my­self, and I’m grate­ful to live in a time where I can choose what I want to do and have it be at­tain­able.

While that’s my re­al­i­ty, many aren’t so lucky. Our grand­moth­ers were told that sci­ence wasn’t an op­tion for them. Our moth­ers could some­times choose but were of­ten un­sup­port­ed. To­day, girls have ac­cess, ex­po­sure and even sup­port, but bar­ri­ers re­main. In cru­cial Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy, En­gi­neer­ing and Math­e­mat­ics (STEM) fields, women make up on­ly one third of the work­force, not be­cause women lack tal­ent, skill, in­tel­li­gence or am­bi­tion, but be­cause sys­tems have been built with­out women in mind and bar­ri­ers erect­ed, ac­tive­ly push­ing them out of rooms, con­ver­sa­tions and com­mu­ni­ties de­spite half of the pop­u­la­tion be­ing fe­male.

For the 2026 In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Women and Girls in Sci­ence, let us fo­cus on the theme, re­defin­ing STEM by clos­ing the gen­der gap, which ul­ti­mate­ly leads to bet­ter sci­ence, so­lu­tions and fu­tures for all.

In our evolv­ing world, where tech­nol­o­gy, health­care, cli­mate, busi­ness and pol­i­cy have dras­ti­cal­ly changed our lives, it’s in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant to in­clude women in STEM spaces. These fields in­form us about life and our world, im­pact­ing the de­ci­sions we make, and when women are ab­sent from lab­o­ra­to­ries, re­search teams and in­no­v­a­tive spaces, knowl­edge is lost. Sci­ence that ex­cludes women of­ten fails women, and by ex­ten­sion, our so­ci­ety. In the med­ical field, for ex­am­ple, cer­tain de­mo­graph­ics are of­ten less re­searched, lead­ing to a poor­er over­all stan­dard of care.

A no­table re­gion­al ex­am­ple of a woman who ad­dressed some of these med­ical re­search is­sues is Dr Si­mone Badal, a Ja­maican bio­chemist. She recog­nised a cru­cial gap in can­cer re­search mod­els, where black pa­tients are large­ly omit­ted, and de­vel­oped sev­er­al new sys­tems for study­ing prostate and breast can­cer, ex­pand­ing the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of black pop­u­la­tions in can­cer re­search for both men and women. Dr Badal’s work has made both prostate and breast can­cer re­search more com­pre­hen­sive, sav­ing lives.

In­clu­sion is al­so vi­tal to fight an ur­gent threat – cli­mate change. Heat to­day feels far more in­tense than it did ten years ago, and that’s on­ly the tip of the ice­berg. Ris­ing sea lev­els, stronger storms, food in­se­cu­ri­ty, pub­lic health crises and ter­ri­ble dam­age to cru­cial ecosys­tems like coral reefs are get­ting more preva­lent, and the Caribbean is es­pe­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change’s cat­a­stroph­ic re­sults. We no longer have time for slow, un­equal sys­tems. Change and so­lu­tions are need­ed quick­ly and we can­not af­ford to over­look fe­male voic­es bring­ing in­no­va­tion and lived ex­pe­ri­ence in­to sci­en­tif­ic so­lu­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS), which de­scribes all Caribbean is­lands.

Dr Geor­giana Gor­don-Stra­chan, Ja­maican epi­demi­ol­o­gist and di­rec­tor of the Trop­i­cal Me­tab­o­lism Re­search Unit at UWI, is an ex­am­ple of such a fe­male voice. Her work ex­tends be­yond lab­o­ra­to­ries in­to pol­i­cy; she was the lead au­thor of The 2024 Re­port of the Lancet Count­down Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States: On the front­line of health im­pacts, spear­head­ing the call for ac­tion, which stud­ied the ef­fects of cli­mate change on SIDS pop­u­la­tions and com­mu­ni­ties, pre­sent­ing them for in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences and call­ing for change. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, through re­search, sur­veys and stud­ies, Dr Gor­don-Stra­chan has com­piled ev­i­dence that di­rect­ly in­forms na­tion­al health pol­i­cy and de­vel­op­ment strate­gies for Ja­maica’s Vi­sion 2030 frame­work. Her epi­demi­ol­o­gy, bio­sta­tis­tics and health pol­i­cy ex­per­tise have al­so aid­ed or­gan­i­sa­tions like the World Bank, UNICEF and PA­HO, ben­e­fit­ting so­ci­ety at many lev­els.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tion al­so mat­ters. Ex­pe­ri­ences in our youth are piv­otal to the peo­ple we be­come. Par­ents, teach­ers and oth­ers in­flu­ence us, in­ten­tion­al­ly or not. Sly com­men­tary, ex­po­sure to par­tic­u­lar me­dia or stereo­typ­ing can push girls away from cer­tain ca­reers, po­ten­tial­ly smoth­er­ing their pas­sion or lim­it­ing their cu­rios­i­ty. To break this pat­tern, in­clu­sion of girls and women in STEM fields must be nur­tured and en­cour­aged, and not just by wear­ing “#GirlPow­er” shirts. In­dus­tries, in­sti­tu­tions and lead­ers have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that op­por­tu­ni­ty isn’t gen­der-de­ter­mined. See­ing women who look like them in spaces they as­pire to en­ter brings girls one step clos­er to clos­ing the gen­der gap – and clos­ing the gap be­tween dreams and re­al­i­ty en­sures that tal­ent is no longer lost to ex­clu­sion.

The fu­ture of STEM can be ac­tive­ly cho­sen, shaped by those in­vit­ed in­to the room, whose ques­tions are tak­en se­ri­ous­ly and whose re­al­i­ties are con­sid­ered worth study­ing. In­clud­ing women in these en­vi­ron­ments gives us in­sight, per­spec­tive and pos­si­bil­i­ty, ben­e­fit­ting every­one. I look for­ward to a fu­ture where men and women con­tribute to the ad­vance­ment of all STEM fields, sav­ing our plan­et, mak­ing it a bet­ter place and pre­serv­ing it for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

The fore­go­ing is a week­ly col­umn by Earth­Medic and Earth­Nurse NGO to help read­ers un­der­stand and ad­dress the cli­mate and health cri­sis.