A woman, who is a Senate aide, is responsible for the fact that the three boxes containing the electoral votes, were secured when the rioters burst into the Capital Building. She directed other staffers to gather the boxes and transport them to a secure location, returning them to the Senate Chamber when the House and Senate were able to continue their joint session some seven hours later. [19th – 1/11/21]
Women make up just over a quarter of all members of the 117th Congress – the highest percentage in U.S. history and a considerable increase from a decade ago.
Counting the House and the Senate – 144 of 539 seats – 27% are held by women. That is a 50% increase from 10 years ago when 96 women were serving in the 112th Congress. This of course is well below the female share of the U.S. population. [PEW 1/15/21]
Women account for 24% of federal judges appointed by Trump. The following are the presidents in the order of the percentage of women federal judges appointed by each of the presidents.
Barack Obama – 42%
Donald Trump – 24%
Bill Clinton – 28%
George W Bush – 22%
George H.W. Bush – 19%
Jimmy Carter – 16%
Ronald Reagan – 8%
[PEW 1/13/21]
French microbiologist Emmanuelle Charpentier and American biochemist Jennifer Doudna received the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry in December for their groundbreaking work. They met at a conference in 2011, agreed to collaborate on an intersection of their gene research, and have now received one of the highest honors for their development of CRISPR, a groundbreaking gene editing technique with wide-ranging uses across biology and medicine.
They are respectively the sixth and seventh women to receive the Nobel Prize for Chemistry of the 187 total prize winners in Chemistry in the 105-year history of the Nobel Prize. The duo also won a Breakthrough Prize, called “the Oscars of Science”, and $3 million each for their work in 2015.
Dr. Jinelle Wint, Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs at Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, MO, told the New York Times that aspiring women scientists should be empowered to think “that they, too, can be in the next Nobel Prize winners of the future.” [GenderAvenger]
“If one man can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it.”
Malala Yousafzai, activist for female education
Inventions by Women
(Thanks to Peter Hart)
Although Alice Parker’s invention in 1919 of a gas-powered central heater was never manufactured, her idea was the first that allowed for using natural gas to heat a home, inspiring the central heating systems of today.
Kevlar, the life-saving material that is 5 times stronger than steel and is used to make bulletproof vests, was invented in 1965 by Stephanie Kwolek.
Dr. Grace Murray Hopper was a computer scientist who invented COBOL which is the first user-friendly computer software system in the 1940s. She was also a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy and the first person to use the reference to a glitch in a computer system when she literally found a bug (moth) causing problems with her computer.