Jess Wade on women in engineering

Jess Wade, a renowned British physicist and prominent feminist role model, is on a mission to advance diversity in science. To mark International Women’s Day 2025, we talk to Jess about her work and why she’s written over 2,000 Wikipedia biographies since 2018, highlighting women and people of colour in STEM fields.

What inspired you to become a physicist? What are your proudest achievements in the field to date, and what you currently working on?

My physics teacher at school was totally inspirational; Dr Dorothy Walgate. Her doctorate was focussed on developing sensitive microscopes to understand functional materials, which is very similar to the science I’m interested in today. From a science side, my most proud achievement was developing approaches to control chiral structures in thin films. These approaches make it possible to generate strongly twisted (circularly polarised) light and may impact the spin of charge carriers. These breakthroughs can be used to design new optoelectronic and spintronic technologies, including efficient solar panels, detectors and light emitting diodes.

You’ve written thousands of Wikipedia entries to highlight the work of female scientists. What impact has this had, and what else should governments, universities, and others do to make sure the contributions of female scientists are properly recognised?

Women scientists deserve to be recognised, spoken about and celebrated – both online and offline. Wikipedia is one of the most frequently visited websites in the world. It used by everyone in society, including teachers, journalists, broadcasters, academics and young people – irrespective of their language or politics. But, like history books, Wikipedia is primarily written by men, about other men. I’m constantly amazed when I read about, see or hear from an incredible woman, search for her online and…realise that she doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. I started editing Wikipedia because I wanted to better document women’s contributions to the world. Ultimately, I want to make the world’s most democratised platform for knowledge sharing more equitable, accurate, and complete. Improving content about science – and scientists – can help the public to make better informed decisions, honour the discoveries of scientists from historically excluded groups AND inspire future generations of researchers. The representation of women in Wikipedia biographies has increased a little since I started editing (from 17 to 20% of all biographies on English language Wikipedia), but more importantly, people have started to talk about how we need to better celebrate women. They are better at nominating them for awards, inviting them to speak at conferences, getting them on radio and including them in their lesson plans. More and more people tell me that they edit, translate and add content to Wikipedia.

Governments, universities, funding councils and publishing houses should collect data on how their practises are impacting women. We knew to start adding content to Wikipedia because (a) we knew how important it was as a platform and (b) we knew there were content gaps. Universities, funding councils and publishing houses have access to data on how their policies systematically disadvantage women (e.g. promotion, grant allocation, papers accepted). Governments can call for change, e.g. establishing All Party Parliamentary Groups, launching inquiries and sharing best practises, and coordinating national activities.

This year’s International Women’s Day is about speeding up progress toward gender equality. Women in STEM still face challenges like bias in hiring, funding, and career growth. What big changes would help make STEM a fairer and more welcoming field for everyone?

Transparency and a shift toward a modern, progressive and inclusive research culture. What does that mean? In academia, decisions (who gets funded, who gets hired, who wins awards, which technologies will be prioritised by government strategies) are often made behind closed doors, usually by a group of powerful men with similar backgrounds and lived experience. If there aren’t clear evaluation criteria – for example, most calls look to fund ‘excellent’ research, but the definition of excellent can mean very different things to different people – then decisions aren’t meritocratic but biased and unfair, perpetuating inequality and underrepresentation. Inclusive research cultures are ones that promote sense of belonging, proactively work to alleviate the precarious nature of fixed-term contracts, celebrate people from a range of job families (e.g. academics, technical professionals and strategy managers) and recognise that people from different demographic groups might need different types/levels of support (e.g. equity vs. equality).

You’re passionate about encouraging young people, especially girls, to choose careers in STEM. What are the best ways to break stereotypes and help them feel confident in pursuing such careers?

High quality physics education, off-curriculum learning experiences and a school culture that challenges stereotypes at every opportunity. We have a terrifyingly small number of skills specialist physics teachers in the UK, with a quarter of students saying their school physics experience was ‘poor’. If we can’t get brilliant physics teachers in every classroom, we need to find other ways to inspire young people. That could be through science festivals, museums, story books or fantastic YouTube videos. We need to help non-specialist teachers and parents see the magic of physics too. There’s great research from the IOP and IOE which is really worth reading.

Organisations like the Rank Prize help support scientific research. What can they do to better support women in STEM, both in funding and making their work more visible?

The Rank Prize are an incredible convenor of experts and champion of science, collaboration and discovery. By inviting women to lead and speak at Rank Prize events, honouring women’s breakthroughs through Rank prize awards, and making sure women Early Career Researchers are invited to contribute to meetings and workshops, Rank are already supporting women in STEM. I look forward to being involved with more Rank Prize activities in the future, and am grateful for everything you have already done.