Celebrating International Women and Girls in Science Day

International Women and Girls in Science Day is celebrated on 11 February each year and calls attention to the incredibly rich and varied contributions women make to all the scientific disciplines.

Having developed an exceptionally robust reputation for the delivery of its STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) provision and being a STEM assured institution, B&FC is very proud to have an amazing cohort of female students who are excelling in subject areas as diverse as aerospace engineering, marine biology and forensics from Level 2 diplomas to honours degree programmes.

Chatting to a group who are currently working towards their Level 3 diplomas, all of them have aspirations to pursue scientific careers and have chosen subjects based on the breadth of opportunity and progression that these will afford them as they look to develop their careers.

As well as being a comparatively well-paid sector, the girls all believe that the industry offers real rewards both terms of job satisfaction and in the variety of roles available to them.

No one envisages facing any barriers to success either based on their gender alone with the consensus of opinion being that being female is actually an advantage in many respects. When asked how the boys on their courses had responded to them studying a traditionally male-dominated subject, Kieley Medley, a Biomedical Science student, is quick to point out that whilst there may have been some resistance to begin with, the boys weren’t averse to asking them for help when they realised that the girls were probably cleverer than they were.

Frankie Harley, also a Biomedical Science student, believes that one of the reasons that girls can outperform boys in science subjects is that they are often much better at concentrating than their male counterparts and also have greater attention to detail, attributes which Frankie believes are essential to making a success of both studying science and working in the field.

As well as developing exceptional female science students, the College also has an impressive number of female scientists among its teaching staff with Jagjit Walia and Linda Martin in Science, Storm Isles in Marine Biology and Amy Hazell and Margarita Georgieva in Engineering to name just a few leading the charge. As Jagjit says:

“Women have made many remarkable contributions to science over the years; women like Ada Lovelace, Katherine Johnson and Rosalind Franklin who are perhaps only now getting the credit they deserved.

“My hope for our female science students is that they will continue to build on the foundations these and many other ground-breaking female scientists have made and continue to prove that women can make valuable and sometimes world-changing contributions to the worlds of science, technology, engineering and maths.”