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How women in science are making a difference during the pandemic

February 11, 2021

Women in science

Photo: Curtesy of UN Women

UN Women

Originally published on UN Women on February 9.

It will soon be a year since WHO declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. By now, every corner of the world has felt the devastating impact of the pandemic, and women and girls in science are on the front lines of response. They are healthcare workers and innovators. They are researching vaccines and pioneering treatments. They are leading us toward a safer world, and inspiring the next generation of girls to be forces of good in science and tech.

This 11 February, we're celebrating International Day of Women and Girls in Science by highlighting just some of the women and girls around the world who have made tremendous contributions during the ongoing crisis.

Doctors and nurses

Entela KolovaniPhoto: Curtsey of Entela Kolovani

Women make up 70% of health and social care workers. This puts them at the heart of COVID-19 response, even though they are often underrepresented in decision-making and leadership.

"Treating patients with COVID-19 is very hard, each one with their own unique needs," says Dr. Entela Kolovani a physician at the hospital of infectious diseases in Tirana, Albania who started treating patients diagnosed with COVID-19 at the very beginning of the pandemic. "We are dealing not only with the virus, but also with the psychological impact it has on patients. They are totally isolated from their families and we need to stay the closest possible to them."

In Mexico, 79% of nurses are women, like Brenda Abad. She was assigned to detect those with COVID-19 on her first day working at a public hospital.

"At the beginning I was very scared of catching the disease and being contagious, but in the end, you have to do your job and you're trained for it," she says.

Özlem Türeci

Özlem TüreciPhoto: Curtsey of Özlem Türeci

Co-founder of the biotechnology company BioNTech, Özlem Türeci is not just a scientist but also a physician, an entrepreneur and a leader in the global health sector. In 2020, her company developed the first approved RNA-based vaccine against COVID-19, which came as a much-needed moment of hope in a year of unprecedented crisis.

More than 1,300 people from over 60 countries currently work at BioNTech, and more than half of them are women. Türeci says researchers should focus on the things they want to change and the problems the want to solve, thinking broader and dreaming big.

Katalin Karikó

There are many discoveries that made the COVID-19 vaccine possible, and one of the most essential researches was that of Katalin Karikó, focused on the therapeutic possibilities of mRNA. Yet, her idea that mRNA could be used to fight disease was deemed too radical, too financially risky to fund at the time. She applied for grant after grant, but kept getting rejections. She was even demoted from her position. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Eventually, Karikó and her former colleague Drew Weissman developed a method of utilizing synthetic mRNA to fight disease. That discovery is now the basis of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Anika Chebrolu

As the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies took up the race for the COVID-19 vaccine, there was one discovery by a young woman scientist that had the potential to provide a therapy to novel coranavirus. Anika, a 14-year-old Indian American, had started her science project in her bedroom when she was in eighth grade, initially looking to find a treatment for the influenza virus. That meant studying and researching the pandemics that affected the world throughout history, until she started actually living through one.

As the COVID-19 outbreak spread around the world, Amika changed gears with the help of her mentor to target the virus that causes COVID-19. She identified a lead molecule that can selectively bind to the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and potentially inhibit the novel corona virus. In October 2020, Anika won the 3M Young Scientist Challenge.

Megs Shah and Fairuz Ahmed

While COVID-19 containment measures led to long periods of isolation and stay-at-home orders, many found themselves trapped in unsafe relationships or violent environments. Megs Shah and Fairuz Ahmed recognized the need for new technology to best reach those in need, and to enable the service provider organizations to actually connect with domestic violence survivors and manage cases virtually.

The Parasol Cooperative, founded by Shah and Fairuz, is working to educate and connect survivors and those in need, and the service providers. Their innovative technology, inspired by their own experiences and informed by their work with survivors, aims to offer the comfort and education of support groups to the most vulnerable populations being affected by domestic violence.

Ramida "Jennie" Juengpaisal

Ramida "Jennie" JuengpaisalPhoto: Ramida "Jennie" Juengpaisal

In Thailand, Ramida Juengpaisal, 24, worked to create a national COVID-19 tracker that pulls together all available information about the virus and helps to stop the spread of misinformation as COVID-19 first began to spread. The "COVID Tracker by 5Lab", that Jennie worked on shared information about outbreaks and cleaning procedures, as well as critical information about where testing is available and how much it costs.

"For too long, the STEM fields have been shaped by gender biases that exclude women and girls," Jennie says. "There is a lot of women working in the tech industry, but they don't have platforms to show their potential. Despite this, women and girls are pushing the boundaries every day."

Kizzmekia "Kizzy" Corbett

Kizzmekia "Kizzy" CorbettPhoto: Kizzmekia "Kizzy" Corbett

Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett is one of the leading scientists behind the US Government's vaccine research. Corbett is part of a team within the National Institutes of health that worked to develop one of the vaccines which is more than 90 per cent effective.

Recognizing Dr. Corbett's contributions and leadership in vaccine research during the pandemic is especially important both because COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted black communities within the US, and because often black women in science have been left out of history books.

Dr. Corbett hopes that her critical work will help inspire future generations of girls of colour in science, who can see themselves in her success.

Do you know more women and girls in science making a difference during the COVID-19 crisis? Give them a shoutout on social media using #WomenInScience

Can tech help female entrepreneurs break the bias?

Women founders continue to come up against common challenges and biases

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Written by Kelly Devine, Division President UK & Ireland, Mastercard

Starting a business may have historically been perceived as a man’s game, but this couldn’t be further from reality. Research shows women are actually more likely than men to actively choose to start their own business – often motivated by the desire to be their own boss or to have a better work-life balance and spend more time with their family.

The recently published Mastercard Index of Women Entrepreneurship 2021 found that in the category of 'Aspiration Driven Entrepreneurship’ – capturing those who actively choose to start their own business – women in the UK surpass men: 60% vs 56%. And Mastercard research from February 2022 found 10% of female business owners started their business in the past two years compared to 6% of men – meaning women were 67% more likely to have started a business during the pandemic.

Yet, there are common challenges that women founders continue to come up against - not least the gender imbalance in the household and long-held biases which are still prevalent.

In the UK, women are almost three times more likely to be balancing care and home commitments than men, and this was exacerbated during the pandemic as the additional barriers of school closures and lockdowns meant that the care time of dependents rose significantly on a day-to-day level for women. In addition, women were less likely to have access to a home office, greatly impacting the work they were able to accomplish when working from home was the only option.

It's also widely known that female business owners are still more likely to struggle to access funding for their business ideas. According to Dealroom, all-women founding teams received just 1.4% of the €23.7bn invested into UK start-ups in 2021, while all-male leadership teams have taken almost 90% of the available capital.

Without financial support, and when juggling significant time pressures both at home and at work, how can women grow their companies and #BreaktheBias (as this year’s International Women’s Day termed it)? What tools or support can save them time and money, and give them the headspace they need to focus on building their business?

With female owned businesses collectively estimating revenue growth of £120 billion over the next five years, solving this problem is bigger than supporting women – it’s about supporting the national economy.

Using tech to level the playing field

There are clearly societal issues at play that need to be resolved. But when we look at the rise in technology businesses during the pandemic, we can plainly see an alternative source of support critical for business growth: digital tools.

A third of female business owners say new technologies will be crucial to the success of their business in the future and one in five say it is the most important thing for business growth.

With new technology comes new ways to pay, create, and work. And yet there are barriers that prevent business owners accessing this technology. Women are significantly more likely to say they want to use more digital tools but don’t know what is best for their business and also more concerned about the security of digital tools.

When technology is adopted by businesses – whether using online accounting solutions or messenger services for communicating with staff – it saves them time, allows them to maintain and grow their customer base, and ultimately increases cost savings and profit.

By drastically improving the training and support that is available to women-owned business to access and utilise technology we will allow these businesses to grow and succeed. And we know there is demand for it.

Research done by the IFC and Dalberg shows that female entrepreneurs are more likely to invest time and money in business development. This includes product development, customer base expansion, and digital tools and training and there are plenty of services available offering this type of support – many of them for free.

One such programme is Strive UK – an initiative of the Mastercard Center for Inclusive Growth – which aims to reach 650,000 micro and small business owners across the UK and empower them with the tools they need to thrive in the digital economy through free guidance, helpful tools and one-to-one mentoring.

Working together with small business experts – Enterprise Nation, Be the Business and Digital Boost – we hope to ensure hundreds of thousands of UK female business owners have the tools they need to succeed and reach their ambitious goals. Because this ambition remains strong in the UK, with female business owners largely optimistic about the future despite the multitude of challenges they are facing. Four in ten say they will grow their business in the next five years – compared to only a third of male business owners – and they’re also 35% less likely than men to say they plan to downsize or close the business.

But if we do not empower female entrepreneurs to access the tools and technology they need to grow, there is a risk this optimism could be misplaced. Support programmes that provide business owners with guidance and mentorship can help ensure this isn’t the case, allowing female entrepreneurs to not only survive but thrive in the months and years ahead.