We grow up hearing stories about Newton, Edison, Einstein, Darwin… names that conjure genius and breakthrough and innovation. But how many of us were taught that much of what we call innovation and scientific breakthroughs emerged from contributions by women whose names vanished into mere footnotes and forgotten archives?
What is being referred to is an actual documented phenomenon known as the Matilda Effect. It refers mainly to the bias in science and history where the work of women is systematically downplayed, attributed to male colleagues or goes uncredited entirely. Ironically, there are many remarkable examples that highlight that:
Rosalind Franklin’s X-ray crystallography work was essential to understanding the structure of DNA, yet when Francis Crick and James Watson received the Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1962, Franklin’s contribution was not acknowledged in their acceptance speech. Lise Meitner helped uncover nuclear fission, but when the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded in 1944 for that work, her male collaborator received full credit.
Women like Nettie Stevens, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Marie Tharp,… who all made groundbreaking discoveries, ( and I invite you all to read about), yet their work was overshadowed because the world only recognised the men connected to it.
This erasure isn’t random, nor accidental. It reflects deep norms about whose work gets recognised and whose doesn’t, and it shapes what we teach children about who can be a scientist, inventor, or thinker.
This isn’t quite surprising when we look at how girls are conditioned from a young age. We tell girls not just to fit in, but to avoid threatening the status quo altogether. We tell girls to smile, to lower their voices, to not take up too much space… and while these seem like harmless phrases, they develop into early signals that loudness, leadership, confidence, and risk taking… mainly behaviours rewarded in society… are somehow less suitable for those assigned F for female at birth.
Studies have actually shown that gender stereotypes do not only shape how girls define themselves, but how others evaluate them, from the classroom to the workplace.
In fact, confidence gaps emerge early between boys and girls and widen over time. This translates into girls being less likely than boys to express ambition for leadership roles because societal expectations shape how they view their own potential. And by the time these girls grow up and become working women in the labour market, these patterns would have hardened into structures and patterns: fewer women in leadership, fewer women in STEM, and fewer women in decision-making roles.
What do the numbers say?
Even though women make up around half of the population and have equal or higher rates of general university graduation, they are underrepresented in key technical fields. In the European Union, only about one in three STEM graduates are women, and they represent just one in five ICT specialists. In technical professions including science, engineering and ICT, women account for roughly one quarter of self-employed professionals. Worldwide, women make up only 30% of the AI workforce. And the higher up we go in these industries, the less women you find in these rooms. That’s strongly attributed to the fact that the
current system functions with a leaky pipelines. This means that women leave STEM fields as they advance to higher professional levels, not because they are incompetent or unable, but because the system is built that way. On entrepreneurship and business, the story sounds the same. Women account for approximately 34% of the EU self-employed, and 30% of startup entrepreneurs. However, had women been participating in early stage entrepreneurship at the same rate as men, there would be around 5.5 million more women entrepreneurs in the EU.
The thing is, this is not just about representation.
It’s about opportunity, encouragement, and ownership. A girl who never hears about the women hidden in scientific history is less likely to believe she belongs in a laboratory. A young woman who hears “be polite” and “don’t take up space” learns that ambition may require compensation at the cost of comfort. A professional who is consistently evaluated against gendered expectations will internalise extra barriers that their male counterparts simply don’t face.
So do we really need International Women’s Day? The short answer is yes. But not for celebration alone. We need it because recognition matters, and because if we can devote one day to highlighting women, we must also commit to examining the 364 days where the structures around us continue to invisibilise, undervalue, and sideline women.
So let us stop questioning why half the picture is missing and start reforming the frame itself by redesigning systems that allow girls and women the space, skills and support to fully realise their potential.
