Today is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. More women are entering science fields than ever before but a significant gender gap exists especially in Meteorology. Women make up nearly half of the U.S. workforce but when it comes to holding jobs in STEM they represent only 27%.
Women starting a career in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields have increased from 33% in 2000, to 40% in recent years according to a study published in Nature that tracked female scientists’ published research.
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While the doors are slowly closing on the gender gap, the atmospheric sciences may have the fewest women of all geosciences. A 2005 survey of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) found that 17% of its members (excluding students) were women.
Three early female weather pioneers have paved the way for other women in weather with achievements that are important for everyone to know.
Eunice Foote
Dating back to the nineteenth century, Eunice Foote helped discover the greenhouse gas effect on the planet. She worked closely in the 1820′s with Joseph Fourier, who wrote about how water vapor and carbon dioxide affect temperature. Foote conducted research linking sunlight and greenhouse gasses to potential planetary warming.
She also campaigned for women’s rights, signing the Declaration of Sentiments which demanded equality with men in social status and the right to vote.
Joanne Simpson
Joanne Simpson was the first woman in the United States to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, which she received in 1949 from the University of Chicago.
Simpson taught and researched meteorology at numerous universities as well as the federal government. Simpson contributed to many areas of the atmospheric sciences, especially tropical meteorology and pioneered cloud physics and hurricane hot towers.
June Bacon-Bercey
June Bacon-Bercey was the first African American to earn a Meteorology degree and the first woman to earn the prestigious American Meteorological Society Seal of Approval.
After earning her degree at UCLA in 1954, she worked as a forecaster for the U.S. Weather Bureau, and subsequently for the Atomic Energy Commission, assessing the impacts of atomic energy upon the atmosphere.
By 1970, she became a science reporter for WGR-TV, Buffalo, and within four months had become Chief Meteorologist for the station.
She was instrumental in laying the foundation for Women and Minorities and served on the board of the AMS to bring equality in these efforts.
She established a scholarship for women in meteorology in 1977, and helped fund the Jackson State University meteorology program to bring more Black Americans into the field. She passed away in 2019 but her legacy continues through the AMS annual June Bacon-Bercey Award for Broadcast Meteorology which recognizes a broadcast meteorologist for sustained long-term contributions to the community, or for outstanding work during a specific weather event.