Women in STEM

NEWS: The entire performance of SHE is now free to watch online

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From the 21-23 November 2019, students from the University of Leeds department of Performance and Cultural Industries performed the play SHE at Stage@Leeds. Based on the lives of women in engineering, the students devised the play themselves, while working with the Electrifying Women project team. You can read more about the production and the different women whose lives were dramatised here.

Education packs for KS3 and KS4 students relating to the performance are available in the Educational Source Packs.

The Electrical Handbook for Women – a transformative 20th century text

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Graeme Gooday writes about the Electrical Association for Women’s handbook, first produced in 1934, of which nothing of the sort had previously been published in Britain for technically-minded women. It was so popular that 33,000 copies were sold in its first year alone, and it remained in print until the 1980s. What was it that made this book so popular? But then why was its final edition Essential Electricity: A User’s Guide not written specifically for women at all?

The Long Read: Discovering the Victorian Engineer Henrietta Vansittart, part 1

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This blog post focuses on the life and work of Henrietta Vansittart (1833-1883) who held the patent for the Lowe-Vansittart propeller. This propeller was widely used in the Royal Navy’s ships and was awarded a first class diploma at the Kensington exhibition in 1871. A model of the propeller is held by the Science Museum Group. So why don’t we know more about her fascinating life?

We need you! Volunteering for the Electrifying Women project

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One of the main aims of the project – to introduce more people to the history of women in engineering and thereby encourage more girls and women to find their place in the industry – still requires work. There are still many more audiences to reach and more stories to tell. This is why we need you! We want to provide the resources that you might need to deliver your own events, or to write a blog, or do your own research into the history of women in engineering.

‘SHE’: performing the lives of engineering women

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On a cold and wet November evening, we entered the Stage@Leeds performing space for SHE, a public performance by final-year theatre and performance students at the University of Leeds. The enticing poster showed a young woman with a printed circuit board projected onto her face. Read more about how the students brought the lives of women in engineering and STEM to life.