Chatelaine magazine recognizes grad student for promoting science

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Chatelaine.jpg” caption=”Larissa Vingilis-Jaremko, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, helps a student with a science experiment. Photo courtesy of Faculty of Science.”]Although progress has been made in recent years to overcome gender stereotypes in math and science, these barriers still exist. It takes people like Larissa Vingilis-Jaremko, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour within the Faculty of Science to push the boundaries.

Although Vingilis-Jaremko is only 25 years old, her advocacy and encouragement of girls and women in science has brought her national recognition in the form of many awards. Most recently, she was recognized in the May edition of Chatelaine magazine as one of the 80 top women to watch in Canada.

“Larissa is an inspiration to women in science of all ages. She's not only an outstanding scientist, but also a natural leader, and a terrific role model. We're so pleased that she chose McMaster for her graduate studies, and we expect many more great things from her in the future,” said Allison Sekuler, associate vice-president of Research, Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience and professor of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour.

Vingilis-Jaremko started her battle against the gender stereotyping of girls and women in science when she was nine years old. She noticed that girls her age were not as interested in science as she was, and encouragement for girls to study science was lacking.

She experienced this first-hand when her teacher told her that she would prefer a boy to help her set up a lab kit for the class. However, Vingilis-Jaremko had her mother as a role model, who is herself a scientist and at the time was president of the Canadian Association of Women in Science (CAWIS).

Virgilis-Jaremko's mother often took her to board meetings, and at the age of nine, she stood up at a CAWIS meeting and told them her plan to start the Canadian Association of Girls In Science (CAGIS). The result was encouragement, and later, a few dollars for postage to send some information to girls who had participated in the same science camp that she attended in London, Ont.

CAGIS was established to facilitate and encourage interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics among girls in a warm and supportive atmosphere. CAGIS brings girls to the workplaces of women and men in these fields to get a “behind the scenes” perspective of science in action with fun, hands-on activities. That first chapter had 30 girls register. CAGIS has now reached thousands of girls, and with 11 chapters from coast to coast, it is making a difference in the lives of girls all over Canada.

Girls often receive subtle messages that they are not predisposed to science and math, and as a result, are steered away. There is a strong stereotype of a scientist as a crazy-haired old man who is a bit mad and never leaves his lab. Stereotypes such as these can affect attitudes towards and even performance in the sciences and related subjects.

To explain, she described a study on stereotype threat that engaged groups of men and women doing a challenging math test. One group of men and women were told prior to taking the math test that no gender differences had been found on prior tests. Another group was told prior to taking the test that gender differences had been found.

The result for the first group was that men and women performed equally well. However, in the second group told of gender differences, the women performed more poorly than the men and more poorly than the women in the first group. Creating these stereotypes affected their performance on the test. “This,” said Vingilis-Jaremko, “is the power of stereotyping.”

In order to survive and thrive in our knowledge-based society, we need to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to pursue the sciences. It is not that girls have a lack of interest in the sciences, but a lack of exposure. Exposing girls to the fun side of science in a warm and supportive atmosphere, and providing them with positive role models can help break those stereotypes.

For more information, or if you are interested in establishing a chapter of CAGIS in your community, please visit www.cagis.ca