The Women Who Made Me Stay in STEM: An Women's History Month Reflection
- Allison Higgins
- Mar 10
- 6 min read
April may be the cruelest month according to T.S Eliot, but the joy that March typically brings to my life often sets the tone for an amazing spring. Fresh off the heels of Black History Month, we emerge into Women’s History Month and one of my favorite commemorative holiday’s, International Women’s Day. The first time I recognized and celebrated International Women's Day was as an undergraduate, but the power behind celebrating a day for women, along with a whole month of commemorating women’s firsts throughout history made my heart sing, especially as one of extremely few women computer science majors in my classes. Every year since, I have tried to dive deeper into the legacy of women in STEM, while also still charting my own path as one of these women.
I learned early about heroines like Ada Lovelace, the creator of the world’s first computer program, and Grace Hopper, the inventor of the compiler, a tool that translates English language into computer code. Though I truly appreciated the contributions of these women, as I navigated the transition from student to professional, I began to notice for myself, how many barriers still existed for women STEM professionals in the late 2010’s. I also noticed how these attitudes were still pushing us out of our majors, code boot camps, and careers. More than once, my dedication to completing my degree, and launching my career as a software engineer, had been questioned in a covertly sexist or racist fashion. Eventually the questions began to weigh on my consciousness as well. With every new class, and assignment, my path seemed more and more mistaken. I had an idea of what I wanted to do, and where I wanted to do it, but before I got there, I needed a more relatable set of heroines to look up to.
The universe was definitely listening, and started placing new mentors in my path almost immediately. First was what would become my favorite professor in school. We met almost by accident at the on campus computer lab. I thought that she was a fellow student at first, but when she told me that she taught what would be the next programming class in my degree sequence, I asked if I could hug her. To this day, I still count her as a mentor and a dear friend. When I arrived in her class the following spring, I was a little less anxious, but still not quite sure if I had what it would take to be an engineer. Her teaching style was dynamic to say the least, but I still struggled with the mathematical side of computing, even as I began to connect the dots between my math and computer science courses.
One night, on a study break, I decided to google “Black Women software engineers”. I refused to believe that I would be the first or only, and I thought that if I could just talk to one, I may find the courage to persist in my studies. By happenstance, Google conveniently led me to the portfolio site of a Black woman software engineer based in Atlanta. I sent a message through her site explaining that I was a student, and would love to ask her a few questions. Another seed of faith had been planted. That same spring as my second programming class, I came across the information for a hackathon taking place nearby. I worked with my professor to gather a team, and we entered representing Clayton State University. Guess who happened to be a hackathon mentor and judge? After my fan-girling for a few minutes, she began helping my team flesh out our goals for the project and the platforms that would be best and easiest to use for setup. As we worked out the technical implementation of the team idea, we bonded over shared experiences and programming languages. Shortly before the end of the hackathon, she offered me a technical internship with her company for the summer and the opportunity to attend that year’s Google I/O conference.
Though I had found the light at the end of my tunnel, I still had some ground to cover. I became involved with local technical meet ups, and began encouraging my classmates to join me in attending, and networking with tech professionals around Atlanta. I also began helping students find scholarships, internships, and co-op opportunities to make the transition into corporate easier. In the meantime, I applied for and received the opportunity to intern with a defense contractor. Over the moon was an understatement. I knew that I’d get to work with aerospace technology, but my career purview was now widened to include places like NASA, and OakRidge Labs, maybe even the Kennedy Space Center. A few weeks into my internship, I was still excited but the cracks had started to show. Again I found myself a minority, within a minority, and the fact that this was an election year made things no better. Although my team appreciated me, and tried to help me make the best of my experience, I couldn’t help but notice the hateful rhetoric and ideas that were adopted the closer we got to the election. I worried again about the certainty of my path. I had been inspired by movies and culture in that year, and how they began to coalesce around the idea of Black women in STEM and the particularities of our journeys. The mantle of Iron Man was being passed on to RiRi Willams aka “Iron Heart”. The book and soon to be released film “Hidden Figures” were being widely lauded, and I happily purchased my copy. As I read the book, I began to grow more aware of how the inequities my forerunners faced were still very much so baked into the culture of my internship. 50 odd years later, and here I was feeling the same sense of isolation, and the same doubting of my purpose. Was this really what I wanted?
Yet, by then the die had been cast, and I had earned a scholarship to that year’s Grace Hopper Celebration in Houston Texas. With encouragement, and support, I worked very hard to get my head back into the game. I planned to find a new internship at the conference, with the end goal of graduating with a full time offer. I packed my best professional, casual outfits, and set off with my favorite professor and another student for the time of our lives in Texas. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, but the best part for me was the arrival of my internship offer letter from a Silicon Valley powerhouse after we landed in Atlanta. I cried and my mom cried with me. The dream I’d had those years before was finally coming to fruition.
That moment felt like the closing of one chapter and the quiet beginning of another. For so long I had been searching for proof that women like me existed in this field; that we could survive it, contribute to it, and even thrive within it. Along the way, I discovered something even more powerful than proof: community. The heroines I learned about in textbooks, Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Katherine Johnson and so many others, laid the foundation for the world I was stepping into. But it was the women I encountered along my own path who made that world feel real and reachable: my professor who became a mentor, a software engineer who volunteered a few hours for a hackathon, and a network of women who showed up to conferences, hackathons, and meetups determined to make space for the next generation. Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day remind us that history is not only something we inherit, it’s something we actively build. Every woman who persists in a classroom where she is the only one, every mentor who takes time to answer a question, and every young student who dares to imagine herself as an scientist/engineer adds another thread to that story. Looking back now, I realize that the heroines I was searching for were never as distant as they seemed. They were already in the room: sometimes in front of the classroom, sometimes judging a hackathon, and sometimes quietly pushing forward despite the same doubts I carried. Now, in my own small way, I hope to be one of them for someone else. The real power of women in STEM is not just in the breakthroughs we make; it’s in the doors we leave open behind us.
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