Women of STEM print from inappropriately adorable on tumblr! From her post about the making of the print:
I’m including this addendum to my post of the “Women in STEM” graphic I created to sell as a print at Anime Boston’s Artists’ Alley, because there are comments popping up of “why didn’t you include so-and-so,” etc. Here is how I decided who to include:
1. I put together an initial list of STEM ladies, going off the top of my head and some cursory Googling. This first list had over 100 women on it. Obviously, I can’t do a poster with 100 women on it, since I am busy with work and also have to sleep and eat, so I had to pare down the list.
2. The majority of the list was white women, so I started by striking off most of them. As all the proceeds from my Artists’ Alley sales will be donated to Black Girls Code, it didn’t make sense for a print benefitting an organization dedicated to diversifying STEM fields to be made up of mostly cisgender white women. Women are definitely underrepresented in STEM fields, but women of color even less so, and being a WOC in STEM comes with its own set of challenges and prejudices.
3. After paring down the list, I went back and looked for any holes to fill, making sure I had a good mix of varying racial and ethnic identities, gender identities, time periods, known and not-well-known names, and STEM fields. (I do admit, however, I included more space exploration/astronomy stuff because I love NASA.) Cue even more research and Wikipedia-ing.
4. The research/editing process continued until I felt I had a good selection of STEM women for the poster. Then I drew 24 women and colored them in Illustrator and then I passed out.
Check out close ups of the poster here.