The Spanish Association of Women Researchers and Technologists (AMIT) works to make women more visible and to encourage a greater presence of them in science.

A presence that is too low, since according to UNESCO, only 28% of scientific researchers in the world are female. A number that is even worse in Spain if we take a look at STEM degrees with a clear downward trend, where less than 12% of girls enroll in degrees such as Mathematics.

It was necessary to raise awareness of these worrying numbers and also to generate debate in order to reverse these enrollment statistics, and to avoid facing the future with only half the talent of the population.

In Spain, it didn’t seem too complicated to establish a hypothesis about the reasons that were driving girls away from science degrees: the lack of references and role models to draw inspiration from. In Spain, girls grow up thinking that science is a man’s thing.

This is proved by the largest study on the presence of women in educational material, which reveals that the average female representation barely reaches 7.6% in all subjects of the Spanish Compulsory Secondary Education curriculum.

Because, apart from the isolated case of Marie Curie, it seems difficult to rescue the name of any distinguished female scientist from popular culture.

A future without women in science and in science degrees is doomed to perpetuate a gender bias in algorithms and artificial intelligence, designed from an exclusively male perspective.

We were wondering why there are no female role models to inspire girls. Have there ever been? And we discovered that there have been many. Yes, indeed! Lise Meitner, Rosalind Franklin, or Nettie Stevens are just some of them. However, their findings were systematically silenced by something known as the Matilda Effect, a discrimination that has ignored and deprived female scientists of recognition.

So, we thought that it was about time to stir up the past a bit, not only to do the right thing with these forgotten Matildas (also to do so) but mainly to arouse scientific vocation in girls.

Convinced that it’s never too late to inspire, we launched #NoMoreMatildas: an initiative to bring all these female scientists back where they belong, starting, precisely, with textbooks.

We started a movement from classrooms, to turn teachers into activists. Taking advantage of the fact that in Spain they enjoy a certain academic freedom to design their didactic units, we designed some educational materials, such as a collection of illustrated books that depicted the complicated lives that Einstein, Fleming or Schrödinger would have had if they had been born female.

In collaboration with the Chair of Scientific Culture of the University of the Basque Country, we designed an annex to “hack” textbooks for years 5-6 of Primary Education to reclaim the missing Matildas.

A series of actions to protest, which we wanted to coincide with the implementation of the new educational law (LOMLOE) and with its curricular modification.

We launched an animated video that denounced the consequences of the Matilda Effect and that also generated some debate: What would have happened if Einstein had been born a woman? A viral presentation of the Nomorematildas.com content platform, where parents and teachers could download educational materials for free.

The campaign’s timeline was designed to last for a month in social media (Twitter & Instagram). That was the amount of time we considered to be necessary to try to bring these Matildas into the media conversation, on the occasion of the coming 11th February (International Day of Women and Girls in Science).

-Educational materials had over 50,000 downloads.

-The term “Matildas” became a new slogan to fight for equality, being part of debates, news reports and even filling the front pages of newspapers, reaching a PR value of more than 5 million euros and getting a social reach of 25 million people.

-Even the President of the Government of Spain took a stand in favour of the “Matildas”, and members of this government, such as the Vice-president, the Ministers of Science and Education agreed to present the campaign in the European Parliament.

-Female members of the European Parliament of every stripe (Socialists & Democrats, European’s People Party, Renew Europe or The Left in the European Parliament) joined the movement.

-Spain’s National Association of Publishers of Books and Teaching Materials (ANELE) made the public announcement to take advantage of the forthcoming educational law to include the Matildas in their future editions.