An investigation into the public awareness of famous women geoscientists

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Date
2026-02-15
Authors
Burek, Cynthia V.
Higgs, Bettie
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Publisher
International Union of Geological Sciences
Published Version
10.18814/epiiugs/2026/02601s05
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Abstract
An investigation was undertaken to establish public awareness and knowledge of famous women in science, and particularly within the geosciences. A questionnaire was used to survey 1815 adults, mainly across western Europe, with minor inputs from elsewhere. The data was analysed to establish public awareness of female geoscientists, within the broader female scientists data set. The results show that the awareness of any women scientists, dead or alive, from history or current times, famous or not, is minimal. The evidence for women geoscientists is almost non-existent, regardless of respondent’s background (nationality, age, gender, or academic level). This paper will outline the results and discuss why this is the case. It is proposed that the insights gained from this study could provide pointers for future educational initiatives that support SDG 5 (gender equality).
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Keywords
Famous women geoscientists , Female geoscientists , Female scientists , Gender equality , ~Education - Journal Articles~
Citation
Burek, C. V., Higgs, B. (2026) 'An investigation into the public awareness of famous women geoscientists', Episodes, pp. 1-10. https://doi.org/10.18814/epiiugs/2026/02601s05
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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/18551
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School of Education
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© 2026, the Authors. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.