Four years ago, the film Hidden Figures took the world by storm for its stellar performances, screenplay, and cultural significance. With 21 awards from countless film festivals and organizations and three Academy Award nominations to boot, the film garnered attention and respect from a global audience. Last week, Margot Lee Shetterly, gave a lecture over Zoom to discuss her book Hidden Figures which the film was based on. She expressed her experiences leading up to publishing the book and its critical response, as well as the ways in which we can ensure diversity in STEM careers.
Shetterly hails from Hampton, Virginia, which is where the occurrences detailed in Hidden Figures take place, just as they actually did in the mid-1900s. Her father worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as one of the earliest Black engineers, whose work followed attempts at lowering hiring discrimination in the workplace under the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. This allowed for Shetterly’s access to executives at NASA.
During her lecture, the story Shetterly set out to tell was as much hers as it was Katherine Johnson’s, Dorothy Vaughan’s, and Mary Jackson’s, the three women she argues as being “hidden figures.” She explained that she is as much a product of the work of those three women as are the rockets they helped put into space.
Any reader who decides to pick up Hidden Figures is taken through the history of Shetterly’s town and her father’s workplace, and is additionally given details about her community members. However, the impact of Hidden Figures lies in the notion that through uncovering and sharing her own history and her ties to Hampton, Shetterly reveals a key piece of American history that will contribute to the heightening importance of diversity in STEM forevermore.
The weight of representation is felt most keenly on those who suffer from a lack of it. For example, there is a notable lack of Black, principal dancers in the American Ballet Theater (ABT), except for one dancer, Misty Copeland. The lack of Black dancers in ABT did not stop Misty from becoming a principal dancer; however, her being there has encouraged thousands of budding ballerinas who don’t fit the usual mold of ABT principal dancers to see a version of themselves on the center stage.
Currently, many STEM fields are not representative of most demographic proportions. While this does not necessarily inhibit a more diverse generation of scientists, mathematicians, or engineers, it also does not necessarily encourage students of different backgrounds to view themselves as possible STEM candidates in the same way that having representation would. Hidden Figures, while acknowledging the women who helped the United States win the space race, encourages impressionable children and students who don’t normally see themselves represented in STEM in the media or on the big screen to start seeing themselves that way.
Through her work, Margot Lee Shetterly has changed what it means to look like a scientist to multiple communities by exposing U.S. history globally. Diversity in thought can only be attained through diversity of experience, and putting a spotlight on three Black women who achieved scientific greatness at a time when black achievements were not aptly celebrated shows that the fields of STEM necessitate a diverse group of professionals.
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