Women in Science

Science really is what helps me to understand the world, and to get through the existence, right through the existence. How does the world function? Where do we come from? Why do we exist? Things like this. And I think this is the most interesting topic to deal with. When I finished my high school exam, I was very proud, and I already knew that I would be studying biochemistry. We visited the grandmother of my boyfriend at this time, and she asked me, "Who are you?" "What are you going to do now? You finished school, right?" And I said, "I am going to study biochemistry." And I was very proud. And she said, "What a stupid idea." "You are a woman. Why do you want to study? Even your high school exam was a bad idea." "You will have children and you will stay at home." When I gave birth to Lotta, until then, it was quite ok, but afterwards, when I met people, they're always asking, "Are you working really full time?" And my boyfriend stands next to me, and I think, why are you asking me and not both of us? Actually my university was a technical university. The students are studying science. And the percentage of the women are less than 10%. So that's why at the beginning of the university, it was for me quite tough. One day my father brought a microscope home and I had the chance to look at a fly in more detail, and this is how I got into touch with science. My daughter also loves chemistry. And when I did my PhD, I took her often to the university and I showed her some experiments and the lab. She loved the different colors and so until now, she likes to be a chemist too. For chemistry my dad can be held responsible. My dad and I had sort of a competition regarding grades so he told me which grades he had in which high school class. And then I would always say like, "Oh, I'm better in this subject," and so on. And he always said to me, "Oh wait until you get chemistry. In chemistry I always had a straight A and I'm not sure whether you can achieve that because chemistry is hard." And that kind of challenged me so I said I want to be better than that or I want to be the same as that. I received an award for my PhD thesis which was the Empiris Award for Research in Brain Diseases, and I was very happy. I was also very proud because it seemed that we made a significant contribution with our Alzhemier's disease research. And it was so interesting because the Swiss television came and they asked one question for each of the award winners. We were two. There was a male and a female winner of the award. And the male winner was asked something like "What did you do in your PhD thesis?" And I was asked, "How did you achieve this as a woman?" I mean it was meant to be positive, but in the end, I want to tell you what I did, I don't want to tell you why I did this as a woman. It would be nice that more women want to come into the scientific fields. Because we need also the ideas from women. I can just recommend to forget the typical stereotypes because some of the best chemists I know are female. I would just suggest go for it, it's real fun to study chemistry. We have to remember that this was quite different some years ago in the fifties for example. Women needed a signature from their husbands to be able to work. Can you imagine? And this has changed. This is so great because now we can just do it. And I'm very grateful to be born in Europe in this century and not for example in Afghanistan. And I think we can all contribute to this change. We can make this happen everywhere in the world and show people that it's also worth to do it.