There’s a different kind of display near the National Mall in D.C. for Women’s History Month that hopes to inspire young female scientists.
In the greenery next to the Smithsonian Castle stand 120 bright orange statues.
If you walk up to one and scan the QR code, you will learn a story about a current woman in science making a big impact. Ellen Stofan, undersecretary for science and research at the Smithsonian Institution, said she hopes this will inspire girls to say they can.
“I want these statues of women who are doing things now to really inspire girls to say, I can do that. I can be the one who’s going to go solve climate change. I’m going to invent a cure for the next pandemic,” Stofan told WTOP.
The Smithsonian partnered with Light Hill Philanthropies and the IF/THEN project to display the 3D printed, bright orange statues.
The 120 life-size 3D-printed statues are of a diverse collection of contemporary STEM innovators, all women, and role models leading a variety of fields. Some focus on protecting wildlife, discovering galaxies, building YouTube’s platform or trying to cure cancer.
Those featured include Jessica Esquivel, one of only 150 Black women with a doctorate in physics in the country, and Karina Popovich, a college student who produced over 82,000 pieces of 3D-printed personal protective equipment for health care workers in the early days of the pandemic.
The IF/THEN initiative is designed by Lyda Hill Philanthropies to activate a culture shift among young girls to open their eyes to STEM careers. But some may ask, “why the color orange?”
“It was to make them look like everybody and nobody, right? Because these are diverse women, they’re from all different backgrounds [and] they have every skin tone under the sun,” Stofan said.
She said she hopes young girls see that women can succeed in STEM fields.
“I’m a scientist, and I know when I was a kid, it was really hard to find biographies of women scientists and to really feel like women belong in this field,” Stofan said.
Select statues will be moved to different museums on the mall and displayed through the end of the month.
“We’re passing up talent all over the place of women who think, ‘I don’t belong because no one in that field looks like me,'” Stofan said.
