Jessica Wade: belief

Transcript context

…If I think of 20th-century history from my naïve, distanced standpoint, it seems to me it was the commercial book market where women make a big breakthrough. You have Margaret Mead, you have Rachel Carson, you have Jane Goodall, which is what, 1971? The buyers of the books — they don’t seem to care, if the book is good or interesting to them. Then you have big advances for women in science that is led by for-profit incentives, basically. That’s really interesting. I wonder if it’s still the same today. I wonder if people in that commercial book-market world would still celebrate and see the achievements of women scientists or the achievements of women, and take them as seriously as the achievements of men. I still get the feeling — despite you having a huge amount more writing and popular opinion around the need for more women scientists, or the work of women scientists, or the history of women scientists — it’s still a very specific type of person who will go into a bookshop and buy that. Not every man who’s quite biased or opinionated on these issues will go and buy that fantastic history-of-women-scientists book even if they exist. I think booksellers and book marketers can do quite a lot of magic in that space, but we have to make sure it’s being read and exciting everyone. Now, you’re on Twitter, but my anecdotal impression is that social media, in general, have swung some of the bias back toward men, who, for whatever reasons, are more likely to be vocal on social media in terms of celebrity and science. Do you agree, disagree?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.