A very special episode of the Women in STEM podcast with Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, the astrophysicist who was responsible for the discovery of pulsars while a radio astronomy postgraduate student at Cambridge. She talks to Alan Meban about the lack of opportunities for girls to study science when she was at school, the sexism she experienced at university, and the Nobel Prize that was awarded to her supervisor rather than the student who made the discovery. Dame Jocelyn also comments on the drop off of girls studying science between GCSEs and A-levels, and explains how a scholarship fund set up after she won the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics is helping women and other underrepresented groups pursue PhDs in physics. (Podcast episode artwork by Conor McCabe used under a Creative Commons license.)

Fancy a career that allows you to scour beaches at dawn? Susan McCambridge is an intertidal ecologist with the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. She tells our Women in STEM podcast Rebecca McKinney about the best bits of her job, the qualifications needed to study marine biology, and the gender balance in her field. It’s not a nine to five job, but Susan loves being able to spend so much time working outdoors despite the weather.

Alison McCoubrey is a consultant general and colorectal surgeon with the Northern Health and Social Care Trust. Women make up more than half of medical graduates, yet the proportion of female consultant surgeons is just 13%. Alison talks to podcast host Rebecca McKinney about what inspired her to train to become a surgeon, how long it took, what personal characteristics are useful, what the workload is like, and how patients react to a female surgeon.

Women make up a tiny proportion of programmers and software developers in the UK. In this episode of the podcast, Louise Black (PWC’s Women in Tech lead) and Maisy Sinclair (a student sponsored by PWC) talk to Rebecca McKinney about what their jobs involve, what attracted them into a career in technology, and what qualifications are necessary.

Statistician Lynda Kennedy tells Rebecca McKinney about her work at the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency in this episode of The Equality Commission’s Women in STEM podcast. Good statistics are absolutely essential if we want to have Government decisions, laws and policies based on evidence. And they’ve been crucial during the pandemic to give health professionals and political leaders a clear view of the situation. Lynda is the deputy principal statistician with NISRA and talks about her route into statistics, and her experience in the job to help you decide whether it could be the career for you.

Forensic reporting officer Sarah Jane Kelly joins Rebecca McKinney in this episode of The Equality Commission’s Women in STEM podcast. Forensic science is fast becoming a popular career choice for students and there are now more than a hundred forensic science courses on offer at UK universities. Sarah Jane specialises in fingerprints and visits crime scenes as well as recovering fingerprints from items that have been submitted to the laboratory. She tells us what's like to work in forensic science, and explains what qualifications are needed to enter this exciting line of work.

In this episode of The Equality Commission’s Women in STEM podcast, Rebecca McKinney is joined by Mairead Meyer, the managing director of Openreach in Northern Ireland. An engineer by background, she leads a team of more than 750 engineers who maintain the telephone cables, ducts, cabinets and exchanges that connect homes and businesses to the broadband and telephone network. Mairead talks about her own career as well as some of the opportunities open now to girls and young women in telecommunications.

Welcome to the Women in STEM podcast from The Equality Commission, hosted by Rebecca McKinney.

Science, technology, engineering and mathematics were for years seen as jobs for the boys, but now we all know or have heard of women who are having successful careers and interesting jobs in these fields. The Equality Commission believes it’s important that girls and young women have equal access to interesting and well-paid jobs

This short series of podcasts will introduce to some of them, you’ll hear about what got them interested, what it was like for them in a male-dominated workplace or study environment and what advice they have for girls who would like to do the same.

Subscribe to hear the whole season of interviews.