Julia Lane on the Global Importance of Women in STEM
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2025 marks the 10th anniversary of the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, yet women remain underrepresented in STEM fields worldwide. In this video, we speak with Julia Lane—an alumna of the Emerging Leaders Program, Assistant Vice President for Science at the University of Chicago, and Federal Strategy Advisor at the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park (IQMP)—to explore why closing the gender gap in STEM is more urgent than ever. Julia shares her insights on what it means to be a woman in science today, why a global perspective is essential for driving innovation, and what inspired her own journey in STEM.
Interview Summary:
Who or what inspired you to pursue a career in technology and science? I've had a lot of amazing women role models in my life, including my great grandmother, who was a doctor in a time when very few women were actually doctors. She did this while she was traveling and working across the globe, and also around raising a family. She was really inspiring for me to want to be in a science and technology role.
How has your background in international relations informed your work in science and technology? Modern science is inherently global and it requires extensive international collaboration. Just think of the International Space Station, think of CERN in Switzerland, or the Human Genome Project. All of these big scientific projects required thousands of scientists working together across hundreds of countries.
Around the world, women are underrepresented in STEM fields. Why is it globally important that we address this gender gap? We're at a really important inflection point in our history. We are facing many global challenges like climate change, combating the next pandemic, or curing diseases. When I think about the importance of including women in science and technology, I think about it from a very practical perspective. Why would we handicap ourselves by only including 50 percent of our population if we're trying to solve these major issues? We need to bring women and girls and minorities into these fields so that we can really solve these challenges and make sure that the future is someplace that we leave for multiple generations.
What steps can the global scientific community take to better support women and girls in science? We need to have a broader definition of what it means to be a woman in science and a woman in technology. I think oftentimes people have this image in their head of someone sitting in a lab in a lab coat, probably pipetting, and has a PhD. But also, you could be a woman in science if you graduated from a community college and now you're starting to work in data science, or perhaps you were a worker who was recently up-skilled and is now entering into the semiconductor industry. These are all examples of people and women working in STEM and working in technology, and we need to be able to embrace all versions of that.
