On Wednesday, June 17, Future Tense—a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University—will host an evening event in Washington, D.C., on designing the 21st century. For more information and to RSVP, visit the New America website.
When I moved to a new town after graduate school, one of the first things I did was head to the local makerspace—a place where people get together to work on all kinds of DIY projects, from the high-tech to the low-. I soon noticed two things: I was often the only woman in the room and usually the only person who expressed an interest in crafting over coding or 3-D printing. While my scientific street cred (Ph.D. in chemistry and nanotechnology) gained me acceptance, both my gender and my interests made me feel like an outsider in…