If Dantzig had a sister

“For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common.” – Virginia Woolf, “A Room of One’s Own”

Have you ever imagined if Dantzig had a sister? Anand Subramanian and I did, and, being inspired by the insightful conversations with all the 30 female guests in his s.t. podcast series, we wrote this article for the s.t. column in OR/MS Today!

February 11 is the International Day of Women and Girls in Science. The article discusses why there is still the need for such days, and the challenges faced by women in Operations Research and sciences in general.

To me, “thinking in common” means discussing and brainstorming, sharing and comparing views and opinions, not necessarily the same ones. It was very nice to do it on such a delicate and multifaceted topic as gender inequality in STEM, directly with Anand and indirectly with all the female guests of the s.t. podcast, whom I thank for telling their experiences. A special thanks to Janaína Lima and Kara Tucker for listening to the podcasts compiling useful notes and for the editorial support, respectively.

We know the subject is much more complex than what could seem from this column. Steps ahead have been made in the last decades. However, the optimal solution seems still a little distant. We may need new models to reformulate the problem and close the gap. To do that, we all need to talk about what we think describes the problem and the constraints and variables nowadays, given also the past. The goal is one and well-defined. Each of us may have different ideas or proposals for solving approaches: let’s share them, let’s make them “common”, not only on February 11.