GYA Blog #thislittlegirlisme

GYA Co-Chair Priscilla Kolibea Mante, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana I was Born in Accra, Ghana, to parents who were both teachers. Nonetheless, I hated going to school. My maternal grandmother always had to bribe me with...

Jane Yau (Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education, Germany) In Hong Kong, China, the little girl in the picture loved to learn at school and was very curious. In the village where she grew up, she loved to...

Dominika Latusek-Jurczak (Kozminski University, Poland) The sky’s the limit! That’s what the little girl in this picture firmly believed. But then she was told that there wouldn’t be many chances for her in life. The little girl had dreams, but...

Amarjargal Dagvadorj (Parliamentary Research Service, Mongolia) I was ten years old in this picture. At that time, only a few people had personal cameras in Ulaanbaatar, the capital city of Mongolia. Those with cameras used to stand in the capital’s...

Ana Elizabeth Ochoa Sánchez (Universidad del Azuay, Ecuador) I was born on January 24, 1986 in a Latin family. My father is a doctor, and my mother is a primary school teacher. My brother was born four years later. I...

Ramia AL BAKAIN (University of Jordan) Success is to focus on your positives, and to make your strengths stronger and stronger. Since I entered primary school, I have hoped to put a positive imprint on this world through science, which...

Fatin Aliah Phang (Universiti Teknologi Malaysia) I am a Chinese descendant, born in Sarawak, Borneo Island, and access to education – particularly science education – was considered a privilege when I was growing up. Due to racial tensions during the...

Flávia Ferreira Pires (Universidade Federal da Paraíba, Brazil) Though my paternal grandmother was a school teacher who loves to read and write poetry, my maternal grandmother could barely read and write. Both grandmothers were from a generation where schooling was...

I was born 35 years ago in a rural community of just a few dozen inhabitants in Michoacán, Mexico. I was fortunate that my parents encouraged me to be curious, and read books, many books! When I was a child,...

It is nice to be a woman and a scientist, but it is really hard. I am a mother of two beautiful kids, a girl, and a boy. That little girl in the picture is me (at 4 years old)...

Imagine a little girl of five, in a verandah full of stuffed toys, scribbling on the wall and talking to herself. That would be my daughter, five years ago. When I caught her at this game the first time, I...

I was very lucky to be born in a place where I had great role models. When I was growing up, my mom was a biologist and a professor at university, while my dad was a university student so our...

On the day after the International Day of Girls and Women in Science 2022, I celebrated my 40th birthday. It is hard to believe that the girl who was 4 years old in the photo is now 10 times older....

Although I wasn’t necessarily sure at first I would become a scientist, I kind of always knew that through knowledge acquisition I could empower my voice and could help other girls and women do the same. I am from central...

I developed my passion for teaching through my love to write with chalk on the blackboard in grade 1. At that time, I liked the idea of writing that can be easily wiped away. I asked my parents, who were...

#ThisLittleGirlIsMe in this photo taken many years ago. Today I am a scientist and this is my tale. I grew up in South Africa in an extremely loving and supportive family who provided me with every possible opportunity to learn...

#ThisLittleGirlIsMe, and she is still a big part of who I am today. From early in my life it was clear that I was headed for a life of learning. I loved books from before I could understand what the...

I grew up in a neighborhood in the south of Buenos Aires City, Argentina. Spending my infancy among my three football fan brothers, I was “expected” to be the goalkeeper only in case they needed me. I soon realized that...

After transferring to a new school because of my father’s work, my academic standing was not comparable to my previous school. But it was OK – I didn’t think much at that time, besides just going with the flow, enjoying...

This little girl has never been told that girls can’t do science. On the contrary, she was encouraged to the maximum by her family and always felt that studying science is something special and very interesting. She always believed that...

My mother is a biologist and I grew up helping her measure and write down data in tables for her experiments, and listening to her explain fascinating phenomena to little children visiting the marine science museum. My mother is also...

This little girl became intrigued by the brain and curious about unraveling the neural mechanism underlying mental health conditions in 6th grade when her best friend suffered from anorexia. She pursued her passion, became a first-generation university student, worked hard,...

As a girl, growing up, I loved reading books and was an introvert. I had a beautiful loving family where my parents told me I could be anything I wanted and allowed me and my sisters all the flexibility we...

The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown has been challenging, but being confined at home for such a long time allowed me to reflect on my journey as a woman in science, a mother with young kids, in a traditionally steadfast society....

I am still this smiling but stubborn little girl at 4 years of age.  I am the youngest of a large (and loud) family and grew up in a small city with 20,000 inhabitants in South America (Brazil). My mother...

As a molecular biologist, I have a deep interest in understanding how life works at the cellular and molecular levels. I have worked in research projects in the fields of microbiome, cancer, synthetic biology and recoding. I am also interested...

If someone had told me 20 years ago that one day I will be where I am now, I would have laughed. In fact, most of the things I do or am today, I have denied one way or another...

I was born in Tunis, Tunisia. Since my early childhood, I have been fascinated by biology. I fed my curiosity through documentary films, science magazines and science-fiction films. My parents encouraged me by buying me encyclopedias, scientific novels and taking...

As a little girl, I was always told by my family that I was special and there was nothing that girls could not achieve. I have a lot of good memories of my childhood and growing-up days. I was the...

From a very young age, this little girl was interested in exploring everything around her, and loved animals and nature. This curiosity continued as a girl and a woman, and being so curious, what was more logical than to love...

This is a story of a 3-years-old young village girl who had never imagined herself as a scientist or even as part of an international platform. She comes from a low-income family and had a limited perspective on daily life....

The little girl in this photo is 6 years old and started her school life on the day the photo was taken. She went on to become one of the youngest women professors in Turkey at the age of 36....