The Matilda Effect

The Matilda Effect is defined as a pattern in history where women's contributions have been ignored or attributed to male counterparts, basically giving women no credit for their accomplishments. If you look through the history of the world that certainly appears to be the case, where all famous human beings before the year 1600 or so were men......you got the rarest of rare exceptions with Cleopatra (she had to be romantically involved in one of the juiciest love triangles ever with Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony), Sappho the Lesbos poet, and maybe like Boudicea rebelling against the Romans or like Joan of Arc. Other than that, it's all men. Men got all the opportunities to shine, being educated, fighting in wars, being emperor or king, etc. So I get why it's frustrating that when women finally were given opportunities to contribute, some of them didn't get the credit they deserved like Rosalind Franklin for the double helix. I am glad our baby girls is born in an era when the importance of women is recognized and appreciated. It's also a great reason to focus on famous women for trivia clues! The men will come naturally, but it's important for me who idolized only male sports stars, male actors, male historical figures, etc., to learn a lot more about women, because I kind of suffered from the Matilda Effect as well learning everything I needed to know, generally dismissing women throughout history unless they were famous entertainer like singers, actresses, etc. I don't think I could have named any female scientists before trivia, outside of maybe Marie Curie. Now I cherish reading about famous female astronomers like Ellen Ochoa, for example, the first Hispanic American woman in space, or Diana Nyad, who makes it on Jeopardy all the time, or Lise Meitner, who I'm embarassed to say I didn't know the existence of until last year for her discovery of nuclear fission. All these ladies now come up disproportionately on trivia shows because men just have a bigger pool to choose from, but the ladies can stand out now their star shine even brighter. Being an Asian tiger dad, I've of course already thought about what our Baby Girl should do as a profession, assuming any jobs will exist in 18 years when she becomes of age...science is the hope of course, but I can't expect her to do that if I couldn't crack it due to lack of interest/ lack of ability. I took the easy way out and opting not to grind into fields I wasn't good at; Baby Yan might have that same inclination, especially with the lack of attention span her generation will have. (I barely even have the attention span to finish feeding her from the bottle because I want to move on to other activities!) Based on Baby Yan's extreme activity with her limbs (both arms and legs are pretty strong) I'm hoping to get her active in sports, maybe one of the few things that will survive the robot revolution since humans will want to see other humans perform still, not just robot athletes beating humans. Almost everything needs to get started young, but especially ice skating, snowboarding (like Chloe Kim!), gymnastics, everything that requires muscle memory from a young, young age. Neither MJ and I were very athletic, but maybe we can develop the muscle memory needed for golf swings? Take 100 golf swings per day starting age 3? Whatever Baby Yan decides to do, I hope she's able to withstand the Matilda Effect and stand out on her own!