Kailynn Bannon
The Southern Editor
Every March, people around the nation celebrate Women’s History Month by recognizing the triumphs and accomplishments that women have achieved. Women everywhere prevail from discrimination and show the world their strength by becoming successful in male-dominated areas of work and study.
Women began to receive their well-deserved recognition back in 1857 when female workers marched in protest of their unequal rights. On that March 8, now known as International Women’s Day, was one of the first organized strikes by working women. Since the 1800s, the women’s rights movement has made much progress in recognizing hard-working women and little girls with big dreams.
The fields that typically have more men are business, engineering, computer science, sports marketing, finance and many more. Female students are breaking down these statistics and stereotypes by inserting themselves into these studies and dominating their field.
The women at Florida Southern College are working hard during their time at the school, even if they’ve only been here for a year. Women across all areas of study are implementing innovative ideas and breaking down boundaries in their school and community.
Brooke Sommers, a freshman at FSC, has been wowing the business department with her startup, Dermageneous. Her biotech company won first place in the school’s Shark Tank Competition hosted for all freshman business students where they can pitch their ideas.
“We’re able to take a customer’s DNA with a swab test and analyze their DNA and link that DNA to the existing products on the market that work with their unique genetic compounds,” Sommers said.
Sommers is double majoring in Spanish and business administration, with a concentration in international business. She also wants to pick up an entrepreneurship minor next year.
She has been interested in international business to work with companies to help expand their businesses outside the nation. Her double major in Spanish will help her understand the native language of many countries without needing a translator.
She wants her company to take off so she can further pursue it after she graduates.
She got the idea for Dermageneous after getting a 23andMe DNA kit. She was inspired by how DNA could tell you much more about a person than just their heritage.
“It’s kind of like a cheat code for the customers,” Sommers said. “When you go into a drug store, and you’re looking for products that will work for you, it’s able to give you a list of all the products that are going to work for your DNA.”
Alex Elliot is a sophomore majoring in sports communication and marketing with a minor in sports business management. In the highly male-dominated world of sports, Elliot emphasized the importance of having more female voices.
Elliot has worked with FSC’s athletic communications department since her first week as a freshman. She works any sports game – runs statistics, works the camera and pretty much anything else they give her. Since working with Athletic Communications, she developed an interest in becoming a sports information director after college.
“Working for them made me realize I want to do what they do,” Elliot said.
She played sports all her life before attending college until she got injured and could no longer play sports. While she could no longer pursue soccer or basketball, she still wanted an education and career where she could be actively involved rather than sitting at a desk. That’s when she found the sports communication department.
“I just felt like still being a part of it and having a big impact without actually playing would be something I’d want to do,” Elliot said.
Women have increasingly become more involved in sports since the early 2000s, and they started getting more recognition from the media and colleges. Elliot believes that having women’s perspectives on any game, even in men’s sports, is beneficial to avid fans and even girls who might be interested in sports.
“I feel like it adds diversity – women pay attention to women,” Elliot said
Junior Molly Kennedy has been busy during her time at FSC. She is a marine biology major with a chemistry minor, working as a peer mentor and a lab teaching assistant for her department. She is the PR and Marketing Chair for the marine biology honor society, Rho Rho Rho, as well as the Vice President for the newly established Snorkel Club on campus.
Her goal as a member of the executive board for Tri Rho is to open up the club to students of any major who appreciate the ocean and the planet.
“Since I was a freshman, I loved that we had a community on campus to sort of help people out,” Kennedy said. “I think marine biology sometimes gets overlooked in terms of difficulty, but there’s a lot of challenging courses. So it was nice to have a community of people that also were taking these challenging courses.”
As a little girl, Kennedy got into competitive swimming and developed a love for the water. Even after growing up outside of D.C. and being scared of sharks, she has pushed herself to learn more about ocean life and study the things she used to be scared of. With her experience in swimming, diving and chemistry, she knew early on that she wanted to study marine biology.
“My parents would take us up to the Baltimore aquarium, which was my favorite activity. I immediately fell in love with it. So I felt a connection to the water pretty early on,” Kennedy said.
After she graduates, Kennedy wants to go straight to graduate school to get her Ph.D. with the goal of becoming a professor with a lab someday.
She has been working hard to get the Snorkel Club to become a sanctioned organization this semester. As a freshman, she would get up at 2 a.m. to go diving by herself and soon realized how daunting it can be. She is passionate about having a community on campus where everyone can interact with the ocean together.
Even with her busy schedule and working overseas in South Africa for an internship, Kennedy has launched a successful science communication podcast called Sippin’ on Science, inspired by her love for coffee and experience as a barista.
She got accepted into the Young Voices of Science Communication program led by the Hubbard Brook Research Foundation. Through this program, she was able to meet people from all over the country and beyond and talk about the importance of science communication. As a part of the program, participants create a final communications project. That’s where Kennedy got this idea to launch her podcast.
“I love talking to people,” Kennedy said. “They have some really cool stories. It’s also been able to help me feel a little bit better about going through grad school, undergrad, internships and life in general. Everyone has a very different path on how they ended up successful, even if success is just being happy.”
While the nation has implemented more rights for women over the past couple of centuries than ever before, there is still lots more work to be done.
Sommers often gets on conference calls and finds herself being the only woman on the call. She notices that when she’s in a room, or even a call full of men, she just isn’t taken as seriously.
“Sometimes when I speak up, I feel like they either dismiss the words I have to say or they won’t value it as highly as one of their male colleges would,” Sommers said. “I feel like that’s kind of frustrating for me. Because I know I have the insight for the things they are speaking about, and it can be difficult for me to feel my opinion holds the same value as theirs, especially being the only woman.”
Sommers isn’t the only one who has experienced dismissal in the workplace. Elliot states that this is a common occurrence in the world of sports.
“Letting them talk over you and not letting them hear your voice is definitely a big thing because I feel like women struggle with that a lot,” Elliot said.
Lots of women do struggle with being talked over in their careers. A study done by George Washington University found that men interrupt women 33% more often than when they speak with other men. The study showed that most women are interrupted at least twice throughout a three-minute conversation.
The women of FSC want to be a part of making that change happen. They’re taking strides into making the workplace a place that amplifies women’s voices instead of diminishing them.
Women have made important contributions to FSC and the Lakeland community. Alumni and women everywhere have built huge businesses that have taken off and changed the city as we know it. Just a few months ago, Lakeland was named the No. 1 city in the nation for female workers.
“I feel like it’s so important to show that women are able to do something in a world where it previously appeared as only men can do it, or women are seen as less-than,” Sommers said. “It’s important in business, and all majors even, to see that no matter who you are, or where you come from, you are able to succeed in the career you want based on the things you want to do and what you want to see in the world.”
Kennedy has noticed a lack of transparency regarding open conversations with others in the field. It helps to have other women in the field who can relate to one another and confide in when in need of support.
“I think that sometimes it can be difficult, especially in marine biology, to express how being a woman makes it a little more challenging,” Kennedy said.
Marine biology majors will sometimes be on small boats for 12 hours, and it can get uncomfortable without any advice from other women.
“Especially when I’m on my period, it’s very challenging. It’s uncomfortable. You can’t really talk to a male colleague about that, he doesn’t really understand,” Kennedy said. “It’s been such a male-dominated industry that I don’t know if it necessarily comes to mind when they’re thinking about fieldwork. So it’s great to have women in the community so we can have these conversations and see if we can change the field in a way that’s more inclusive of women.”
She realized that the source behind a lot of this gender bias in the industry comes from people curating their inner circles around those who look like them.
“It challenged me to think about including people who don’t look like me, maybe more men or more people of color,” Kennedy said.
While women make up the majority of the marine biology department at FSC, it’s not so similar in the real world.
“There’s this huge pipeline in a master’s or Ph.D. program where women sort of get weeded out. A lot of it has to do with family planning,” Kennedy said.
Kennedy has had conversations with women in her department, including professors, who have had to adjust their family life just to keep a job.
“I think that every woman should have the right to choose what she wants to do with her life when she wants to do it. Sometimes that will inhibit you from getting a job, and it certainly can inhibit you from doing fieldwork,” Kennedy said. “There are not great resources available for child care … so I do think that there could be better systems in place.”
Mothers or not, women have fought for centuries to get equal rights. By showing up and becoming successful in their fields, women are proving that they have so much more to bring to the table than they have been given credit for in the past.
“I will say that Florida Southern is amazing,” Kennedy said. “The biology department has so many incredible women and men that are teaching here, and I have felt totally supported.”
By breaking boundaries and creating innovative solutions, the women of FSC are taking major steps towards making their departments more diverse.
