WAI2025 Keynote Speaker Emily Calandrelli Hollywood hasn’t caught up to women’s interest in science.
By Kathryn B. Creedy
As I listened to Emily Calandrelli at Women in Aviation International Conference opening session, I got mad. Here is young woman focused completely on “supersizing” the impact of #aviation #STEM #STEAM education and Hollywood doesn’t see her value.
Calandrelli, AKA The Space Gal on social media platforms, said Hollywood sees women as a risk. “We scare them,” she said.
One of the stories she told about trying to break into the big leagues to get her programming to television was maddening.
But first, did I mention she is an aerospace engineer with a degree from MIT? She’s also an astronaut and science communicator. She also achieved something else amazing – the first solo female science show host in the US with Exploration Outer Space while she was visibly pregnant! Little girls wanted to emulate her so much, they wore her signature pink overalls stuffed with pillows. As if that weren’t enough, she is an author of children’s books based on her tv show. So, she has the chops.
She grew up wondering where all the female Bill Nyes where.
Turns out Hollywood sees women as too big a risk. They are an afterthought, she indicated. The men in Hollywood say there was no market for science programming with a woman host because the demographic is all men, and they don’t want to watch a woman. Tell that to PBS’s NOVA and NATURE where women are everything from narrators to mission scientists. One of the best shows I watched on PBS was Picture a Scientist on women’s struggle to become the top in their field.
But, when it comes to children’s show, they are very comfortable with women hosts.
I thought, yeah, the “Mom” role. God these guys are really neanderthals but that might be unfair to neanderthals.
It is absolutely shortsighted since I spend my 90% my tv time watching science documentaries on geology, nature, climate change and space exploration. I revel in the space science shows because of the number of smart, powerful women who play important engineering, design and mission roles and earn coverage by the documentarians because they are so critical to the mission. The message they send is not only they are there, but they are important contributors and their male colleagues respect what they do. Space exploration is clearly a team sport, and they are just regular parts of the team.
It is absolutely incredible to me, as a science consumer, that in the 21st Century that a business would actually leave 50% of the market out of their programming. Could there be a better poster child for why diversity is good for the bottom line. Women are responsible for as much as 85% of spending decisions.
A Pretty Face
I chuckled when she turned an old myth about women – the brainless, dumb woman, who is only good as window dressing – on its head. Remember men used to say women are hired for their looks, not brains, especially in television. It looks as if that still applies and they won’t even take brainy women. Well, she was told that for a woman to be hired as a co-host she’d need to be an astronaut. “Was the male host an astronaut,” she asked.
No, she said, and I thought, yeah, the male co-host was the pretty face. But just think about that. The male had been reduced to nothing but window dressing, a role women have been in for millennia.
Calandrelli aired an old commercial for the Discovery Channel used to attract viewers. All the hosts were male. Worse, the most recent commercial is exactly the same!
“Science TV has become testosterone TV,” she reported. “Meanwhile, 30% of scientists and engineers are women. Of the 133 television shows out there, only 1% are hosted or led by women. What would that look like if 50% of science shows were hosted by women?
“If you want to change the story, you need to change the storyteller.”
She was eventually rewarded with a Netflix series Emily’s Wonder Lab, but it only ran a year because networks were moving to cartoons “despite the fact that Emily’s Wonder Lap was in the top 16% of all tv shows and movies on the platform worldwide.”
It’s all about costs but if you take all the salaries of all the hosts it’s $14 million, she reported. “That could have created nine more seasons Emily’s Wonder Lab which moved to the top 13% besting Grey’s Anatomy. It ran in 190 countries in local languages. But here’s the impact. You know when a kid chooses science for their birthday theme, that is revolutionary.”
“DEI is not just a nice thing to have,” she told the nearly 5000 attendees. “It’s good for the bottom line. Women are not a small demographic they are 50% of the population.
After the cancellation, she pivoted, as any ambitious woman does, wanting to reduce the stereotype of what scientists looks like. “There’s value in representation,” she said. “But the value for those who are not represented is that it completely changes the way they see friends and female role models in their lives. Role models in life takes real people, not cartoons.
She trademarked her catch phrase – stay curious and keep exploring – and took all the experiments done in her tv show and turned them into children’s books which climbed to Number One on the New York Times Best Seller List. Now tell me women are not bankable!
What’s next for Emily is taking the money she made from her books to re-invest in herself and her mission which is creating her own show – Emily’s Science Lab – on You Tube. Within six months she booked 150,000 subscribers.
“If we want representation, we are going to have to create it ourselves,” Callendrelli said. “No one is going to do it for us. Nobody will help us because we are seen as a financial risk. Today it’s worse because they are now afraid they’ll get in trouble because of the anti-DEI movement. The lack of women in STEM is everyone’s problem. Not having diversity comes at a high cost in money and lives.” She described how most drug studies are done on men and the impact on women is ‘inferred.’ Even crash test dummies are based on men which resulted in more injuries for women.
“This is not just a recruitment problem it is an attrition problem,” she said. “Women in STEM is no silver bullet. But it is an incredibly powerful tool society is actively choosing not to use!”
Yeah, perfect example. I stopped paying attention when my doctor talked about BMI when I read a study showing it was done in the 1940s, on men alone.
Calandrelli is exactly the role model we need.
futureaviationaerospaceworkforce.com 