The Best (Free) Posters of STEM Women
Our periodically updated list of beautiful, free posters—along with a few good reasons why you should display them in your classroom.
Free posters! Do we need to say more?
This recently updated, growing collection from Women You Should Know (WomenYSK) was drawn by female illustrators and features a racially and ethnically diverse cast of female scientists and mathematicians from around the world. The series is available in eight languages. Beautifully rendered in vibrant colors, the posters depict scientists like Dr. Hayat Sindi from Saudi Arabia, Tu YouYou from China, and American astronaut and physician Mae Jemison.
We also love another free series by designer Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya from her website Beyond Curie, which highlights six female scientists whose leadership and scholarship revolutionized their fields. Finally, a three-part series from the Department of Energy offers 12 free printable posters of female astronauts, physicists, mathematicians and chemists who made notable contributions to American history.
Studies show that hanging posters like these in classrooms and school hallways has a real impact, increasing math and science confidence in girls. A 2010 study, for example, found that simple gestures of representation matter: when female high school students viewed chemistry textbooks containing pictures of female scientists, they performed better academically than female students who viewed textbooks containing only pictures of males.
We covered gender and STEM comprehensively—including solutions to common obstacles to gender inclusion—in our 2019 article Keeping Girls in STEM: 3 Barriers, 3 Solutions.