The future well-being of humanity depends heavily — maybe entirely — on our net proficiency in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Viewed in that light, the under-representation of women in those fields isn’t just unfortunate, it’s disastrous. Half of our potential for advancement is stymied, when the species needs all the help it can get.

Here in the writing cave we try not to be too soapboxy about stuff. Rune Skelley writes about what fascinates Kent and Jen. We don’t make those choices based on any agenda beyond “make it awesome, and then add a bunch of amazing up in there.”

With all that being said, we looked back over our projects and discovered that Rune Skelley has a damn good track record of strong female characters who rock the STEM. These ladies include an electrical engineer, a computer programmer, a geneticist, and a pair of medical researchers. It wouldn’t count for much if these were just labels we stuck on them, just part of their backstory or shorthand for “she’s a nerdy chick.” These are not walk-on roles, either. We’re talking about protagonists and major supporting characters. And in each case, if not for their expertise, depicted on the page, the plot could not move forward.

Other female characters in our novels have brainy jobs outside of STEM: an author and an investigative journalist, for example. (And a couple of them are murderers with special powers. They make a formidable group!)

The guys in our books represent too, of course. But we’re not here to talk about them today.

Our team being gender-balanced, and biased toward the geeky end of the scale, probably goes a long way to account for all this. It’s just art imitating life: Jen has a BS, whereas Kent limps by on his measly BA.

To learn more about women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, you can start here.