Giving Compass' Take:

• This Smithsonian magazine article profiles Ellen Swallow Richards, the first female student at MIT, who started an all-women chemistry lab and advocated for consumer protections in the food industry.

• How might this story inspire the next generation of female scientists? How can donors support more STEM programs with gender equity in mind?

• Here's how women are changing the education sector in general.

This past election cycle, hundreds of women ran for office on a promise to make the future brighter and more female. Many ran on platforms that made climate change a priority, asserting that the United States needed to take drastic action to protect our planet and our future. Women rallying behind environmental protection has deep roots: 150 years ago, chemist and public safety advocate Ellen Swallow Richards solidified the idea of “human ecology,” the study of how people shape their environments, and how their environments shape them.

Richards had initially planned to go into astronomy, but she found herself drawn again and again to more earthly aims. As the first female student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she applied rigorous chemistry to the home, starting a movement to empower housewives to advocate for home safety. Upon finishing her undergraduate studies, Richards summed up her goal to use science for practical good in a letter to her parents: “My life,” she wrote, “is to be one of active fighting.”

For Richards, chemistry was the ideal tool for women to effect such change: It was scientific, practical and, most of all, relevant to daily life. After all, women had been experimenting with chemistry in the home all along, from understanding the chemical reactions required to make bread rise to the processes required to create a bar of soap. By harnessing the knowledge that women in the home already had and then applying scientific principles, Richards believed women would spark a change that would resonate beyond the kitchen table and transform society.

Read the full article about Ellen Swallows Richards, the first female student at MIT, by Leila McNeill at Smithsonian.com.