Rosalind Franklin is the only woman named in compulsory GCSE science
A Cambridge-led study of over 40 exam specifications found that just three women appear, and only Rosalind Franklin is in compulsory GCSE science.
By
Farah Choudhury
In brief
- Only three mentions of women appear among 224 unique scientists in UK specifications.
- At GCSE, Rosalind Franklin is the only woman named.
- Girls make up 24.1% of physics participants at Key Stage 5 in 2025.
- The authors suggest one named woman per subject, inside topics already compulsory.
Science courses in England, Wales and Scotland credit almost every famous discovery to a man, and a new study has counted how rarely that changes. Researchers at the University of Cambridge worked with IncludeHer and set out their findings in an article on The Conversation.
What the study examined
The team went through more than 40 science specifications, the documents that define the knowledge students need in order to pass their exams. They covered the six main exam boards for GCSEs and A-levels, plus Scotland’s National 5s and Highers. IncludeHer is a joint project whose aim is to give women a stronger presence in school science teaching.
The Cambridge group followed an Australian investigation led by the astrophysicist Dr Kat Ross, which had uncovered very few female scientists in high school curricula. The UK team wanted to know whether British specifications had comparable gaps. Across the 224 unique scientists they found, discoveries are presented almost entirely through concepts that carry men’s names, and only three mentions involve women.
The three women who do appear
Each of the three is attached to one piece of work, and the reach of those mentions is narrow.
| Scientist | Work | Where she appears |
|---|---|---|
| Inge Lehmann | Found that Earth has a solid inner core inside a liquid outer core | A-level Geology, through the “Lehmann discontinuity” |
| Marie Tharp | Mapped the ocean floor and identified the rift valley of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge | A-level geology |
| Rosalind Franklin | X-ray crystallography that revealed the double helix of DNA | Two biology specifications |
GCSE science is compulsory for every student, and there Franklin is the sole woman named. Lehmann and Tharp turn up only in geology, a subject chosen by fewer than 2% of science students.
Why the gap matters
According to the article, half of Britons cannot name one woman scientist. Women account for about a third of scientists worldwide, and the UK workforce shows a similar share.
At Key Stage 4, boys and girls take up science in balanced numbers. Two years later, at Key Stage 5, the figures above show how far girls’ participation in these subjects has dropped. The imbalance carries into university, where roughly a quarter of physics undergraduates in the UK are women.
Exam content is set by the specifications, so teachers who want to mention women scientists must add them on their own, on top of already heavy workloads.
The proposed additions
The authors suggest placing one female scientist per subject inside compulsory topics where the woman’s name is currently absent. Their list includes:
- Marie Skłodowska-Curie for atomic structure and radioactivity, and Lise Meitner for nuclear fission.
- Jocelyn Bell Burnell for pulsars, in GCSE astronomy.
- Dorothy Hodgkin and Tu Youyou in biology.
- Stephanie Kwolek for Kevlar and polymers, in chemistry.
- Annie Jump Cannon for star classification, in physics.
- Susan Solomon for Antarctic ozone depletion, in environmental science.
Photo: Tima Miroshnichenko / Pexels
