Iron Willed: Showcasing Women in STEM at Burlington’s Joseph Brant Museum

By: Maisha Hasan, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Burlington Local-News.ca

 

In the latest stop of a travelling exhibit, “Iron Willed: Women in STEM” arrived at Burlington’s Joseph Brant Museum earlier this year, where it will remain until March 29, 2026.

 

The developer of this exhibition is the government-owned organization Ingenium, Canada’s Museums of Science and Innovation, which manages Canada’s national science museums. As well as developing travelling exhibitions, Ingenium manages artifact loans, runs community programs, webinars, virtual exhibitions, and lecture series, among other activities. 

 

The exhibition carries Ingenium’s work from its Ottawa headquarters to audiences in Burlington, showcasing the achievements of women in STEM, as well as the challenges faced in making those contributions. 

 

Jessica Benjak-Waterous is the lead curator at Joseph Brant Museum and had oversight on bringing the exhibition to Joseph Brant Museum. She offered her thoughts on the exhibit and the goals in bringing it to Burlington. Answers have been lightly edited for flow and clarity.

 

How did this exhibit come to be?

 

We have a temporary gallery space that has been hosting travelling exhibits about two to three times a year, and we worked with Ingenium before, in getting travelling exhibits from them. This really sparked an interest for me because of the time period of when I wanted to book this exhibit. It was falling right around the time of International Women’s Day and International Day of Women and Girls in Science [March 8 and February 11, respectively]. That is one of the main reasons I wanted to have this exhibit here. 

 

It’s also near and dear to my heart because I studied cultural heritage conservation. Science is a big part of that, with chemistry and preserving artifacts. I thought it was nice to have an exhibit here; it can inspire more girls to go into the field.

 

The exhibition highlights both achievements and systemic barriers. How do you balance celebrating successes with acknowledging the challenges behind them?

In the exhibit, there is one main area that has a timeline history of women in STEM. Then, it’s broken down into different sections. There is a science section, and it talks about women’s achievements and challenges. It is broken down into technology, engineering, and mathematics. It talks about challenges and achievements for women in those different areas. 

 

Another area talks more about how we can support women and girls today and inspire them. It goes into more popular [well-known] women, like Roberta Bondar — our first female Canadian astronaut — or Margaret Newton, who became an expert in wheat, despite her lab hours being cut when she was in her degree program [because of sexist rules in place at McGill University’s Faculty of Agriculture in 1914, that said women couldn’t be in the lab after 10 p.m.], or Marie Maynard Daly, the first African American to get a PhD in chemistry.

 

How does this exhibit fit into the greater context of the Joseph Brant Museum?

 

At the Joseph Brant Museum, we like to celebrate mainly Burlington’s history. That’s a part of our mandate. In the exhibit as well, with a lot of travelling exhibits, we like to do our own Burlington component. We have one wall section in there that talks about Burlington women in STEM. We only have a few examples. One of the things right now that we’ve been posting on our website and social media is to collect stories and artifacts about Burlington STEM. 

 

How have people interacted with the exhibition so far? 

 

We have a little community board in there where people can add a post-it note about women who inspire them, who have worked in STEM. Some stories have been shared there. 

 

When people come out of the exhibit, there are some [who are] not surprised that there are still challenges, but then other people are surprised that there are. I had a male visitor the other day who was from an engineering background and was shocked [to see the challenges that women in STEM still face]. 

 

I’ve also developed a speaker series that we’re going to have, with Burlington women in STEM talking about their careers and what inspired them to get into STEM, so we can inspire more girls and women in the Burlington area to get involved in STEM.

 

What have you learned from the exhibition about systemic barriers for women in STEM?

I’ve learned that there are still biases. There’s an implicit bias test in the exhibit, which is interesting, and I took the test, and I have a little bit of bias towards women in STEM. I thought that was very interesting, being someone who comes from STEM. 

 

When you look at engineers, people still see men in those positions, not a lot of females in those positions. It is nice that even though in a world where access to education and jobs is improving for women, we’re still talking about the challenges and trying to still get more women involved. I think it is inspiring more girls to look into [STEM] more. I put resources in as something that Ingenium didn’t really have in their exhibit that I wanted to highlight in our portion of the exhibition — resources for girls who wanted to do workshops or meet people in this area, etc. 

 

How do you hope exhibitions like “Iron Willed” contribute to future change in STEM fields?

 

With a lot of the school groups that have come in, building more of those STEM groups in their schools. I know some schools are already doing that, but I do know other schools could build their own programs within their schools to inspire more older girls. 

 

It would be nice to also have more access to mentors in the area, too. The speaker series could develop more. One of the women that we have talking to, her name is Miss Halle Stradar. She’s from Biotroopers. She does biology workshops for kids. I thought she would be great to come in and talk to girls, putting the ideas in other women’s minds that they can do workshops with engineering, or workshops with math, or other types of science workshops with chemistry or something. [I hope this] inspires women to step up into those leadership and mentoring roles as well. 

 

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The STEMinist Speaker Series, featuring local women in STEM, will begin on Feb. 11, 2026, at 7 p.m., featuring Dr. Ève Gilroy. The event will also offer a viewing of the film Ms. Scientist; attendees can also view the Iron-Willed: Women in STEM exhibition. Dr. Gilroy is a scientist in environmental research at Burlington’s Canada Centre for Inland Waters.

 

The second in the STEMinist series will be on March 8, 2026, at 2 p.m., featuring Vaishali Sridhar of Biotroopers, who is a scientist and educator with a background in molecular biology, genomics, and biotech.

 

Tickets for the STEMinist series can be purchased for $15 (for students and seniors) to $18 (for adults) on the Museums of Burlington website; click here.

For more information on Iron-Willed: Women in STEM and on opening hours, visit Joseph Brant Museum’s website.