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landofnowhereSo there's a lot I could say about Meg Murry, later O'Keefe, from the Madeleine L'Engle books, relating to various bits of the women in STEM discourse, which I mostly won't do here. (The version of Meg Murry in the recent movie is also worth talking about, but from a different time and social context, and we don't get to learn as much about her future.)
But I just had the idea of Meg Murry O'Keefe as a "hidden figure" -- some of this is already in canon, we know she helps Calvin with his math, but I like the idea of taking this further. In my headcanon, she works as a computer programmer to help support Calvin as he gets his MD/PhD: I like the idea of her being one of the women helping Edward Lorenz on chaos theory, doing the sort of work that nowadays would be credited with co-authorship, but which wasn't valued in that way at the time. And then, later in her series, when the kids are grown, I want her "boring housewife" life to just be a cover for her doing some highly important classified work :-D -- she's realize that this is a better deal than having to vanish without a trace like Charles Wallace.
(She probably does feel insecure about not having a Ph.D., because the books put an excessive emphasis on characters having multiple graduate degrees, and she's never felt comfortable in school-like situations, but it doesn't keep her from doing important stuff.)
But I just had the idea of Meg Murry O'Keefe as a "hidden figure" -- some of this is already in canon, we know she helps Calvin with his math, but I like the idea of taking this further. In my headcanon, she works as a computer programmer to help support Calvin as he gets his MD/PhD: I like the idea of her being one of the women helping Edward Lorenz on chaos theory, doing the sort of work that nowadays would be credited with co-authorship, but which wasn't valued in that way at the time. And then, later in her series, when the kids are grown, I want her "boring housewife" life to just be a cover for her doing some highly important classified work :-D -- she's realize that this is a better deal than having to vanish without a trace like Charles Wallace.
(She probably does feel insecure about not having a Ph.D., because the books put an excessive emphasis on characters having multiple graduate degrees, and she's never felt comfortable in school-like situations, but it doesn't keep her from doing important stuff.)