As Dr Jess Wade, postdoctoral researcher in plastic electronics at Imperial College London, continues her mission of adding women in science to Wikipedia, she highlights a key problem with many “women into science” projects: a lack of evidence that they work. “There’s so much energy, enthusiasm and money going into all these initiatives to get girls into science. Absolutely none of them is evidence-based and none of them works. It’s so unscientific, that’s what really surprises me,” she says.

You wouldn’t know it from marketing campaigns such as EDF Energy’s Pretty Curious competition or IBM’s #HackAHairDryer campaign, but there’s a solid body of research from which advocates can draw inspiration. We know that, for example, role models play a crucial part in developing girls’ and women’s interests. Studies by Girlguiding UK have shown that girls value role models and that a lack of role models puts them off careers such as engineering. And a psychologist, Penelope Lockwood, found that women needed female role models to illustrate that success was attainable.

By adding more pages to Wikipedia, Wade is expanding women’s representation on one of the most-read websites in the world. It’s a noble mission that mirrors the work of projects such as TrowelBlazers, highlighting women in archaeology, palaeontology and geology, and Ada Lovelace Day, an annual global celebration of women in science that I founded, which has featured many Wikipedia “edit-a-thons” over the last 10 years.

There are so many amazing and inspiring women in science that it’s hard to choose between them. But here are five whose work and achievements make them great role models for us all.

Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin

The only British woman to have won a Nobel prize for science, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was among the first to use X-ray crystallography to reveal the structure of antibiotics, vitamins and proteins such as cholesterol, penicillin, Vitamin B12 and insulin. Her work established X-ray crystallography as the best way to investigate the properties and functions of many biological molecules. Crowfoot Hodgkin understood the importance of computers, including many programmers in her research team and, in 1959, persuading Oxford University to buy a Mercury computer. She was awarded the Nobel prize in Chemistry in 1964.

Patricia Bath

Dr Patricia Bath’s Laserphaco Probe is a medical device to remove cataracts, one of the leading causes of vision loss and blindness. In 1981, Bath began working on a design that used a laser instead of ultrasound, making the process less invasive, faster and more accurate. Bath patented her idea in 1988, becoming the first African-American woman to receive a medical patent. The Laserphaco Probe also removes diseased corneas, and Bath used it to restore sight to a woman who had been blind for more than 30 years.

Tu Youyou

Professor Tu Youyou is a pharmaceutical chemist who won the Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015 for her discovery of the drugs artemisinin and dihydroartemisinin. Her drugs have been used to treat 200 million malaria patients, saving millions of lives. In 1967, Tu began testing more than 2,000 herbal recipes in her search for a new anti-malarial drug. Her breakthrough was using cold water, instead of hot, to prepare an extract of qinghao, or sweet wormwood. After successful animal tests, Tu volunteered to be the first human subject.

Eugenie Clark

Known as the Shark Lady, Dr Eugenie Clark was the founding director of the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, and a prolific and inspirational writer. Clark proved that sharks can learn simple tasks, discovered that the Moses sole secretes an effective shark repellent and debunked the myth that sharks need to swim to breathe. Clark pioneered the use of scuba diving in marine biology and continued her research well into “retirement”, learning to pilot a sub when she was 87.

Yvonne Brill

During the 1960s space race, Yvonne Brill developed a more lightweight, accurate and flexible propulsion system for communications satellites. She combined hydrazine, a propellant that gives off heat when it decomposes in the presence of a catalyst, with the resistojet, a thruster that heats a propellant, vaporising it and creating thrust from the gas’s expansion. She began her patent application for the electrothermal hydrazine thruster in 1967. Although the patent was granted in 1974, it wasn’t until 1983 that Brill saw her invention tested. It’s now an industry standard.

With more and more businesses recognising that they’re missing out on this kind of talent because women are dissuaded from pursuing science careers, there’s a temptation to pour money into more marketing campaigns and stunts. But what’s really needed is for companies to take a more rigorous, evidence-based approach and to work with, and fund, those in the field who already know what works and what doesn’t.

Girls and women don’t need gimmicks to get into science; they need year-round access to resources, role models and support.

• Suw Charman-Anderson is the founder of Ada Lovelace Day, an international celebration of the achievements of women in Stem