For women everywhere, breaking into the STEM field—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—is tough enough. But pile hunger and poverty on top of gender bias? Sounds almost impossible.

It’s not, as has been demonstrated by many formidable women from thedeveloping world. On Sunday in San Jose, California, the oldest scientific organization in the United States, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, honored five of them: one mathematician and four physicists from Sudan, Nigeria, and Vietnam. Despite the odds, they’ve shown that their fields would not be as strong without the contributions of women, who face many obstacles getting into and advancing in the male-dominated world of science.