Eileen Pollack Quotes

Negative gender stereotypes related to girls' education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics begin as early as primary school and have the devastating effect of making them doubt their own potential.

There is an outdated belief that girls are not as good at science and math subjects as boys. But according to the report 'Generation STEM,' high school girls earn more math and science credits than boys do, and their GPAs, aggregated across math and science classes, are higher than boys'.

The important thing is when you look at areas like physics and you realise that only one in five A-level students is a girl. We know it isn't about aptitude.

In high school, I didn't realize that science or engineering were male-dominated fields. When I got to college, and I was one of two girls in a 50-person class, that's when I realized that this was a unique decision I had made as a girl to go into engineering.

All through college, I had frequently been the only girl in a science class - which wasn't such a bad deal.

When I was growing up, I had lots of smart classmates that were girls, but none of us were really pushed into math or computers or anything like that. Girls took AP history and AP English and AP European history. And boys took calculus and physics.

We still raise girls to look to other people for assurance they are attractive and smart, while boys are raised to determine their own value. Many girls are still made to feel it's not feminine to be good at science or math.

Given that many girls are indoctrinated to believe that they should be feminine and modest about their abilities, as well as brought up to assume that girls are not innately gifted at science or math, it is not surprising that so few can see themselves as successful computer scientists.

If I'm teaching girls that do love to make cookies and do love fashion - that they can use math as a part of that - you think that's me saying, come on girls you belong in the kitchen, you belong shopping? Or, do you think it's me showing them how math is part of all their life, even the part they thought it had nothing to do with?

I had a great deal of confidence when I graduated from Berkeley. I had almost none when I was at Princeton. After a while, when people tell you you can't do something because you're a woman, you begin to believe maybe they're right.

For whatever reason, I didn't succumb to the stereotype that science wasn't for girls. I got encouragement from my parents. I never ran into a teacher or a counselor who told me that science was for boys. A lot of my friends did.

In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics.

Female physicists, astronomers and mathematicians are up against more than 2,000 years of convention that has long portrayed these fields as inherently male.

My daughter was 10 years old when she told me she hated computers. As someone who has spent her career helping build one of the largest tech companies in the world, I was in shock. Suddenly an issue I faced repeatedly at work - the lack of women in tech - hit squarely at home.

I was nearly as far behind in calculus as I was in physics. But I wasn't the only woman in the class, so I felt more comfortable asking questions.

I did not grow up thinking that I wanted to be an engineer. I had read some articles about girls becoming increasingly scientifically illiterate and that girls lacked confidence in their capabilities when it came to quantitative skills. And I just thought that was kind of wrong.

The absence of women within STEM programs is not only progressive, it is persistent - despite more than 20 years of programs intended to encourage the participation of girls and women.

When I was in 7th grade, we were all given an exam. It was science and math, and the boys who did well were skipped ahead so that when they got to be juniors or seniors in high school they would be able to go to the local community college and take calculus and physics there. And I wasn't skipped ahead.

Arguably, my student status and perhaps my gender were also my downfall with respect to the Nobel Prize, which was awarded to Professor Antony Hewish and Professor Martin Ryle. At the time, science was still perceived as being carried out by distinguished men.

I think there really needs to be a culture change because young girls are very interested in math and science, but somewhere along the way, they veer off of that.

Nobody likes feeling like an outsider, so it's intimidating for young girls to give STEM a try when they look into STEM clubs/classes and see a room full of boys.

Success in math and the hard sciences, far from being a matter of gender, is almost entirely dependent on culture - a culture that teaches girls math isn't cool and no one will date them if they excel in physics.

The most powerful determinant of whether a woman goes on in science might be whether anyone encourages her to go on.

Males and females can both have a fixed mindset about math and science, but it hurts girls more because they are on the negative end of the stereotype.

Young women are not as likely to receive the encouragement they need from role models like teachers and parents. And they should be encouraged - studies show women are just as likely as men to win when they do run.