That's brilliant! Stories like this really make my day. Those young women are smart!! Hopefully they continue their love of science and do great things in the world!

So, so cool! Good on ya, girls!!

Thank you for this. I like watching women doing things as well as or better than the men, and I like pioneers (I am really waiting for that Clinton-Obama ticket). I know people should respect women for being themselves, but achievements like this demonstrate why. I hope these young ladies will be proud role models who by their own achievements, have opened greater opportunities for themselves and sparked a willingness for people to accept more women like themselves.

I had to start learning that my female peers were my equals (or better) and worthy of equal respect, because after years spent cruising through the top levels of school classes in a small community, I suddenly faced the reality of big city university life, where I suddenly met hundreds of women smarter than I was, who were the same age, but up to a year or two ahead of me in math and engineering classes (they went to good high schools and studied hard). It just slapped me awake.

I began late, I know. And now that I am 39, fresh from returning to school to start at the bottom rung of a new career, with almost exclusively female peers and authority figures nearly 20 years younger than myself, that's a new level of humility and respect I needed to learn.

This may not be the appropriate place to bring this up, but something that has always bothered me is the gendered separation of the disciplines and, in turn, the degradation of those then associated with women. It seems that humanities are often conceived of as more feminine and less valuable. Why does interest in science make a girl smart but interest in english, for example, not hold the same amount of intellectual worth? I am not trying to make any connection to these girl in particular, they are awesome and super congrats to them. It just seems important to point out there is a huge divide and its been gendered then ranked accordingly. Has anyone else experienced this?

Even better is the fact that out of the 18 winners, 6 individual and 6 teams of 2, 11 out of 18 were women.

YAY!!!!!

You know Marissa, that's a really good point and I've never thought about it actually. I'm a communications major, I wish I could be a doctor or something but I always say I wouldn't be smart enough to. But it's not as if communications majors are stupid because I don't think I'm stupid, I just like words and connecting people. I'm better at that than I am at science. But yes, I see what you mean.

lindsayPW, just as an aside, these girls are in what, high school? as a state science fair finalist in my day who went on to major in english, it's not really fair to expect girls who are good at a particular subject to make it their lives. probably a lot of the girls in this competition are outstanding in just about every academic area.

just saying.

Jessica,
Even as you are congratulating girls for achieving in science, you apologize for your own interest in science, "yes, I'm a bit dorky."

Do you think this is related to gender, or do you think it's a general cultural stigma about science being un-cool?

-Mali

I noticed the same thing, Indiglow11.

I think math & science are privileged above humanties because it's typically men who enter math & science. And men enter math and science because it's privileged above humanities. Hmph. Chicken or egg?

Marissa,

I think the sepearation occurs even in the general field of science. I study fish and I'm in grad school working on fish retoration and when I get out I hope to get a job working along those lines. Howeve, eb=ven as an undergrad, I was looked down on by my peers in biology class because ultimately, I am not doing human-life-saving research. I will never forget one critical student who asked me, after I presented a project on the decline of a specific sea turtle, "Why is this even important?" As an aside, the natural resources department is bursting with women students, but there is only one tenured woman faculty member. In an experimental design class, there are 7 men and 3 women, and during one session we discussed the disparity between women studying science in academics and the amount of women (or absence of women) that hold faculty positions or high-up ecological resource management positions. Anyway....not totally related I guess....

Kudos to those girls, and I hope they do great things in the future...

Jessica, I'm interested in your answer to indiglo11's question, too.

I'm studying sociology. Funny, it's mostly women that do that. The media story is that social sciences aren't real subjects - look at the UK Daily Mail frothing on about "media studies" as a fake easy subject for example. Could it be that the patriarchy don't like women understanding how the structures of society constrain our choices? How those with power claim that their power is natural, and therefore unchallengeable? Oh surely not.
And men are generally less interested, because the way society is structured seems ok to them, and there's all these cool science things to do..

I also say that hormones have a lot to do with it. Having had a brain that developed under testosterone, I was very good at mathematics & logic - I still am, but the more humane social connection things now seem more important to me, now I'm running on estrogen.
So I think there's both "natural" and social reasons for the gendering of subjects.

It is awesome to see girls being recognized in a scientific domain.
I am getting my master's in a very statistics-heavy quantitative psychology program, and I have been really upset by some of the sexism I've noticed and encountered from some of the other students. Women outnumber men in the program, but the people who speak up the most are the men. A lot of my female classmates seem to defer to them and respect them as the experts. The frustrating this is that these guys don't know what they're talking about! Their comments in class are completely without content; I think they just like to hear themselves speak.
I was particularly frustrated while working on a group statistics project. Whenever I corrected one of my male group members, he seemed hostile and didn't want to admit he was wrong. He ended up totally botching his section of the project. I felt like a big part of that hostility came from the fact that I am a woman and therefore couldn't possibly know as much about math as he did. Of course, I have consistently gotten the best scores in my most math-oriented course. But, you know, I have a vagina so I don't know what I'm talking about!
Fortunately a mentor of mine told me that this type of behavior is NOT the norm in psychology, so hopefully once I get out of this program I won't encounter it as much.

Waterpixi,

Oh I most definitely agree that there are gender hierarchies even within the disciplines themselves. This issue is very close to home for me as I am a grad student in a much more female-oriented humanities field while my boyfriend is a grad student in a male-oriented humanities field. We both notice that people react very differently to our fields in accordance with this gender hierarchy. It is really disappointing. I certainly am not making any kind of negative statement about these very talented girls or this posting; I think it is RAD when girls are very successful in male-oriented fields! I am all about breaking our gender assumptions. I just think it is good to be aware of the multi-layered network of these gender assumptions and the hierarchies of different types of work and study.

I am so proud and happy for those young ladies. Especially because when I read those presentation titles, I went a little slack-jawed.
My brain also does not function in that science sphere. I have a Master's degree in sociology, which no one respects but me and other people with social science degrees. The best job I could find (after months of searching and depleting my savings trying to hold out for something better) was receptionist. I answer the phone. It takes all my strength not to pick up the phone and say, "Good afternoon. I am wasting my mid-twenties, and I can't afford to go to the dentist. How can I help you?"

How awesome! And they are only in high school, wow.

indiglow11, actually I meant dorky as a good thing! Am I the only one who uses dork as a positive?! Also, I was referring more the school I went to (which was considered the "nerdy" NY school) than my interest in science. But I see how you could take it that way. Make no mistake, I'm proud of my science dorkiness (hence my new obsessions with Seed magazine)

Jessica: my husband and I say that we're nerds all the time. Proudly.

There's a gender disparity in music too; I go to a very highly regarded music school with distinct Jazz and Classical tracks, and the Jazz students always talk about how they're the "real" musicians. Guess which track is (even more) male dominated?

Even within the Classical track there's not an over-abundance of female instrumentalists. Most girls are in the vocal program, which is, of course, considered to be even easier.

Congrats to these folks- with trends like this maybe we won't have to hear any more crap from high university officials defending gender inequality in academia-particularly in the fields of math and science. Women and men should exercise their passion and talent no matter where these may lead,without fear of exclusion or derision.

I am the only female mechanical engineering major in my year at my college, and I am so grateful that this site exists. I really think it gives me the strength to call out the guys I work with on all their sexist bullshit. My passion is science, and while it isn't easy to be "the girl" in the class, I love studying engines and machines.

The other day I was talking to a girl in civil engineering who told me she thought mechanical looked like fun, but she was intimidated by all of the machines we work with. It made me sad that some girls think all the guys know what they are doing with machines before even coming to college. Every where I go there is this assumption that boys are somehow better at the physical aspect of science, I think it really brings down female enrollment in fields like engineering.

I’ve been working to educate girls, here in my university and at the middle school I tutor at, about the most fun and interesting major that exists. Society of Women Engineers is my support group, and Feministing is the best source for pride to fight against a sexist world.

I go to an engineering university and despite the ratio difference I do see many female students in various engineering degrees. I'm studying mechanical and two of my female friends are electrical and civil. I've never felt treated very differently and from what I've seen no one ever really knows what they're doing in labs. :)

In the case of my field, nursing, the explanations came very simply: nursing was an extension of the traditional role of women as caregivers. In western culture, before Florence Nightingale, it was not necessary for nurses to have specialized training, as even volunteers could care for the war wounded, under appalling hospital conditions.

The "educated" roles, that of the physicians, went almost exclusively to men, because that is how it was. Through the pioneering work of Florence Nightingale and the many women (I find no list of prominent men in my texts) after her, modern nursing has developed into a recognized profession, with their own schools, standards of practice, and governing boards. Local nurses consider themselves to be running the hospitals (the hospital or clinic manager is likely a female nurse), with the doctors as their "guests" who come to make rounds - once a month, in the case of long term care. Ha ha. While nursing salaries are very attractive, compared to those of other traditionally female professions like teaching, the wide gap between "women" nurses and "men" doctors remains.

Because of continuing gender stereotypes, 95% of RNs in the US are women, and just 90% of nursing students are women. One may consider such a scenario heavenly for the men, but while hardly oppressed, I faced gender bias too. Little things like, "You're so lucky you don't have to pay for school." "What?" "You know, the waivers given to men to promote non-traditional students." (Also offered to women to go into auto mechanics, for example.) Well that was 100% untrue for me, and I didn't know what the devil those classmates (or even one instructor) were talking about at the time. Local facilities do not demand female supervision for male nurses to work with female patients, but it could be very awkward caring for the young women in OB/GYN and L+D.

It's considered sad to hear a woman say science or technical fields are too hard for her, because listeners consider it a gender issue. It might simply be personal. As a man, I can honestly say that I am not going to be a doctor or nurse manager, because I do not consider myself smart enough, and I lack the drive to work or study that hard.

It seems that humanities are often conceived of as more feminine and less valuable. Why does interest in science make a girl smart but interest in english, for example, not hold the same amount of intellectual worth?

Has anyone else experienced this?

As someone who attended an urban public magnet high school in NYC, majored in a humanities/social science subject in college, and worked in IT, my impression is that an additional factor is the anti-intellectualism of the American culture which privileges "practical" fields over "theoretical" ones. This phenomenon has been a part of American history since its founding as Alexis de Tocqueville found when he published "Democracy In America" in the early 19th century.

Arts, humanities, and social science fields are seen as the least practical by the American public at large as it is not seen as directly applicable to a high paying profession that they view as the most important objective of attending university/college.

It was one reason why few relatives and high school classmates could comprehend my choice to major in history when I ended up working in the IT after graduation. This was even after I cited choosing that major due to my strong intellectual interests in that field.

Moreover, in a world where both private and public sector institutions are demanding more quantification of measures, any field where the rigorous use of math is central is considered "serious" whereas qualitative measures are considered "fuzzy" and thus, not worthy of serious consideration. It is a factor in why rational choice, with its overemphasis on quantitative measures over qualitative measures, has spread from the economics field to other social science fields such as political science and even anthropology....a trend that has greatly disturbed grad school classmates who are in those departments.

I know this is far from a complete answer...but this is what I was able to type up off the top of my head. I hope this contributes a smidgen towards how one person understands the reasons behind the disparagement of the arts, humanities, and social science fields in our society...or many others.

On the "can the word nerd be cool" issue, Sarah Vowel writes well about how intelligent people in the States often feel the need to apologize for being clever, and use self-deprecating humor as a defense against derogatory remarks made by the cool jock kids. Her essay is very funny and dead-on (she contends that Gore might have won by a landslide had he only been able to use the same claiming of 'nerd' tactics). You can read it in A Partly Cloudy Patriot.

Micing,

Oh, of course no one knows what they are doing in labs, that’s exactly what I told the civil girl, haha. I just mean that some people assume you have to know a lot about machines and stuff to study it.

As far as being treated differently, I definitely do get a lot of “Oh, lemme do that, Im a guy� but maybe that is just at my university. At the very least you must get some of the reactions from older people of, “Engineering, isn’t that for boys?� (that is a direct quote)
I just mean that it can be intimidating for some women to enter a field that is overwhelmingly male, especially as there is still plenty of prejudice out there.

:) All you little women need to wake up...i know its hard in your terrified state.
This whole site is a desperate call for "HELP"...The sad truth is that young otherwise normal women who have the misfortune of reading any of this garbage, will be emotionally and mentally lost for a long long time. Especially if they think they can compete with men.I have seen it happen many many times (and i am sure you experience it daily). The reason few think they can compete is relaxation in men(and that has nothing to do with a pitiful feminist movement..heres a clue for those that dare,masonic . Nevertheless, i doubt that any of the women here can comprehend the destruction they cause to that which they have supposedly been taught (brainwashed/indoctrinated)to stand up for,women.
You are all certainly terrified of men, otherwise this need for a "support web site" would not be. I can assure you that men do not run such waste of time websites, trying to comfort each other amongst themselves,whilst spreading notions that any sane individual can clearly see are nonsense.You see that is what being a MAN is all about-self autonomy. Something which you obviously will never have is emotional and mental autonomy (this sheep herd mentality has sealed your fate).I don't like giving to much wisdom to fools, especially women fools, but here is some;The very reason you have this site is by manipulating the very nature of womans fears. Thus you, a mentally sick and emotionally unstable generation of women,try to offer help by taking advantage of womans nature to seek comfort and advice, as vulnerable as she is, as you are.The underlying nature of this paradox, as you will never offer any real help as woman cannot help woman, is the destruction of more naive quite nearly normal women.
The solution,the LORD JESUS CHRIST, submission and obedience is your only happiness.It takes more strength to submit than it does to rebel.I am sure you all are trying to contain your emotion now, and i know it will take a few weeks if not years ever to recover. I am sure we will see it manifest in more self destruction.

yours truly

Mr Emmanuel

P.S i saw an interview of one of you (she wrote a "book" apparently), she was a devious little woman, trying to convince anyone she could that women are not out for sexual gratification on exposing their bodies.(apparently trying to give excuses for female behavior...this woman obviously has complex deep psychological problems)She also stated that all women are feminists, but just don't know it... how sad and mistaken she is.

MruDontfoolAnyone, you forgot "wake up sheeple!".

"I can assure you that men do not run such waste of time websites, trying to comfort each other amongst themselves,whilst spreading notions that any sane individual can clearly see are nonsense."

- I guess someone has never visited an MRA site, huh?

And as for the comment about Jesus, you'll be happy to know that while we've got a nifty little bunch of atheists, agnostics, and theists of various faiths, several of us are proud to declare ourselves both feminists and Christians - although I'm sure our interpretations of the Bible differ greatly from yours.

Here is some truth...for those that dare to accept responsibility and are strong enough to direct their desires to good.

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Feminism/feminism_is_evil.htm
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Womens%20Page/silly_women.htm
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Womens%20Page/women_dont_belong_in_military.htm
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Feminism/feminisms_dead_end.htm
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Abortion%20is%20Murder/abortion_pride.htm

Read the truth and weep, you generation of perverse silly little men(few that support this garbage) and of course women(who think they are men).

yours truly

Emmanuel

"This may not be the appropriate place to bring this up, but something that has always bothered me is the gendered separation of the disciplines and, in turn, the degradation of those then associated with women."

It's more the gendered separation of the disciplines and, in turn, the women associated with those already less respected.

"It seems that humanities are often conceived of as more feminine and less valuable."

If patriarchies considered the humanities more valuable than the sciences then they would consider the humanities more masculine.

"Could it be that the patriarchy don't like women understanding how the structures of society constrain our choices? How those with power claim that their power is natural, and therefore unchallengeable? Oh surely not."

Another good point.

"It's considered sad to hear a woman say science or technical fields are too hard for her, because listeners consider it a gender issue. It might simply be personal."

In my case, I majored in computer science (part of an engineering department at the school) for 2 years before burning out and switching to a humanities major.

"At the very least you must get some of the reactions from older people of, 'Engineering, isn’t that for boys?' (that is a direct quote)"

When I was in a middle school summer program I met a girl who wanted to be an engineer. She told me how she got some reactions of "You want to drive trains?" from other kids at her school.

I'm also reminded of this:

http://www-tech.mit.edu/V117/N30/anders.30c.html

"...A new group, the Extropians, gained considerable renown over the summer after they tried to include their literature in the freshman mailing put out by the Association of Student Activities - and, later, after the secretary of the MIT Corporation decided to extract the submission from the mailing, when they surreptitiously mailed out their pamphlet to freshmen using mailing money out of their own pockets...

"...'Oh, you are going to try to excel at everything. Be totally hard-core, get straight A's� write articles for some newspaper or magazine. You especially can't wait to meet the intense interesting people�' The authors go on to discover, shockingly, that people don't constantly stand around talking about quantum computing and the Mandelbrot set. They also decry fraternities for 'their anti-intellectualism,' not to mention - gasp! - foosball tables.

"People here have lives? The horror. And worse: All this anti-intellectualism is caused by affirmative action. Although the authors admit that 'not all women or all �underrepresented' minorities are unqualified,' they note that women comprise the majority of 'architecture, biology, management, or brain and cognitive sciences, obviously the less rigorous majors.' Proof positive, by Extropian standards.

"But the authors reveal a far better ruler for judging women on campus: 'Ask upperclasswomen, better yet ask a sorority, how often a group of women will sit down on the weekend to discuss what Bell's Theorem and the Aspect Experiment imply for a hidden variables interpretation of quantum mechanics� Such women are so rare here that these scenarios never happen. (What some men would do for intellectual women who are serious about living the exalted life.)

"While I leave the reader to imagine what the real motivation for such sentiments might be, I'm going to suggest it isn't reasoned discourse..."

If there's such a gender gap in the sciences and engineering, why don't more of you go back to college and pick up a degree in engineering?

Jenn- because I'm up to my ears in debt from LAW SCHOOL, thankyouverymuch. I hope there's some level of sarcasm in your comment that I'm missing. You make the decision to go back to college sound as simple as a decision to make a stop at the grocery store on the way home.

I emailed this story to my dad, a chemical engineer who does a lot of interviewing for entry-level positions. He just wrote me back to tell me that roughly half his candidates are female now (also, my dad gets a lot of kudos at work for having one of the most diverse workgroups in the company). So, I agree with what my dad said, that "times are a-changing" (which, I might add, he said very happily).

Even within the Classical track there's not an over-abundance of female instrumentalists. Most girls are in the vocal program, which is, of course, considered to be even easier.

Genny,

The college I attended also had a well-regarded conservatory where there was some ribbing between the college and conservatory students.

The Voice majors, in particular, got the most ribbing....though from my experience, that was more of the college students' reactions to the elitist snobbery most of them experienced at the "Connies'" hands and the stereotype that they cannot compete as well in the college's academic courses.

The first is an experience nearly every college student has encountered at some point so it tends to stick...though it is seriously overblown IME.

The second I've only heard from my classmates as most "Connie" classmates in my college courses were able to hold their own academically. I did tend, however, to look askance at the ones who along with some college students complained about their instructors' accents.

IME, those complaints often exhibited more about their own racism and desire to excuse their own poor academic work habits than an indictment of the instructor's verbal language skills.

I do not understand your weird obsession with organic chemistry. Ugh...

I'm a chemistry major, and at least 80% of the students are girls. I think the problem is, that even though that is the case, you see less and less girls the higher up the education gets. There might be a lot doing their second degrees, but how many are doing post docs?

Certainly there are more boys in physics and math. Sometimes it makes me wish I had studied one of those subjects just because of that reason. But, I can't help it, I love chemistry.

DrkEyedCajn ~

The decision to pursue an engineering degree after years of school is not as simple as a trip to the grocery store. However, it takes more to do, then talk.

Well, Jenn, it's a little late for a career change for me. However, I think I'm still allowed to have an opinion on the underrepresentation of women in math & science, and I don't think there's a super-quick fix. Like most social attitudes, it's going to take a while. If you're asking what I, personally, plan on doing to change it, I answer you that I plan to raise my daughters to not be as terrified of math as I am, an attitude I really didn't pick up until high school. And then I was discouraged from pursuing an engineering degree when I brought it up on my own.

Frankly, I'm offended by your tone. Then again, maybe you're a professor in quantum physics and you really DO want us all to drop what we're doing and get science degrees. Or maybe you're just telling us to shut up. I suspect the latter.