http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/magazine/why-are-there-still-so-few-women-in-science.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&hp
I was not good at math, but my high school chemistry teacher made the labs very interesting to me. There were 3 women in my college chemistry class (not my section - the whole graduating class). During the Vietnam war, Emerson Electric told me they did not hire women for the lab jobs. The next summer, I did manage a job, but the men often came and took over pulling spot wells on the big machine to check the welds.
I applied to graduate school at Washington University, I left the interview feeling like I would be locked in a lab for five years and let out when I graduated. When I applied to Indiana University, the faculty talked me into a Masters in Arts of Teaching program. I did manage to put that right after a semester, but still only took a M.S. in chemistry because the only other women I knew in the program (and IU runs a BIG graduate program) were not in the Ph.D. program. Serendipitously, I landed at Vanderbilt and finally braved the rigors of the doctoral program. Even there, a professor told me to go home and have babies when I met him in the lunch line. While I was in academia, I was the only woman in the chemistry department, and only one woman was a full professor in the A&S school.
So if you have a girl in the family, buy her a Danica McKellar math book if appropriate, and search for role models and a mentor. For the most part, and don't we all say that about our jobs, I have had a wonderful journey living better with chemistry, and I wish that on the girls growing up.
