Jane stood at the board between Tommy and her best friend, Doris. As the teacher pronounced each word, they wrote it on the board, after which the teacher spelled the words and they checked their own work. Doris had missed two already, and then Tommy misspelled a word. Doris and Tommy exchanged supportive glances and gestures. Jane noticed that because she hadn’t missed any, they were excluding her. After four more words, Doris missed the next one. Again Doris and Tommy smiled at each other with obvious comradery. Jane felt really uncomfortable. She like Doris and Tommy; why did they have to act like that? There were only two words left on the test when Jane decided that they would like her better is she missed some words, too. When Tommy noticed her next word was wrong, he grinned at her encouragingly. She felt much better. Both Tommy and Doris looked sympathetically at Jane. When the teacher took the “good students” for a special treat while the rest of the class had to write correctly the words they had missed 100 times, Jane wanted to go, too. After all, she knew those words.

After everyone left, Tommy and Doris began talking to her. She thought a moment about the treat and wondered what it was, but as she looked again at her friends happily chatting with her included, she thought it was really worth it.

Rank Job median weekly Earnings of Both Sexes

Percent Female

Chief executives $1, 903 23.4

Engineers $1,458 12.1

Aircraft pilots/flight engineers $1, 390 2.6

First line supervisors/managers of fire fighting and preventing workers

$1, 327 8.7

Locomotive engineers and operators $1,223 2.8

Computer Programmers $1, 218 22.4

First line supervisors/managers of police and detectives

$1,200 14.7

Network systems and data communications analysts

$1,130 23.7

Architects, except naval $1,128 24.8

Rank Job median weekly Earnings of Both Sexes

Percent Female

Railroad conductors and yardmasters $1,067 4.7

Cost estimators $1,055 10

Detectives and criminal investigators $1,053 19.2

Broadcast and sound engineering technicians and radio operators

$972 16.1

Fire fighters $970 4.8

Chiropractors $962 15.3

Power plant operators, distributors, and dispatchers

$960 9.2

First line supervisors/mangers of construction and extraction workers

$947 2.7

First line supervisors/ managers of mechanics, installers and repairers

$937 8

Crane and tower operators $925 3.7

Aircraft mechanics and service technicians

$919 1.7

1. Sexism/discrimination/sexual harassment2. Dealing with males who are intimidated by

intelligent girls and wont date girls they perceive as smarter than they are

3. High expectations

“Young women with above-average intelligence are told that men feel threatened by them; thus, we should hide our brains or we’ll never get married” *Girl, 14

Highly intelligent girls are often not encouraged and are viewed as ‘weird.’ Other girls feel threatened by them, as do boys, which severely stunts dating relationships and even normal friendships” *Sarah, 15

Galbraith and Delisle, 1996

Highly gifted girls often do not receive recognition for their achievements

Gifted girls take less rigorous courses than gifted boys in high school

Gifted girls’ IQ scores drop during adolescence, perhaps as girls begin to perceive that giftedness in females in undesirable

Gifted girls are likely to continue to have higher academic achievement than boys, as measured by grade point average

Highly gifted girls attend less prestigious colleges than highly gifted boys, a choice that leads to lower status careers

Gifted girls fear having to choose between career and marriage, yet this “either/or” dilemma is not in fact a reality for many gifted women

Gifted girls maintain a high involvement in extracurricular and social activities during adolescence

The Gifted Kids’ Survival Guide,1996

The Past turns into the Future…1981-26.7% of faculty positions were women by 2000 it had only risen to 37.5%

2005-National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) reported avg. salary for men professors was $91,102, women professors $81,719

1/3 women 25-29 have college degrees w/ 44% doctoral compared to ¼ men of the same age group

2005 women earned 1/3 of all science and engineering doctorates but only occupy 15% of science and engineering faculty positions at the top 50 research universities (National Science Foundation) and only 23% of science and engineering jobs.

Women earn 29% of B.S. in science and engineering, but only 18% of all scientists and engineers employed are women.

Women account for less than 10% of the physicists and engineers

More women today work in managerial and profession careers, however they are not prepared to move into the “better paying, higher status, fastest growing occupations. National census shows women still choose traditionally female careers i.e. teaching and nursing

Clark, 2008

AT HOME:

*Girl babies have different experience from boy babies (sounds, colors, toys, etc.)*Girls are taught to be passive, accepting, and nurturing*Expected to enjoy quieter games and activities and not take risks*Mothers encourage daughters to stay close

AT SCHOOL:

*Preschool teachers reinforce the same types of behavior noted in the home*Boys are called on more than girls, boys are encouraged/allowed to call out answers*Detailed and precise feedback, praise, criticism, and remediation greet the participation of boys, girls seldom experience such behaviors *Girls learn to conceal talents by imitating the behavior of children with home they are placed*Boys actually learn more than girls because teachers explain how things work and encourage them to try out toys/materials *By 6th grade girls become more concerned with popularity than being perceived as independent/competent *In HS girls take fewer demanding math/science courses

IN SOCIETY:

*Women get higher test-anxiety scores than men, most likely due to the idea that motivation to achieve directly contradicts the role expectation of femininity*Gifted women believe they must excel in every role they play and must play every role assigned *Perfection complex leads women to set impossible goals and to continually strive to achieve at ever-higher levels *Society helps to establish mixed expectations—women should be supportive, nurturing, but are also expect to assertively develop their own talent.*Girls are rewarded by teachers/parents for good grade but society sends messages that intellectual pursuits are unfeminine

The fell in love with ideas They had time alone They spent unusual amount of time gaining information and

experiences through reading They felt different or special, in positive and negative ways They received individualized instruction as children The often educated in a same-sex environment They often experience an awkward and socially difficult adolescent They seem capable of connectedness in relationships without giving

up personal identities and goals They assume equality with men, even in the face of resistance Most has mentors who nurtured their talents and provided access to

professional involvement They chose to integrate many roles and tasks into their lives and

sought to excel at all of them They refused to acknowledge limitations of gender

Identify them early-best age to evaluate/identify gifted girls is between 3 ½ and 7

Provide special programs that stimulate/challenge them Encourage them to take high math/science classes Use multiple measures of ability and achievement Encourage them to take credit for their successes and

recognize their own talents Provide material to compensate for lack of inclusion of

women’s accomplishments in literature or textbooks Foster friendships with gifted peers who share similar

interests Avoid sex-role stereotyping Encourage independence and risk-taking Avoid different expectations for girls than for boys

Delisle and Galbraith, When Gifted Kids Don’t Have All the Answers, 2002

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~dougproj/ *Douglas project for Rutgers women in math, science, and engineering http://girlstech.douglass.rutgers.edu/

  http://www.engineeryourlife.org/ *A guide to engineering for high school girls

http://etf.terc.edu/index.html * Eyes to the Future, Middle School Girls Envisioning Science and Technology in High School and Beyond

http://www.gemsclub.org/index.html * The GEMS Club: Girls Excelling in Math and Science

http://www.girlstart.com/index.asp *Math, Science, and Games, and More for Girls Only

http://www.girlswithwings.com/index.html *Girls with Wings-Women in Aviation Role Models for Girls

http://www.iwaswondering.org/index2.html *Women’s Adventures in Science

http://www.mathcats.com/ *Math Cats—fun math for kids

Clark, B. (2008). Growing up gifted (7th ed.) New York: Prentice Hall

Delisile, J., & Galbraith, J. (2002). When gifted kids don’t have all the answers: How to meet their social and emotional needs. Minneapolis, MS: Free Spirit

Galbraith, J., & Delisile, J. (1996). The gifted kids’ survival guide: A teen handbook. Minneapolis, MS: Free Spirit

Goudreau, J. (2010). Best-paying jobs that women aren’t in. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/17/best-paying-jobs-women-forbes-woman-leadership-career.html