“When I was about 10, I remember, a family acquaintance asked what my favourite subject was and I said ‘math.’ He said girls shouldn’t be interested in math, that English was more like it. I told my parents, who told me to ignore it.”

Seems to me that encouraging women to learn has powerful outcomes.

But wait, there’s more! (Why is it that this topic keeps landing on my radar…?)

Apparently Bush is going to spend $136 billion to “encourage innovation and strengthen the ability of the U.S. to compete in the global economy.” The article Fixing Engineering’s Gender Gap argues that some of those greenbacks should go into encouragaging women into engineering.

“…fewer than 20 percent of engineering graduates are women, according to the National Science Foundation.”

The key issues raised by women in focus groups included:

# Lack of role models.
# Lack of female mentors.
# Discrimination.
# Balancing work and family.
# Perception and self-promotion

Sounds familiar.

[In 1872] women were allowed into lectures, albeit at the discretion of the lecturer. By 1881, women were allowed to sit university examinations, and in 1921 were awarded “titles” as a result, although they would have to wait until 1947 before they were awarded degrees, and 1958 before they achieved equal rights to their male counterparts.

When Emmy Noether applied for a position at Göttingen University, the faculty was afraid that this was the end of things as they knew it.

David Hilbert’s response to the outcry: “I do not see that the sex of the candidate is an argument against her admission. After all, we are a university and not a bathing establishment.”

How is life for women mathematicians in Portugal? I was surprised when I first came to Singapore that (at least among teachers of mathematics) women mathematicians are confident and are seen in a positive way by the society.

This was not the case in Australia, where there were very few female mathematicians and there was a lot more discouragement than enthusiasm for women to take on such a role.