The gender disparity and differences in social interaction in the hard sciences is incredibly noticeable. My accomplishments are usually taken with a grain of salt by my male, premed counterparts. There must be SOME reason I'm getting good grades (being a cute girl, flirting my way there, etc), other than that I'm capable. In addition to that, even the guys who have said explicitly that they support more women in the hard sciences seem to hold gender-based biases against women when speaking indirectly about the issue (i.e. attributing not understanding a task/material because of gender). This doesn't particularly bother ME any significant amount, but it makes my heart hurt because the bigger picture is quite clear.
The STEM environment is somewhat antagonistic for girls, starting from a young age and and onto adulthood. We're trained to believe that we're not good at math or science, and that we can't be because we're just built that way.
But we can do it. It makes me so incredibly upset to know that a girl has made the decision to avoid STEM completely due to feeling incapable, unwelcome, and invaluable.
Going to school at a small university in the south, I see this mindset from girls every day. Not even trying in calculus because they couldn't possibly ever succeed in it. Choosing majors based on deep rooted fear of failure in STEM, even if they're interested in it.
Currently, I'm working in an incredible lab with incredible people. I just got a summer research grant. I also just got a scholarship from GSK, a large pharmaceutical company, that pays for all of my tuition for my two remaining years. I also got an award for excellence in Organic Chemistry. All of this happened in the span of 2 weeks. Getting this positive feedback from the faculty and community has been invaluable to me.
This post really isn't about me. I feel like the ultimate goal of this post, and perhaps everything I do in science, is advocating for other girls who were conditioned to believe they can't do it.
Because we totally can. :)