A topic near and dear to my heart.

As a woman in a male-dominated field (software engineering), well, I just have to say I'd personally like to believe there's no cap on my ability to manage science and math =)

As far back as I can remember, my mother was telling me that I could do anything I wanted, even be president of the United States (hah, like I'd want that job!). She had/has some mixed feelings about where that took me. I didn't just excel in academics; I've played all sorts of rough "boy" sports, from paintball and ice hockey to padded swords and, well, mountain biking.

For years, whenever I start working with a new team, she has asked how many women are in the group. I always thought she was worried about me. Turns out, she's actually super-proud of me doing so well in a male environment. Who knew? =)

I do have a fond memory of some boy in my high school physics class crowing about how boys are better than girls at math. "Really?" I asked. "What'd you get on your math SATs?" "Uhhh," he stammered, "I didn't mean *you*!" Somehow, though, I never thought of myself as good at math, even when I p*ssed my entire geometry class off by throwing the curve on the mid term.

My one really bad experience with a teacher didn't come till college, when I went to my Diff Eq prof's office hours to ask for help on how to study the material. He found out I was a Comp Sci major and rattled off all the courses I would supposedly be bad at, based on his belief that I was bad at math and logic and all of the teachers that had come before and from whom I'd gotten good grades just weren't any good (No, you pompous piece of dirt, you're just a crappy teacher). I took great satisfaction in acing classes he claimed would be hard for me, like Finite Automata, one of my favorite classes.

Ahem.

I can't speak for other women in male-dominated fields, but I am definitely strong in verbal as well as technical areas, which is a huge help for my team. Having both sides means that I can explain difficult technical processes in terms that a non-technical audience can understand, or at least feel comfortable with.

It makes me happy to see research results that appear to support the idea that at least a large portion of the gender disparity in math and science is nurture, not nature. Not surprising to me, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.