Leaving Your Legacy: You Don't Need to Win a Nobel Prize to Inspire the Next Generation

Let's teach our girls it's not about being beautiful! Teach them to be bold. Be authentic. Be strong. Be confident. Be independent and demonstrate their intelligence. Be brave. Be proud. Be real and take ownership of their future!. It is a widely known and highly concerning fact that women remain underrepresented in the science and engineering workforce. This gender imbalance is not as severe as it once was, but wide disparities remain, especially in engineering, computer science, and the physical sciences. The under representation of women in science classes and in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers continues to be a compelling and puzzling issue. Female scientists and engineers are concentrated in different occupations than men, with relatively high rates of women in the social sciences (60%) and in biological, agricultural, and environmental life sciences (48%). Meanwhile, rates of women are relatively low in engineering (15%) and computer and mathematical sciences (26%) [1]. Women make up half of the total U.S. college -educated workforce but only 28% of the science and engineering workforce. It is critically important that girls see STEM as interesting, engaging, and a discipline worth considering when planning for college and beyond. Competence is an important part of intrinsic motivation for females. Girls have been shown to care more than boys about the applications of the science they are learning [6]. Their preference for science in context makes it a good practice to introduce ideas about why a particular area of science is relevant in daily life before getting into complicated, and perhaps difficult, technicalities. Educators must keep science concepts relevant, flexible, and adaptable to ignite curiosity in girls.