I've known that I wanted to pursue a career in a STEM field since I was a kid. When I was in third grade, I wanted to be an engineer. That shifted and evolved with time, eventually resulting in me pursuing a degree in mathematics. I've always loved math—it's been a constant in my life for as long as I can remember, but it's always been a bit hard for me to find other girls who love math as much as I do.
In earlier years when math was a required course, the girl to guy ratio in my STEM classes was about 1:1. I remember the first year I noticed seeing significantly more boys in my math class than girls—Honors precalculus in my junior year of high school. I remember looking around the room and seeing one girl for about every three boys. The ratio in my math class was still higher than the one in my physics class—I still remember less than a third of my AP Physics 1 class being female, and less than a fifth of my AP Physics C class was female.
Don't get me wrong, I love the guys I knew in high school. They were smart, supportive, and good friends to me throughout all of my classes, but it's still a bit disheartening to see the casual way that my female friends and I got written off in those tough classes for no reason other than the fact that we did not seem to be as qualified as our male counterparts. One of my friend's sisters recently posted about her experience as a woman in computer science, and one trend seems to be hauntingly consistent—the males around us don't (usually) actively try to put us down for pursuing STEM, but the concept of male superiority in these fields is so ingrained in their mindset that it doesn't even occur to them that they are not consciously taking us seriously for our work and aspirations.
Knowing that just about every other girl in STEM is going to face very similar experiences to my own in their pursuit of knowledge has made me go extremely out of my way to help any of them get one step closer to achieving their dreams. I've realized how important groups like AWM (Association of Women in Mathematics) and WCS (Women in Computer Science) for giving girls a community and a support system of women who know exactly what they're going through.
To any girl out there who feels discouraged or alone—you have a community, you have a support system, and you can accomplish whatever you want to accomplish in this world.
