Why It’s Crucial to Get More Women Into Science

James Gross, a psychology professor at Stanford University, has a 13-year-old daughter who loves math and science. It hasn’t occurred to her yet that that’s unusual, he says. “But I know in the next couple of years, it will.”

She’s already being pulled out of class to do advanced things “with a couple of other kids, who are guys,” he says. And as someone who studies human emotion for a profession, Gross says, “I know as time goes on, she’ll feel increasingly lonely as a girl who’s interested in math and science”—and be at risk of narrowing her choices in life before finding out how far she could have gone.

Gross’s concern speaks volumes about what has been a touchy subject in the world of science for a long time: Why are there still so few women in science, and how might that affect what we learn from research?