Women's Science

Offering a dramatic counterpoint to the findings that from elementary school through to college, women's interest in science steadily declines, and that "real science" only occurs in research and laboratory investigation, this text describes women engaged with science or engineering at the margins. In an innovative high school genetics class, a school-to-work internship for prospective engineers, an environmental action group and a nonprofit conservation agency, the authors found a high proportion of women who were successful at learning and using technical knowledge, and advancing in equal percentages to men. This text explores how women still had to pay a price, working outside traditional laboratories, receiving less financial compensation and little public prestige, unless they acted like male professionals.