Why it persists and why fixing it matters for everyone
By Denise Colin
February 11th was International Day of Girls and Women in Science. That day invites more than celebration. It also invites honesty.
Women have always contributed to scientific discovery. Yet across many scientific fields today, women remain underrepresented, particularly in positions of recognition, leadership, and authority. This gap is not the result of ability or interest. It reflects systemic bias, unequal support, and cultural assumptions about who belongs in science and whose work is taken seriously.
This is not only a women’s issue. It shapes the quality, direction, and integrity of science itself.
When Women’s Contributions Are Disregarded or Erased
Bias in science is not abstract. It has names, stories, and consequences.
Marie Curie is often framed as an exception—a singular genius whose brilliance could not be denied. Yet even she was nearly excluded from recognition. When the Nobel Prize in Physics was first proposed in 1903, her name was omitted despite her central role in the research. She was included only after her husband intervened.
That pattern is not unique.
Rosalind Franklin produced critical data that made understanding the structure of DNA possible. That data was shared without her knowledge, and the Nobel Prize went to her male colleagues. Her contributions were publicly acknowledged only years later.
Lise Meitner co-discovered nuclear fission and provided its theoretical explanation. Her collaborator received the Nobel Prize alone.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars as a graduate student. The Nobel Prize went to her supervisor.
These stories are not about isolated oversights or a bygone era. They reveal a consistent pattern: women’s scientific contributions have been minimized, appropriated, or overlooked. When recognition is shaped by bias, the scientific record itself becomes distorted.
Why Girls Leave Science
Girls do not disengage from science because they lack talent or curiosity. They disengage because of the conditions around them.
From an early age, girls receive different messages about struggle. When boys encounter difficulty in math or science, they are more often encouraged to persist. When girls struggle, that difficulty is more likely to be interpreted as a signal to redirect and try something else.
Support plays a decisive role. Access to tutoring, mentoring, and encouragement to work through challenges influences who stays and who leaves. When that support is uneven, outcomes are uneven.
Unwelcoming or dismissive environments, cultural expectations about gender and aptitude, and subtle cues about who “belongs” in science accumulate over time. Girls make rational decisions based on what they experience and what is reinforced around them.
This is not an ability nor interest gap. It is a support gap.
What’s Missing When Women Are Missing From Science
The consequences of excluding women from science are not theoretical. They show up in everyday life.
For decades, many medications were tested primarily on men. Women’s bodies, with different hormonal patterns, metabolic rates, and physiological responses, were considered to be a complication rather than a priority. The result was predictable: dosages that didn’t work as intended, side effects that went unnoticed, and health risks that could have been avoided through more inclusive research.
The same pattern appears in what science chooses to study. Menopause, experienced by half the population, remains significantly under-researched. Many women encounter vague guidance, limited treatment options, or dismissal of their symptoms. This doesn’t happen because answers are unattainable, but because the questions were never fully pursued.
These gaps are not accidents. They reflect who has historically been at the table deciding what to research and how to go about it.
When women are missing from science, research questions go unasked, entire areas of knowledge remain underdeveloped, and outcomes suffer. The cost is collective.
That cost extends beyond results to perception. The long-standing exclusion of women has shaped how girls understand credibility and authority in science. When women’s contributions are overlooked or their concerns dismissed, girls internalize who science is for and whose knowledge counts.
This Is a Collective Responsibility
Encouraging girls in science is not about fixing girls. It is about changing the conditions around them.
Parents and Grandparents
Parents and grandparents shape some of the earliest messages about learning and struggle.
Normalizing difficulty as part of learning, not a reason to opt out, matters. Offering support rather than redirection matters. Naming science as a real option early and often matters, not only when a girl excels. Paying attention to how we praise effort, curiosity, and problem-solving matters just as much as celebrating outcomes.
The message girls receive is simple and powerful: You belong here, even when it’s hard.
Women
Women influence how girls see science whether or not they work in scientific fields.
Modeling curiosity openly, speaking with confidence about what you know, and interrupting stereotypes when they appear all send signals. Sharing honest stories about challenge and persistence does too. Girls notice how women take up, or hesitate to take up, intellectual space.
Those signals accumulate.
Community
Communities reinforce the conditions that shape participation.
Equitable academic support in schools, access to mentoring and resources, and consistent recognition of women’s contributions all matter. Encouragement must be ongoing and structural, not symbolic or occasional.
Girls don’t decide whether science is “for them” in one moment. They absorb that message over time based on what is supported, modeled, and valued around them.
Moving Forward, Together
Addressing the underrepresentation of women in science is not about ideology. It is about responsibility and about the future we are shaping together.
At Womanspace, we believe that supporting women begins long before adulthood. It begins with girls—helping them recognize their abilities, trust their curiosity, and pursue what inspires them. It begins by creating environments where girls are encouraged to persist, to question, and to imagine themselves as contributors to the world’s knowledge.
When we change the conditions, participation follows. Girls don’t need convincing. They need room to grow.
