Question: do wew need more women scientists?

Hussain Jaffery answered on 18 Nov 2015:

I agree with Robert. We need more women in certain fields, compared to others. These fields include physics, chemistry and computer sciences. The reason for this is probably cultural biases. We as a society used to tell boys and girls they could only do certain things, whether directly or indirectly. Even today the problem persists; you’ll find that the media (TV, magazines) adverts centre differently to boys and girls. Countering gender bias and promoting gender equality is a challenge for our modern society.

The number of women doing science at the start of the 20th century was relatively low, though there were women who achieved great feats (e.g. Marie Curie, Ada Lovelace, Grace Hooper – do Google each one of these amazing gals). Numbers of women in computer science increased in the middle of the century, especially between the 60s-70s, but declined in the physical/computer sciences in the 80s – when Hollywood movies and media showed only boys messing around with computers in their garages. Numbers of women in the other sciences, however has seen constant and healthy increase, but still room for more!

The way men and women see their role in society should ideally have no difference. Women and men should see each other as equals and not let gender get in the way of what they do.