Feminists

Jane Dammen McAuliffe a scholar of Islamic studies, is the president of Bryn Mawr, a liberal arts college for women.

What's missing from the report in Science magazine is an examination of the larger cultural forces that, in the case of young women, lead many to believe that there are some fields of study that just aren’t for them.

Even after the majority of U.S. colleges and universities have gone coed, women’s colleges continue to prepare an inordinate percentage of their students to succeed in fields traditionally dominated by men.

Cultural forces lead many young women to believe that there are some fields of study that just aren’t for them.

At Bryn Mawr College, our students are six times more likely to graduate with a degree in chemistry than college students nationwide and nine times more likely to do so in math. Indeed, we are second in the nation in the percentage of female students receiving degrees in math, beating out science-oriented coed universities like the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.