Girls Gone Wild ... About Science

The U.S. Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, in conjunction with The Girl Scouts of America, NASA, Sally Ride Science, and dozens of other organizations hosted the "first-ever national summit on girls and math and science" to discuss the gender gap in math and science. The summit, which took place in mid-May, featured U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings as a key speaker. The disparity in science background contributes to a wage disparity in adulthood, since scientific and technological skills are in such high demand and will continue to be so in our future. Students who have a strong background in these areas tend to go further in school, go into more lucrative fields, and excel at those fields, even if the field itself isn't scientific per se.

The Girl Scouts have also begun a web initiative, Girls Go Tech, which provides some wonderful ways to get girls interested in science at a young age, including online science games and an informational brochure for parents. The Charlotte, N.C., Hornets' Nest Council of the Girl Scouts also has a website, Girls Are I.T., that focuses on providing information on, you guessed it, information technology. I also encourage you to check out Sally Ride Science for extremely useful resources on educating girls in the sciences.

Many of the tips provided on these sites apply to both genders, although they are obviously oriented toward girls.