For this author, it wasn't the creativity, but how social the field that motivated this author. From the article: SOCIAL VALUE "This added a social element t

For this author, it wasn't the creativity, but how social the field that motivated this author. From the article: SOCIAL VALUE "This added a social element to maths that I really enjoyed. Most of these kids then moved to other schools, and particularly to the local school that opened a class for bright kids. But I sure as shit wasn’t leaving my friends!" "But to be good at maths was to be in solitude – or elitist and removed from friends." "In high school I sat an IQ test and got accelerated in mathematics and in science. It was social suicide, but luckily I fell in with some amazing women in the year above me and always sat at the back of the class which eventually leant me to (almost) social acceptance across both grades." "It was my secret shame – hanging out with the most beautifully intelligent (yet socially inept) kids of the school did not bode well on my social resume." "So: after so much discouragement, social outcasting and lack of appeal to my introverted self, my pre-tertiary education beat the passion out my left brain entirely." "Socially, the path to becoming a female tech pioneer from here on out could be a struggle for me personally." "it was painful to be good at something, love it, but to then be punished for it in the schoolyard. I’m a social butterfly, dammit!" CREATIVITY The only time she says non-math was creative was, "My English classes were creative: my maths classes were often silent." But if you read on, it was still because creativity was social. "People talking at me, rather than nutting things out with the person next to me, drove me crazy in my maths classes." Nevertheless, the author found self-creativity in computing: "I had a male teacher give me a near-fail (pass minus I think it was called) when I built my first HTML site. He said I didn’t take the project seriously, and I said I wanted to be creative about it because it wasn’t challenging and technically I did nothing wrong – the code was perfect. If you didn’t want it fluro pink and with unicorns, then you should have said so. These days I would say “Write a better brief, dude.”" FURTHER CONSIDERATION It's reaching to extrapolate one person's life to the whole population. Nevertheless, while there are numerous theories of why gender differences persist in STEM, education, etc., I personally am convinced significant statistical improvement in the gender balance in STEM could be made by emphasizing the social value of STEM fields. If you are interested, others have claimed the social quality to be the dominating factor in the female participation across all undergraduate degrees. For instance: “Research has shown that women tend to gravitate towards fields of studies and career paths where they can have a positive social impact and work with others, often collaboratively,” says Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW). “This is why you see so many women in the fields of health care and education. When women do gravitate toward the sciences, it is usually the life sciences.” Source (with interesting statistics of top 10 degrees by gender as well): http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/02/top-10-college-majors-women-forbes-woman-leadership-education.html http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/02/top-10-college-majors-women...