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For a long time, women have struggled to gain complete acceptance in the mathematics field. The purpose of this paper is to explore the history of women in the field of mathematics, the impact and experiences of current female mathematicians, and the common trends for women in the mathematics field, through literature review and personal interviews. This paper looks at the lives of four famous female mathematicians, as well as female mathematicians in the Claremont Colleges who were interviewed for this paper. Specifically this paper examines the discrimination they faced and how they overcame this discrimination, as well as the contributions they have made to the mathematics field. In addition, studies about the effects of gender on mathematics achievement were explored. This paper tries to bring the conclusions of these studies together to present arguments from different perspectives. It also recognizes trends and changes in favor of women in the mathematics field in recent years. In spite of the contributions made by women and the improvements that have come about for women in the field, including the increased number of doctoral recipients, women still face challenges in gaining complete acceptance. Continued change can occur through mentoring and encouraging young women to pursue careers in the mathematics field.

A gender gap in mathematics achievement persists in some nations but not in others. In light of the underrepresentation of women in careers in science, technology, mathematics, and engineering, increasing research attention is being devoted to understanding gender differences in mathematics achievement, attitudes, and affect. The gender stratification hypothesis maintains that such gender differences are closely related to cultural variations in opportunity structures for girls and women. Authors meta-analyzed 2 major international data sets, the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the Programme for International Student Assessment, representing 493,495 students 14 –16 years of age, to estimate the magnitude of gender differences in mathematics achievement, attitudes, and affect across 69 nations throughout the world.

‘Gendered Innovations’ is defined as the process that integrates sex and gender analysis into all phases of basic and applied research to assure excellence and quality in outcomes. Gendered Innovations enhance excellence in science, medicine, and engineering both in terms of knowledge and personnel; they lead to gender-responsible science and technology, and seek to enhance the lives of women and men globally. This paper presents three approaches to gender equality taken by policy makers, institutional administrators, and scientists and engineers over the past three decades. These approaches include: 1) fixing the numbers of women in science, medicine, and engineering; 2) fixing research institutions by removing barriers and transforming structures; 3) fixing knowledge by incorporating gender analysis into basic and applied research. This paper treats each of these approaches but focuses on the third approach — ‘Gendered Innovations’ — by presenting concrete examples of how gender analysis has enhanced scientific knowledge and technology design. Realizing the full potential of gendered innovations in the next decade will require deep interdisciplinary collaborations between gender experts, natural scientists, and engineers.

Data on women in mathematical research in Europe was last collected in 1993 by the Women in Mathematics Committee of the European Mathematical Society. This illustrated a perhaps surprising distribution of the proportions of women in mathematical research across the EU, with considerable differences between different regions. In particular, southern countries, such as Italy, Portugal and Spain, had a much higher proportion of women in mathematics than northern countries such as Germany and Sweden. In 2005, funding from the UK Royal Society Athena Awards enabled authors to repeat this data collection exercise. They used a variety of sources for data collection, including European Women in Mathematics regional coordinators, national statistics agencies and the internet. Their aim was to collect data to compare with the 1993 study, but they also collected further data from countries not included in the original study and tried to obtain more detailed information about career grading than had been possible in 1993.