4. Introduce your girls in STEM to math’s female masters.

Girls in STEMThe tide is shifting for girls in STEM as the enthusiasm and strides made by women in math are becoming greater, but a long road still lies ahead. Introduce students to some of math’s great female minds, such as Ada Lovelace. The daughter of Lord and Lady Byron, Lovelace was a mathematician who is now considered to be the first programmer, as her notes and articles provided insight regarding machines that eventually became modern computers.

Modern female mathematicians are providing a lot of inspiration for girls in STEM – they simply need educators to promote their work in the classroom. In 2014, the inaugural AWM-Microsoft Research Prize in Algebra and Number Theory was awarded to Sophie Morel, a Princeton University mathematics professor, for her approach to the Langlands program. During the same year, Stanford University professor Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman to win the coveted Fields Medal in Mathematics, awarded by the International Mathematical Union (IMU), which, at the time, was headed by the organization’s first female president, Ingrid Daubechies.