Most people, when asked to picture a genius, picture a man. Why is that? Not because there haven't been brilliant women, but because their talents have not been encouraged (or have been actively squashed) or recognized or nurtured in the way that men's have. If genius is "where extraordinary ability meets celebrity," women have historically been lacking the celebrity part of the equation. Yet here, Kaplan finds many genius women, both contemporary and historical.

See also: A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, Shrill by Lindy West, How to Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran ("Nearly everything so far [in history] has been the creation of men....Pretending that women have had a pop at all this before but just ultimately didn't do as well as the men...gives strength to the belief that women simply aren't as good as men, full stop....Women are over, without having even begun. When the truth is that we haven't begun AT ALL. Of course we haven't. We'll know it when we have.")

Quotes

Nobody dreams of mentioning gender when great work is done by a man....It's...difficult for most of us to realize that we live in a world where men's judgments and perspectives are the very air we breathe. (5)

"Genius...[is] where extraordinary ability meets celebrity....Women have historically had only half the equation - the ability but not the celebrity. Their talent went unnoticed." -Charles Jones (18-19)

[Confirmation bias] Research shows that when you already have an opinion about something, you look for the facts and information that will support it. (22)

Looking back over the centuries, it's rather shocking to realize just how little has been done to nurture talented women in any field and give them the chances that they deserve. (35)

"I feel confident about what I'm able to do, and I think I should be here doing it." -Jo Dunkley at Princeton (52)

Guerrilla Girls: without the vision of women artists, "you're seeing less than half the picture." When you ignore the work and voice of women, you're not giving a fair view of the culture at all. You're just telling the story of who is in power. (69)

We rarely use just our own eyes to evaluate a piece of art. We reply on what critics have said and the celebrity of the artist. (75)

"You don't know what you can be until you see it." -Mayim Bialik (90)

We all like to think that we are in control of our choices, so it's unsettling to realize just how much of what we do is influenced by cultural expectations. (90-91)

Our belief systems are powerful enough to change our physical functions [the placebo effect]. They are also powerful enough to change what we can achieve. (93)

FAB: Field-specific ability beliefs (96)

Could it be that once a field has more women, it's less valued and not considered as an area that requires true genius? (96)

"You can make up a story to explain anything - but it doesn't mean it's right." -Lise Eliot (108)

"When you divide people ['hello, boys and girls'], you announce that you have different expectations for them - and that's just wrong." -Lise Eliot (111)

Genius women...don't necessarily fight the stereotypes so much as ignore them. (119)

Forget writing women OUT of history; a lot of men didn't want to write them IN. (142)

"What I think we need to make clear to women is that you're already getting special treatment...It's called special negative treatment and the men are getting special positive treatment. You have to correct for that - otherwise you're dipping lower in the talent pool to get these less-qualified white men." -Meg Urry (143)

But the downside of forecasts or predictions or gender expectations is that we assert a subtle and unconscious force to make them turn out true. (157)

Power means "the ability to be effective, to make a difference in the world, and the right to be taken seriously." -Mary Beard (207)

Orthogonal dimensions (not related, e.g. smart and pretty), "Making a girl give up a way of being in the world that is itself rewarded is one more way we oppress women." -Sarah-Jane Leslie, Princeton (222)

Our identity and sense of confidence get tied into how we look....Women fall into a pattern of..."self-objectification," which means we are always looking at ourselves as we think outsiders would. (225)

The excessive emphasis on appearance makes it harder to focus on anything else that they achieve. (228)

Being too much of a stickler for conventional recognition tamps out any intellectual risk taking. (233)

"The biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white men....The narrative has been that women and minorities take the spots that white men deserve...but the truth is the opposite." -Carol Anderson (245)

Success is "the rewards we earn from the communities we belong to" -Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (265)

If we want to recognize the genius of women, first we have to recognize that women actually exist. Traditions that undermine women [e.g. "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith"] need to be abandoned. (288)

...controlling what women wear or do with their bodies is demeaning, and whatever other excuses are given, it is ultimately an effort to constrain and undercut their talent, potential, and power. (289) ( )