It's perhaps no coincidence that Dr. Kathryn D. Sullivan, a self-described "chubby, smart tomboy," became America's first woman to walk in space.

Maverick resolve and boundless curiosity have coaxed her to the edge and back since sixth grade – a light bulb year that delivered her first taste of high-IQ backlash.

"Up until that point, it was, 'Oh, oh, oh! I know that!' I was eager to have the answer. It was fun – quiz-show fun – to answer the question," Sullivan, 53, says. "And I vividly remember the moment where I shot my hand up, 'I know that! I know that!' then realizing, in my peripheral vision, it wasn't supportive, eager smiles from other kids I was seeing around the classroom. It was a sneer. The 'Oh, isn't she so smart' kind of sneer."

Through four decades, three shuttle flights and some 532 hours in space, the former NASA astronaut and chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hasn't forgotten the childhood sting.

"I remember just sort of viscerally realizing, 'Oh, it really is not such a great thing, standing out here on the edge of this limb, taking darts and spears, visually at least, from these kids,'" says Sullivan, president and CEO of the nationally recognized Center of Science & Industry (COSI), which specializes in hands-on learning for kids.

"For some magical reason, I had enough moxie or composure or confidence that my reaction was, 'Well, OK. I don't have to throw my hand up in the air and answer out loud. I'll just answer it to myself,” she says. “So I could play the outside game, but it didn't really wilt my interior – my internal learning spirit."

Advocating Education
A lifelong education advocate who's steered Columbus, Ohio-based COSI through its largest period of growth, including a new, state-of-the-art, Toledo facility, Sullivan joined former Challenger mate Dr. Sally K. Ride, America's first woman in space, when the well-traveled Sally Ride Science Festival touched down in Dayton.

A recently launched offshoot of the popular Sally Ride Science Club, the festival’s mobile mission is to support young girls in their exploration of science, math and technology through hands-on learning, connecting them to female scientists, scientific content and a nationwide network of common-ground peers.

"Our aspirations are not small," Ride, 53, says, speaking by phone from the University of California, San Diego, where she teaches physics. "We're really trying to change the climate around girls in math, science and technology. We want to try to change people's perceptions of the 11-year-old girl who says she wants to be an electrical engineer or a microbiologist or a computer scientist. And by changing that environment, make sure that she gets the same reaction from her friends, her peers, her parents and her teachers as a boy that same age would get if he said the same thing."

According to Imaginary Lines Inc., which Ride founded, although eight of the 10 fastest-growing occupations are science or technology related, women comprise just 19 percent of the technical work force. Similarly, while roughly the same numbers of elementary school girls and boys are interested in math and science, by middle school, more girls than boys begin to disengage from those subjects.

Encouraging Girls to Excel
The U.S. Department of Education finds that boys and girls have similar mathematics and science proficiency test scores at age 9, but a gender gap surfaces by age 13.

"In elementary school, there really isn't a difference in the level of interest or aptitudes of boys and girls. But in middle school, there are lots of social pressures – some subtle, some not so subtle," Ride says. "If, within a peer group, a girl doesn't feel it's cool to say she's interested in math and science, she's less likely to pursue those interests. If the boy down the block doesn't think that it's cool for a girl to be the best one in the math class, there are some number of girls who will just not admit that they know the answers when maybe they do."

National studies also report a divide in boys' and girls' career aspirations. In science or engineering, the discrepancy emerges as early as eighth grade, with boys more than twice as likely to aspire to become scientists or engineers. The gap widens as females climb educational and career ladders, leading to lower pay and significant lack of representation, even though women comprise nearly half the labor market.

"Not all girls see it,” says Ride, who rocketed to fame June 18, 1983 aboard Challenger flight STS-7. “Not all girls pay attention to it. But it really does affect a significant number of girls, especially in middle school. There are also, still, some lingering stereotypes out there. Girls who are 13 years old don't really think about engineers as female – yet. They tend to hear the word 'engineer' and associate it with, you know, some 50-year-old with a pocket protector: 'White Male Geek.' That's just not an attractive stereotype for a young girl."

What factors are at work? Plenty. They include:

• Girls' less assertive classroom demeanor
• Boys' more demonstrative classroom behavior
• Subtle, stereotypical cues from well-meaning but unaware teachers
• Parents whose careless words and labels broadcast the message that male-dominated fields aren't socially acceptable frontiers

"Girls tend to really need to know they're OK and can be great at something," Sullivan says. "If they get jostled or elbowed too hard, their tendency is not to lean into your nose and punch in your face; it's to back out. At the same time, guys are getting more and more of the signals – through sports, family, countless things – to step up and be counted. Step up and go forward. Grab something. Build something. Take something. Shape something.

"Watch teachers and parents with an exuberant young boy and a frenetic young girl sometime," she says. "There's this bubble of acceptance that he's a boy. He has to bounce off the end of his leash. It's OK. He's supposed to make noise. The girl's told to be quiet and sit down and settle. He's allowed to be a nuisance because he's expected to go out and conquer the world. You're not supposed to be a nuisance."

Ride agrees. "If teachers, for example, just take the time to monitor their own responses in a classroom, they may be surprised at what they find," she says. "I've had lots of women come up to me and say, 'My gosh! I absolutely couldn't believe it, but when I watched myself, yeah, I was doing it.'"

Sullivan recalls a friend, now a Ph.D. college researcher, whose freshman class at MIT was evenly split – 50-50, male-female. That same class at graduation? Just 10 percent female.

"They did this little investigation within their peer group [and found that] just one harsh, critical comment from a professor on a project or in a lab – something B-grade, something less than perfect – they took as a signal: 'Well, you know. You probably can't really be good enough at this, anyway. Yeah, that's right. You shouldn't be here. You should change,'" Sullivan says. "It's as if they felt like impostors. They'd gotten there through 'luck' or 'happenstance' or other things. They didn't think they really deserved it.

"Do that to a guy and it's, 'You're not running me out of here! I'm doing this,'” she says. “It's a complete opposite reaction."

Researchers describe such a mass exodus as the Impostor Effect. "Women who reach unusual and advanced places, there's still that deep, deep core conditioning that leads even them to presume, when questioned or criticized, that there must be some validity in that challenge or criticism,” says Sullivan. “It can't be that you're absolutely, positively deserving and properly there and this is bull****. You've been 'discovered' and you'd better bail."

Parents Can Empower
Ride believes the seeds of inadequacy are planted early. Unintentional or not.

"Teachers with even the very, very best of intentions can go into a mixed-gender class and, without realizing it, encourage the boys more than the girls," says Ride, a recent U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame inductee (the first woman so honored) whose historic flight "broke perhaps the world's highest glass ceiling," according to former mission commander Robert Crippen.

"Boys, especially in middle school years, they're right out there,” says Ride. “Their hands are waving. They want to answer the question whether they know the answer or not. Girls have quite a different response and generally will not raise their hands if they've got any doubt."

The U.S. Department of Education reports that among high school students who don't take math or science their senior year, women are more likely than men to say they did so either because others advised them they didn't need those courses or because they disliked the subject matter.

"A good teacher can give a student a real boost,” Ride says. “A negative teacher, a teacher who gives a student a negative experience, can knock them out of that subject forever. To me, the most damage that a poor teacher or parent can do is suggesting to, let's say, a girl, that science is not for her, or that it's 'OK' not to be good in math."

Sullivan agrees. "We know some things about the kinds of games kids play on themselves when they're in middle school,” she says. “Show alertness to that. If you single out a girl to give an answer or to lead something and you get crap and garbage and sneers from the boys, don't tolerate that."

The solution? Gender-blind parenting via conscious, daily self-monitoring.

"I think the most important role [my parents] played, besides being great role models, was in encouraging me to do what I wanted to do, and encouraging me to pursue what I wanted to pursue as far as I could," Ride says. "They were always saying, 'OK, now what do you want to do next?'"

"The one core element that Sally and I share is identical," Sullivan adds. "It was absolutely, always, completely, unambiguously clear to me that if I was interested, it was always valid. It was always fair. There's not some list of 'You can't be interested in this.' If someone else claims you shouldn't be interested in that, that's wrong. They don't get to tell you that."

Girls as Leaders
Sullivan suggests regularly rotating household chores or classroom leadership duties, addressing any stereotypical behaviors head-on and sending appropriate signals that expertise, inclination and opportunity are not about ego, decibels or gender.

"Tell them, 'I've assigned Mary to lead, and here's the real lesson of teamwork,'" she says. "'If she's a real leader this will be natural and easy and fast. If she's learning to lead, this is what that's about, too, and you guys are going to learn to follow. Both lessons [are valuable]."

Ride’s and Sullivan’s straight-up advice to young girls isolated by outside-the-box interests? View life through a wide-angle lens.

"Look around, because there are a lot of women now who have successfully pursued nontraditional careers and who love it," Ride says. "They're becoming more and more visible, and you can find them in just about any age range. Look around, because there's a little bit of security in numbers."

"Recognize that the people who are hanging around and bugging and bothering you or taunting you or challenging you as to whether you fit well enough, the answer may well be, you don't fit perfectly there," Sullivan says. "And the reason is because someday you're going to know, as I do now, Neil Armstrong. You're going to know Sally Ride. You're going to know people who've walked on the moon. You're going to know people who have built and designed airplanes. You're going to know people who've explored the bottom of the ocean. This is not the end-group of friends in your life."

Want to see more?

• Advocating for the Arts: Building Morale, Attendance and Educational Skills With the Arts
• Encouraging Genius: What's Best for the Gifted Child?
• Homeschooling the Gifted Child: A Gift of Time and Experience
• Talk about it!