Geek Girls Gone Mild

Even when your natural inclination is to be a geek loud and proud, if you're like most women entering the workforce, you'd be apt to suppress it and go for more "gender appropriate" jobs than computer scientist, mathematician, or coroner.

According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, only 17 percent of high school girls take advanced-placement tests in computer science. That is the lowest level of females among all such exams. With the advent of easy-access technology, surprisingly the numbers have been dropping. In 2008, women earned only 18 percent of computer science degrees, compared to 37 percent in 1985.