"What It’s Like as a ‘Girl’ in the Lab"

"Twenty-first-century science has a great deal in common with the medieval apprentice system. Young scientists, typically graduate students and postdoctoral fellows like me, join the laboratory of an established principal investigator, who is rarely involved in hands-on experimentation, but has near-absolute authority in hiring. Only when this lengthy period of training is complete might a young scientist hope to establish an independent laboratory of her own, but she will always be known as having trained in Dr. So-and-so’s lab.

Unfortunately for young women in science, top male scientists may feel that taking on women as trainees could be more trouble than it’s worth. A 2014 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that on average, male scientists train fewer women than female scientists do. This trend is exaggerated for elite male scientists; their labs are even more biased toward men, but the gender bias is not observed in top labs with female heads."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/18/opinion/what-its-like-as-a-girl-in-the-lab.html

One of my best friends was a lab tech in a huge and prestigious lab at Harvard where all but one of the graduate students and post-docs were male, and she has just ridiculous stories of things people said to her. Like, not even the things she overhead - things people said to her. Because when there aren't a lot of women around, the idea that women aren't real scientists is SO present.