Berkley Center

I was raised by a couple of ex-NASA employees who assumed from a young age that I’d go into mathematics and in a part of the United States known for being progressive and tech-oriented. Now, as a woman studying a historically male-dominated topic in a country with some strong traditional gender roles—I’ve been told I’m the first girl in living memory to have ever taken one of my classes—the issue of gender and hard sciences is something I have to face on a near-daily basis.

The pure sciences (i.e. physics, math, and the theoretical branches of computer science as opposed to agriculture, geology, or physical geography) are not a priority in Ghana. I’m curious, in country with only a small (but growing!) tech industry and little to no scientific funding, which Ghanaians decide to go into math or physics and why. Furthermore, I think that advanced, theoretical, and sometimes highly academic topics generally clash with people’s impression of Africa, even people who have traveled widely or lived on the continent for extended periods. I would like to change that.