I am sorry, but as a happy female graduate of what is quite possibly the least 'feminine' major (metallurgical engineering) I couldn't disagree with you more.
You seem to be purportaing the very issue you are trying to avoid. Sure, I had professors who mumbled complicated concepts into their beards and professors whose language could not necessarily be classified as English, but my white and Asian male classmates could not understand them any better than I could.
You cannot hinge on your love for science in high school and blame the school for not making it touchy-feely enough for you to succeed in STEM majors. Sure I had classes I couldn't hack in university, but I came to terms with the fact that it was a limit of my ability and did not blame it on a professor or the way the subject was taught.
Yes, I believe that we do need more women in STEM majors, but it can only be achieved by encouraging women to stick with it and persist, alongside her white and Asian male peers, not by making excuses for her shortcomings, bailing out and then appealing to the university to make STEM major lectures into vagina monologues.
I am sure that your mother can confirm that her college career was not a walk in a park and she is actually in the discinpline that nowadays has the highest number of women.
STEM majors are like the plains of the Serengeti. It's the survival of the fittest. And those of us that survived wouldn't have it any other way.
