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"  In today&amp;#039;s scary news, &amp;quot;bossy&amp;quot; might not be the biggest threat to ambitious women in this country. Instead, a new report suggests that another b-word\u2014actually, just &amp;quot;B,&amp;quot; as in letter grades\u2014is also stopping bright young women from reaching their full potential. Here&amp;#039;s the root of the problem, according to the Washington Post: When women in college set out to major in STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics), more of them get discouraged by those majors&amp;#039; tough grading curves than men do. Those women are about twice as likely to drop out of those fields if they get a B in their intro-level courses instead of an A, while men stick with it, &amp;quot;come hell or high water or B-minuses.&amp;quot; Related: GoldieBlox Founder on Bridging the STEM Gap This grade &amp;quot;discouragement gradient,&amp;quot; as the Post coins it, is a problem. Sure, there are probably plenty of other reasons why a woman drops out of an econ or computer science major\u2014lack of female teachers, interest in other disciplines, etc. But if even a small part of it is due to a tendency tied to gender\u2014fear of &amp;quot;delivering imperfection in the &amp;#039;hard&amp;#039; fields&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;myopic attitudes about the significance of grades,&amp;quot; as the Post suggests\u2014women need to be aware of that programming. And change it. Otherwise, if women keep dropping out of the STEM majors, which lead to some of the most lucrative jobs, how drastically can we really expect those depressing stats about male vs. female earnings to shift? And are we really okay with having less of a shot at the C-suite later in life (again, many of which hire from STEM backgrounds) just because we were afraid of a B grade in college? Photo: Oprah Winfrey getting her honorary degree from Harvard (no grades necessary), courtesy of Getty Related: Women: The New Breadwinners "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/career-politics/news/a24438/women-college-bs-as-grades-earning/>