I was thrilled to read Carolyn Turk in Newsweek ("A Woman Can Learn Anything a Man Can", April 5, 2004). She writes words I've thought a million times and said to my female students enough times to wear out their ears. An excerpt:

Why are we so quick to limit ourselves? I'm not denying that most little girls love dolls and most little boys love videogames, and it may be true that some people favor the right side of their brain, and others the left. But how relevant is that to me, or to anyone, as an individual? Instead of translating our differences into hard and fast conclusions about the human brain, why can't we focus instead on how incredibly flexible we are? Instead of using what we know as a reason why women can't learn physics, maybe we should consider the possibility that our brains are more powerful than we imagine.

Here's a secret: math and science don't come easily to most people. No one was ever born knowing calculus. A woman can learn anything a man can, but first she needs to know that she can do it, and that takes a leap of faith. It also helps to have selective hearing.

... I had moments of panic while sitting underneath the buzzing fluorescent lights in the engineering library on Saturday afternoons, when I worried that the estrogen in my body [replace with your minority-defining feature] was preventing me from understanding thermodynamics. But the guys [replace with your "majority" counterpart] in my classes had to work just as hard, and I knew that I couldn't affort to lose confidence in myself.