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In the past, there was active discrimination against women in science. That has now gone, and although there are residual effects, these are not enough to account for the small numbers of women, particularly in mathematics and physics.

Because there still exists a significant pay gap, women tend to earn less than men over the course of their lifetimes. Compounding the problem, women tend to spend less time in the workforce than men.

There are less opportunities for women.

I know this is economic jargon, but essentially, if you bring more women to the job market, you create value, it makes economic sense, and growth is improved. There are countries where it's almost a no-brainer: Korea, Japan, soon to be China, certainly Germany, Italy. Why? Because they have an aging population.

Technology is one of the key drivers of female economic empowerment, but the fields that women choose to participate in are still decidedly gendered.

There are 80 jobs in which women earn more than men - positions like financial analyst, speech-language pathologist, radiation therapist, library worker, biological technician, motion picture projectionist.

In life sciences, we find a reasonable balance between men and women. In engineering and computer science, we have a major problem. A very small percentage of women will be in computer science.

If you look back on professions, when they became undervalued and paid less, women tended to do better in them.

Women do two thirds of the world's work. Yet they earn only one tenth of the world's income and own less than one percent of the world's property. They are among the poorest of the world's poor.