I am in the process of becoming a scientist. A female scientist. I didn’t think that my gender was relevant to my career aspirations. I have plenty of female company (and competition) as an undergraduate science student at UBC. The ratio of women to men in my classes must be close enough to 50/50 that I have never noticed a gender imbalance (nevermind an advantage in heterosexual dating odds for women in my discipline.) Ditto for the distribution of intimidatingly-smart students; the prof-stumping questions come from women just as often as from men. I have worked in research labs that…