There's too few, for starters. One might think that it could be due to the financial risk of an inherently risky career, or the lack of female role models in the sciences, or the lack of non-princess roles in popular literature, or the malignant aura of sexism in society as a whole (due to which high-stakes moves, like deciding upon a scientific career, suffer more) or clueless and bigoted schoolteachers, or the supposed role gender plays in obsessive behavior like science, or that the whole equality thingie happened less than a generation ago, or the fact that they're too smart (hah! :).
What's missing? The contributions of women who take care of their scientific spouses. The preceding sentence might sound mildly patronizing, but this post by Michelle Franel puts forward the case beautifully, and the fact that there are relatively far fewer stay-at-home husbands available to handle the domestic end for their wives, which accounts for the average productivity of women in scientific careers being lower than men. Curiously enough - according to the article - the per-paper impact of scientific papers written by women tends to be relatively bigger.
These mathematicians, always so provincial... still, I confess that the convoluted thought processes that led to this post were started off on stumbling across the Symposium on Indian Women and Mathematics happening at MatScience.
