When we picture intellectual geniuses, the names that usually spring to mind are Einstein, Hawking, Da Vinci, Newton, or Bill Gates. The list is almost always overwhelmingly male. Yet history is full of women with extraordinary minds—women whose potential was ignored, dismissed, or deliberately hidden. In science alone, 25 women have now won Nobel Prizes (as of 2025), but most of us would be hard-pressed to name more than Marie Curie and perhaps one or two others.
This invisibility isn’t random.
From early childhood, many bright girls learn that standing out is risky. They quickly discover that being “too smart” can mean being called a know-it-all, losing friends, or simply not fitting in. The need for belonging often feels stronger than the need to shine, so they dim their light on purpose: they stop raising their hand, choose easier subjects, hide their real interests, and sometimes even underperform just to seem “normal.”
Society still tends to define high ability through a male lens—exceptional performance in math, physics, or chess—while excellence in language, creativity, empathy, or social insight (areas where many gifted girls excel) is undervalued or dismissed as “soft.” Gifted boys who act out or dominate the classroom are noticed (sometimes admired, sometimes disciplined, but noticed). Gifted girls who are polite, helpful, and get good—but not spectacular—grades often fly completely under the radar.
The consequences show up later.
In my practice, I see the same pattern again and again: a mother brings her child for a gifted evaluation. During the process, she starts recognizing herself in every description. The intensity, the feeling of being “different,” the lifelong sense of never quite belonging, the perfectionism, the boredom at school that she learned to hide—she suddenly realizes those weren’t personal failures. They were signs.
Many of these women cry when they read their own report. For the first time, decades of questions, loneliness, and self-doubt have a name. What they experienced as weakness or weirdness was actually profound intellectual and emotional depth.
And they almost always discover it because of their children.
Because mothers are usually the ones who notice when something isn’t right with their child’s learning, who fight for proper educational support, who read the books and attend the talks. In trying to understand and advocate for their sons and daughters, they accidentally resurrect the gifted little girl they once buried.
The double challenge gifted girls face
1. Late (or no) identification at school
Teachers and psychologists are getting better, but many gifted girls are still missed. They don’t cause problems, they adapt, they mask. By the time anyone notices, it’s often through physical symptoms—chronic headaches, stomach issues, skin conditions with no medical cause—signals of a mind that is starving for stimulation and a soul exhausted from pretending.
2. Lifelong pressure to shrink
Even as adults, bright women are often rewarded for being agreeable, modest, and “relatable.” Admitting you’re highly intelligent can still feel like bragging, especially if you’re a woman.
Why identify as an adult—even if school is long behind you?
Because self-knowledge heals.
Understanding that your intensity, your need for depth, your impatience with small talk, your perfectionism, and your periodic crashes aren’t character flaws—they’re features of a gifted mind—changes everything. It releases decades of guilt. It explains why certain jobs or relationships felt suffocating. It gives you permission to stop apologizing for needing more.
Adult identification isn’t about getting extra time on exams (though some women do go back to university and finally thrive). It’s about integration: rewriting your personal story with compassion, rebuilding self-esteem that was chipped away by years of hiding, and finally allowing yourself to take up the space you were always meant to have.
To every woman reading this who has ever felt “too much” and “not enough” at the same time: you don’t have to keep carrying that tension alone. Your mind was never the problem. The world just wasn’t ready to see you.
But we’re getting there—and you deserve to see yourself clearly first.