Highlights from:
Internal barriers, personal issues and decisions
faced by gifted and talented females
by Sally Reis

Note: As it's a long article, read these first. If they get your attention, read the whole article.

• Many talented women feel being ambitious is synonymous with being selfish.
• Many women with multi potentiality find decision making difficult since it is not possible to do all they would like to do and are capable of doing
• Women with a wide range of personality characteristics and perspectives often have a difficult time understanding themselves and making appropriate choices for career and advanced training
• Talented girls and women frequently accomplish a great deal without the effort required from less capable peers.
  When less effort is warranted, many women feel they are lucky rather than gifted.
• Many gifted adolescent girls believe that possessing high ability means that they will achieve excellent grades without effort. Students often believe that if they must work hard, they lack ability.
• A perfectionism complex can lead talented women to strive to achieve impossible goals and spend their lives trying to achieve perfection in work, home, body, children.
• The characteristics developed by older talented women...
• determination,
• commitment,
• assertiveness, and
• control of their own lives…
• ...directly conflict with what some parents encourage as good and appropriate in their daughters.
• It is not possible in some careers to take time away to raise a family; this reality results in one of the most difficult decisions facing women.
• Some of the reasons that many talented women have few friends and are often lonely revolve around the extremely limited amount of time they have for friendships and the ambivalence of other women to talented women who achieve at high levels.
• Many talented women consciously hide their accomplishments and often seem to feel guilty about being able to accomplish a great deal.
• In research with gifted teenage girls, some very attractive young women invented boyfriends to give them an excuse not to date, allowing them more time to pursue their work in school and their own interests.
• Women who fell in love did not lower ambitions because of falling in love.
  Rather, they first lowered their ambitions and then they fell in love.
• Being perceived as pushy, aggressive, or ambitious is troubling to many talented females who often consciously or unconsciously refrain from speaking too much…
• …too much attention paid to manners in childhood can cripple a talented girl's attitude and her ability to question & speak out.