Recruiting and Retaining Undergraduate Women in Physics

While the numbers of professional women physicists has grown in the recent decades, the percentage has remained flat, and is nowhere near representative of the general population. This suggests a systemic pipeline issue, and indeed it involves many complex factors, including broader societal pressures. The undergraduate level is a formative stage in the life of a physicist. If one elects to pursue physics, it generally must happen in one's first or second year of college. Why do women choose to become physics majors? If they do, what helps them persist and thrive? If they leave, what are the reasons? In this talk, I will underscore various internal and external factors, and provide some practical advice for departments and mentors. Recognizing that "women" are not a monolith, and the "woman" category does nothing to describe differences in racial and cultural identity, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation and gender expression, the advice is designed be useful for those wishing to improve the physics climate for everyone.