Angela Saini's "Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Research that's Rewriting the Story" changed our lives . Unfortunately, we live in a society of stereotypes that are holding girls back. They only make up a fifth of physics A-Level students, a quarter of undergraduate students and only a tenth of physics professors are women. This isn't because of ability - girls outperform boys at GCSE and A-Level - or enthusiasm - but because we exist in a world that tells children that girls and boys are good at different things. We meet too many girls who, despite being brilliant, are not confident, and are unsure of their own potential to become scientists.

Inferior is a powerful, impartial and thoroughly researched look at the causes of these dangerous stereotypes. Throughout history, scientists have looked at the world around them, seen inequality and taken it as a biological fact. It wasn't until 1948 that women could graduate from the University of Cambridge (men could graduate in 1209) and 1946 that they could become Fellows of the Royal Society (men were made Fellows in 1600). How could their contributions to our understanding of the world be measured equally? Inferior has provided us with evidence for our debates about women's capability, fuel for our advocacy and inspiration for our efforts to improve the celebration of women's contributions to science. Angela Saini is an engineer, science writer and broadcaster. She has agreed to sign every copy we send out.

We are raising money to get a copy of Inferior in every library of every girls state school in the country. The books cost £10 each, and anything you can contribute is welcome. We will distribute the books and help teachers identify awesome local women scientists. We are Jess Wade (@jesswade), physicist and chief trouble maker at Imperial College London, and Claire Murray (@drclairemurray), chemist and beam line scientist at one of the UK’s synchrotrons.

If we reach £2,000, we can send one copy to every all girls' state school in the UK. If we reach £15,000, we can send one to every mixed state secondary school with over 1000 pupils. Every £10 raised >£15,000 will get Inferior into a state school with less than 1,000 students.

Thanks to all of your enthusiasm, 4th Estate have agreed to match whatever we raise (!) and manage distribution (!!). This means we can reach even more young people in even more schools.