women and science

So there is an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times in response to the debate about gender and smarts.

Here are some things I found particularly interesting:

Dr. Urry cited a 1983 study in which 360 people - half men, half women - rated [papers on politics, education and the psychology of women] a five-point scale. On average, the men rated them a full point higher when the author was "John T. McKay" than when the author was "Joan T. McKay." There was a similar, but smaller disparity in the scores the women gave.

-by the way, the bracketed stuff is from a correction that the paper issued.

A recent experiment showed that when Princeton students were asked to evaluate two highly qualified candidates for an engineering job - one with more education, the other with more work experience - they picked the more educated candidate 75 percent of the time. But when the candidates were designated as male or female, and the educated candidate bore a female name, suddenly she was preferred only 48 percent of the time.

Ack! As they say, who cares about a small biological difference that may or may not exist when this stuff happens?

I agree with this article in that I think that the reason why women do not do as well in math and science is due to social and cultural influences rather than biological. They point to a number of surveys that support this hypothesis. I think it is hard for women - from teachers preferring guys in class, to outright discrimination (i haven't experienced this myself, it seems more common to baby boomer gen), to having assignments that are more of "guy" interest, or just having to pretend you know everything in order to make it in a field (CS in particular). I think there are probably just lots and lots of little things that slowly add up and make women drop out or lose interest.