Sex, Math, and Scientific Achievement

I came across this Scientific American article about differences between women and men in math and science.

As a woman in the fields of hard science and math, I do believe that there are differences between males and females. My opinions could be somewhat biased after growing up in a place where women were strongly discouraged from doing math and science, and now attending an engineering school that is 75% male. As stated in the article, more men are mathematically gifted. Men are generally better visuospatially, and less gifted verbally. I am decent at math, though not mathematically gifted, but since I have had my life revolve around science and math for nearly four years, I have become better at thinking in the ways necessary to do math/science. My visuospatial skills have improved, but my verbal skills have dramatically decreased.

I think that both sexes are more likely to choose careers that correspond with what they are better at because it usually corresponds to what they are most interested in. If my parents hadn't encouraged an interest in science and math, and helped me to be confident that I could succeed in a career in a scientific field, I know I would not be doing physics and computer science. I would be doing something more focused on verbal abilities. Because of this, I am pretty sure that if there were more programs targeting younger girls for math and science-related careers and educating them more heavily in these areas that there would be more of an interest in these programs and thus more females in science and engineering.

An interesting thing that the article mentions is subconscious sexism towards women in the scientific fields. I believe that this exists, but at the same time find it almost funny that because of the simple fact that I am a woman in science, I am likely to be hired over a man because of affirmative action aimed at evening out the gender gap in the workplace. Both are sexism: if I were hired over a more competent male, it would be like assuming that I need a favor in order to succeed because I'm female. Then, if I were later denied job opportunities and promotions because I am female, if I had proved myself competent since being hired, the initial favor of hiring me would be canceled out. On the other hand, if I turned out not to be competent, hiring me would have hurt the company and wasted lots of resources and money that would have been better spent on another candidate.

In any case, this article is very interesting and definitely worth reading.