<p>Totally annecdotal evidence: I just asked my husband what percentage of the technical staff (engineers, geologists, seismologists, geophysicists, decision analysts etc) at his engineering firm is female. He estimated a third, including a dozen women engineers. Maybe this is unusual. Probably a third of their secretarial staff is male. :)</p>
<p>A funny satire on Summers comments:</p>
<p>Well, the conservatives tend to say that the women who were enraged are too sensitive and PC. There are also mutterings of "maybe it's true, but how can we find out in this atmosphere?"</p>
<p>Another point of view:</p>
<p>disclaimer: I'm a solid blue stater and thought the statement about homosexuality was unnecessary. I'm not in a position to observe discrimination as many of you are so I have been mute on the subject. I've actually observed more discrimination as a stay at home mom than I ever did in the work place.</p>
<p>I am a scientist in a government agency and I would say that the scientific staff in our agency and other similar agencies in other parts of the country, as well as our equivalent federal agency, is pretty evenly divided between men and women at all levels from staff through upper management. I would also say that many of the men are part of two-career families in which child-raising efforts are shared equally between the parents. I interact professionally and am personal friends with many of the faculty at our state university and therefore am very familiar with the long term sacrificifes of one's personal life needed for a tenure-track faculty career. Many of my colleagues, both male and female, chose not to pursue this career path because of the difficulty in balancing career and family. I agree with those who have said that efforts should be made to change the culture of academia so that family and career are not so incompatible, and I feel that this issue, rather than innate differences in ability, is why relatively few women are seen in faculty positions in the sciences.</p>
<p>All of this reminds me of a story (you get to be as old as I am and you're full of stories):</p>
<p>Almost 20 years ago I was working at Bell Labs. My parents-in-law came to visit and accompanied my wife to pick me up after work. I was a little late so they got to see lots of the employees coming out of the building. When I finally did come out, I was at first puzzled by my mother-in-law's comment to me: "Why do guys have so many secretaries in that building?" It never crossed her mind that these women were scientists and engineers.</p>
<p>There is an EXCELLENT article from the NY Times here:
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/science/24women.html?ex=1107601092&ei=1&en=2372cbe326973859%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/24/science/24women.html?ex=1107601092&ei=1&en=2372cbe326973859</a></p>
<p>There is way too much in the article to adequately summarize, but here are some highlights:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Brain studies show males/females use their brains differently, but are equally adept at problem solving</p></li>
<li><p>Evidence shows that culture plays a larger part than innate ability in math: Japanese and Icelandic girls tend to do particularly well in math</p></li>
<li><p>There are more males at the extreme end of the bell curve for math and science aptitude -- that is, more males who are extremely brilliant and more who are extremely stupid -- but these extremes aren't enough to account for career differences, in part because women who pursue math & science careers are more likely to have high scores than men</p></li>
<li><p>SAT scores are a poor predictor of career choice and success for women - they tend to underpredict the rate of success for women, and overpredict the rate for men</p></li>
<li><p>Studies show that college profs tend to grade a math paper higher if it bears the name of a male, than if the same paper bears the name of a female; and highly educated engineers are less likely to be given preference of experienced engineers if the resume bears a female name.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>In short: science shows men & women are different, but it has nothing to do with aptitude and ability; cultural expectations and effort is what determines success. Additonally, women still face significant barriers in the form of subtle prejudice which leads them to be evaluated by a harsher standard than males.</p>