2010/3/28 Günther Schmidt <gue.schmidt@web.de>

Dear Philippa,

"display themselves on demand" is putting it rather harshly don't you think?

In the context of an existing, lengthy discussion that displays the ignorance of some of its participants, no. I could easily see reading the discussion thus far and deciding to take the path of least resistance and keep quiet.

It's worth noting the following study, which received quite a bit of media attention:

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/22/8801.abstract

This argues that gender differences in math performance vary among cultures, and that differences in math performance are thus more likely cultural rather than genetic. Discussions of the study often mention that fact that previous work citing evidence for innateness of ability tended to focus on participants with a shared cultural background.

A relatively recent article in CACM made much the same point for CS; particularly noteworthy to me is the rather different proportion of undergrad CS majors in different countries (the US is particularly low):

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1461928.1461947&coll=portal&dl=ACM&idx=J79&part=magazine&WantType=Magazines&title=Communications

-Jan-Willem Maessen