Starts With A Bang!
Ethan Siegel
http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2012/01/surprise_surprise_gender_equal.php?utm_source=networkbanner&utm_medium=link "Every year I teach dozens of students at the University of Birmingham. Most of the students on the gender and sexuality courses are women. I guess this is because the boys don't think that gender applies to them: that it's a subject for girls."
-Louise Brown
You know the stereotype, perpetrated throughout the United States (and well beyond) for generations: girls aren't as good at math as boys are. For a long time, people pointed towards the long list of (almost exclusively male) mathematicians and scientists as support for this idea.
Never mind the fact that women had been disenfranchised from these careers for centuries. From Barbie dolls to Harvard presidents, the gender disparity in mathematics and the sciences is often attributed to a hypothesized difference in intrinsic aptitude, even today.
Over the past generation, however, standardized tests in the United States have seen that gender gap completely disappear. First among elementary and middle schoolers, then among high schoolers, and today, male and female students achieve identical average math scores on the SATs.
