“This is a rather good example of picking-and-choosing data for maximum effect. They could have shown the percentages of math&science degrees instead of all degrees. They could have discussed why only 20% of the math applicants were women.

“My thought is still that women prefer not to get into math and science or leave the fields early. The 'why' is what needs to be studied.” Tom
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I think we know the “why’s” but require time to get used to them.

1) “Female” minds tend to be left-dominated. Verbal stuff matters more than spatial. Inhibition is the rule. (Sometimes you do find an active right frontal above female gonads: I have a township supervisor with this mix. And I have my suspicions about my girl, Sarah Palin!)
2) “Male” minds have a transient skill, perhaps from their right frontal, for noticing and defining patterns.
3) Age shrinks our access to the right side: the vitality of a culture fades as its young males age. (The payoff is, of course, Darwinian: things that worked need to be repeated. It also recalls Toynbee: a culture in trouble first amplifies old solutions before adopting those of a new religion or an invader.)
4) Yes, females sometimes do math but they VERY rarely invent it. Females also follow rules in class in regard to appearance and completing assignments, often in terms admired by their instructor. True in high school, truer in college. True especially in the law and medicine.
5) The integration of females into the power structure is a reflection of resource stability. Males tend not to exist in severe environments that impose restraints that make experimentation too costly. And we are “feminized” in stable, high density conditions. Being “nice” is of more value than being “strong” or even being “right.”
6) Invasions by a meteor, a virus, or a hoard of Cossacks test a different set of skills.

The bigger picture: genes choose environments, they also react to them. Stability leads to stable behavior and such behavior will often stabilize environments.

Further, oscillators, particularly those that respond to environments, have survival advantages that linear systems do not. There may be good sense in our abilities – by whatever means - to move from feminine dominance and back to masculine.

As for picking data for maximum effect, your nose, ears, eyes, skin, tongue, and kinesthetic organization filter data. So does your mind and the simpler your mind, the more it filters. Sex and aggression are more easily noted and tracked than stock averages.

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