On women in science:

I do believe that there is anti-female bias in many science departments across the country. I'm not sure that there's more than anecdotal evidence for it, but I think the anecdotal evidence is pretty strong. In my experience as an undergrad in physics courses (in which most of the students were physics majors), there were times that it was pretty damn uncomfortable to be a woman. My first year physics lab partner and I were the only women in our lab, and on one occasion, the male lab supervisor walked past several pairs of men with their backpacks up on the lab bench to tell M-- and me that we couldn't keep our bags on the bench either. He then walked back, passing the same boys whom he said nothing too and left the room. That was the most overt example, but there were sometimes jokes about women's abilities or professors who seemed to think I couldn't do something for no obvious reason. And the fact is that being the only woman in a group of men can be uncomfortable. I could see this environment making some women unhappy enough to consider another career (and in fact, I stopped being a physics major, though bias had little to do with that decision). But for me, this was more an annoyance than a situation that would have stopped me from doing something I loved, though I believe that it was worse for many other women.

Honestly, though, I don't really think that the problem is in college primarily. I knew too many women who came into college convinced that they were hopeless in math despite any evidence to the contrary. I TAed Calculus in various forms for three years, and my least self-confident students were always women. Many of them were perfectly competent too, just scared of math and convinced that they had no chance ever at being any good at it.

When I was about to get hired as a mathematician, one question I asked my only female interviewer was how the place was about dealing fairly with pregnant women. I had heard some horror stories from friends in grad school. She told me that her experience had been great, and that was something I took into consideration. I didn't have to worry about losing my career if I chose to have a child.

I think it's possible that there are more male mathematical geniuses, or even that men on average are better than women at math. But I'm not sure the point of saying it, when women still face serious challenges in scientific careers. Once we fix these problems, if women are still underrepresented, then we can talk about biological causes for the underrepresentation. Until then, we should concentrate on fixing the societal problems and not make excuses.