| >It does hold true for men -- specifically, men of African-American and Hispanic descent, when reminded that minorities generally do worse on math exams before the exam is given. I think I've read a general result along the lines of "you have characteristic X, people with that characteristic perform worse" and that this skews the result. You're poor, you're female, you're disabled, but I couldn't really be bothered digging around for the papers. Simplistic? Yes, but as I recalled the research was for the situation where they were told quite shortly before the test about their expected sub-par performance so I was relating it to the research. >Yet, at first, I had been certain I was incapable -- not because any guys were mean to me (not one was anything but helpful), but because I doubted myself, and felt alone and weird. Overcoming self-doubt and social issues is part of being in a particular field though - if jargon rich fields put you (ie "one") off then there are many fields you would struggle in. If you need someone to believe in you before you can do well in a maths test then IMO you're not going to do well when you've only got yourself to rely on to get something done. >Measuring maths ability scientifically and publishing the results, rather than relying on folk-science and anecdote, could help encourage women to trust their own desires and abilities mathematically Go on. What do you mean by maths ability - it's a pretty diverse subject after all. I've seen people do excellently via rote learning whilst for me it was my strength because I could pretty much start with a few "axioms" and work on from there when memory failed - clearly very different abilities that appeared (at undergrad level) to be closely equivalent. |