Brain biology points up another variation: Women's brains have a larger corpus callosum -- the connective tissue between the right and left sides of the brain -- whose job it is to transfer data back and forth. Consequently, women integrate incoming data faster than men do. Women's intuitive "sixth sense" about when the baby in the nursery is going to start squawking, or the boss is about to blow a gasket, or what someone else's response will be before it's stated probably has its origins not in the netherworld, but right there in the highly active corpus callosum of the female brain. What's more, males tend to have more concentrated activity on the left side of the brain (thus the term "left-brained") and less interaction between the right and left sides, while women have greater access to both sides.

Where is the seat of mathematical ability? you might wonder. Ahem, it's in the left side of the brain. And like it or not, that brings us back to Summers' inopportune comment that men do better at the high end of the sciences because of a "different availability of aptitude at the high end."

The average IQ scores of females and males are equal because IQ tests are designed to purposely eliminate sex biases in the scores. But looking deeper, one finds that females and males score differently on separate parts of the test. Men do better on spatial questions, women on reading and other verbal skills.

While some argue that this is a result of conditioning -- when girls take up throwing a ball, their spatial ability increases by leaps and bounds -- conditioning doesn't explain why males' IQ scores are more variable than females'. More males than females end up at the low end of the IQ scale, and not surprisingly, relative to females, there are more male high school dropouts and more men in prison. But the opposite is also true: More males than females have extremely high IQs. And like it or not (I don't like it), this is probably why the world has more male geniuses à la Einstein, Mozart and Michelangelo. We can thank the goddess Nike for Marie Curie, but where's another woman in our pantheon?

Oddly enough, those who argue against the existence of gender differences in ability are likely to fervently believe that biology, and not one's mother, determines homosexuality; demand same-sex medical trials; and adhere to the theory that, indeed, women are more collegial than men when they make decisions.

Despite the biology, environment, of course, is critical in shaping who we become. The numbers of women pursuing careers in the sciences has skyrocketed in the last couple of decades. At the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology nearly half the student body is female. And at medical schools nearly a third of the students are women, while at law schools half are female.

Yes, women can do the math. A new way of thinking about male and female abilities, beginning in the '60s, has opened all kinds of doors. But we are talking about the great mass of people, the averages, here -- not the dim boys who drop out of school or the geniuses who devise a new theorem or discover a new element.

There's still a great deal we don't know about what is ingrained and what is instilled, but acting as if the differences between the sexes are purely anatomical, or merely the product of our environment, does not serve us well. Ignore the differences, and we forfeit the opportunity to encourage and enhance the talents of all of us, from the ordinary student to the truly gifted, regardless of sex.

When mathematically talented 12- and 14-year-olds took the SAT in 1980, the journal Science reported, the ratio of males to females who scored over 700 (out of a possible 800) was 13-to-1. Now the ratio is only 2.8-to-1, a clear sign of progress. What we have to do is continue to make sure that that "one" is nurtured to succeed in whatever she wants to do -- whether it is to be our next Madame Curie or not.

This story has been corrected since it was first published.

Recent Stories