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The proportion of women in hard science courses is small. Take any engineering school, graduate student population in math or math faculty. I'd say that, among math majors, they are 25% of undergraduates, 15% of graduate students and <10% of faculty. The only field that, IMHO, is worse is computer science. Much to the dismay of this single mathematician.

My education (BS -- MBA -- PhD in Industrial Engineering) spanned 20 yrs., and the number of women declined in the "hard" subjects over that time. E.G. Most of the Math majors were girls/women when I was a math major; the guys were taking math for engineering, not as a major. I also worked in programming and systems, there used to be quite a few women. However, I was the only US woman in my PhD program.

My thought: girls/women are "self-selecting" themselves out of higher math and science at an earlier age. There used to be more required core courses; now there is more "choice". Why work hard learning math, after all, when you can get a "real" degree in a "soft" subject like womens' studies? ;)

I guess it's hard to evaluate these things because I tend to lump any "hard science" together and compare. The fact is that there are plenty of women in Chemistry and especially Biology, but very few in Physics -- American or otherwise. So they aren't self-selecting themselves out of science in general.

I think that girls do self-select themselves out to some extent, but I think that at the top level that there are more men with the mental disease that makes them a good mathematician (or something closely related) than women. But nice to hear that there are some female degenerates like yourself. :)

I'm sure it's complete nonsense, but I happen to believe that the "bell curve" for women has a smaller variance than the one for men when it comes to mathematics. So, when you get to the genious mathematician level (or the mentally challenged level) you tend to see more men.