Hewitt and Seymour interviewed 149 current or former science, mathematics, and engineering students at four institutions of varying sizes in the southwestern United States. They concluded that women undergraduates who drop out of science are as capable as their male counterparts who persist. But the type of "cut-throat competition" that goes on in introductory science courses is especially demoralizing to those female students "who felt less secure in their own abilities" and whose "self-confidence depended upon the extrinsic reassurance" of a grade, say the authors.
The notion that the path toward career achievement is steeper and rockier for women scientists than for men is, of course, not a new concept. Mary Esther Gaulden, at age 71 still going strong as a radiation biologist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, recalls that women constituted a tiny percentage of the undergraduate science majors when she attended the University ...
