paying-attention

Yet another study has come out to highlight how different women's minds are from men's. Their findings, which include an implication that men tend to be overconfident of their ability to solve puzzles, are probably valid. Men as a group may indeed have a higher opinion of their own abilities -- such has been the basis of a lot of really bad sitcom humor. Women as a group may indeed be more collaberative and risk-averse in nature and less eager to compete, especially with the opposite sex.
To which I'd have to reply, So what?
The highest performing women in the study appear to have been as logical, rational, competitive and intellectually advanced as the highest performing men. They may even have been just as rude and tactless as the men. Does that mean that they must have made a mistake when filling out the "gender" portion of the registration? Perhaps the error was with the researchers. Maybe the high performing women were really men named "Sidney," "Gerry" and "Kris" and the researchers mistook their gender.
Or maybe, just maybe, these studies are completely beside the point in predicting the abilities and behavior of individuals. I'm in my late 40's and I like a lot of the music my teen-aged son listens to. Does that mean one of us is not really the age and/or gender we say we are?
When opportunities are stage managed to get the highest number of an under-represented group into the mix, studies like this can be helpful. We should all care whether schools and colleges in minority-majority areas are doing a good job of educating their citizens. That's why it is at least marginally valid, for instance, to count the number of Spanish and Native American students who enter, and succeed in, the University of New Mexico's undergraduate honors program.
Studies that rely on percentages and group behavior can give you a rate of expected success and failure of a group. They are absolutely useless, however, in actually predicting the success or failure of individuals. They can lead to dangerous stereotyping. It is also dangerous to judge strangers based on their similarities to people you are close to. I suspect that some of the over-reaction to the comments Lawrence Summers made about women and science were in response to his using his own daughters as examples.
I would love to be able to generalize about the abilities and attitudes of high school and college students based on my own children and my niece and nephews. Both my daughter and my niece are level-headed young women, competitive athletes, good students and sensible in their dealings with boys. My son and all my nephews are good students, good athletes, to varying high degree creative and artistic as well as kind and fair in their dealings with other people. In my opinion, this world would be looking forward to a much better future if I could trust my small sample group to be truly representative.
If I say that they are all athletic, though, that doesn't begin to tell you which of them were offered athletic scholarships in school, or how important that was to any one of them. If I say they are all nice people, that doesn't even predict which of them you would like if you met them.