← Back to Vol. 01 Issue No. 03 — November
Abstract
This paper establish a statistical theory to explain the so-called “underrepresentation” of professional women working at elite levels of achievement in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic occupations in the United States (hereafter referred to by the acronym STEM.) The popular hypothesis is that the women are underrepresented among the high achievers in the STEM occupations because they are victims of invidious discrimination in their education and employment and because of cultural biases discouraging women from entering those occupations. The theory developed in this paper develops an alternative hypothesis: Women are not underrepresented at the highest levels of achievement in the STEM occupations. The theory in this paper implies that differences in the statistical incidence of men and women who are extraordinarily high achievers in STEM is mainly the result of differences in the parameters of sex-linked probability density functions governing the congenital aptitudes for scientific achievement at the highest levels.