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The statistics that surprised and worried me most were in Sonnert and Holton's section on Perfectionsim and Socialization (68-9). The surprise was the evidence that women were choosing quality over quantity. They found that each man published an average of 2.8 publications/yr to a woman's 2.3 However, their small scale study found that the women's articles were cited much more than the men's, women= 24.4 vs men=14.4. I was surprised because I had never heard of this phenomena before. It certainly explains the ways in which women might potentially do science differently than men.

As for what is worrisome, I feel really limited here by having to single out a statistic instead of drawing from the personal narratives in all of the articles. So, I'm including what I found to be the a heartbreaking personal statistic: the differences in self-perception ability of the study participants. 69.7 percent of men vs 51.5% of women considered "their scientific ability to be above average" and 34.7% of women versus 18.0 percent of men considered themselves having an average ability. How can it be that even after jumping through all of the hoops necessary to get to the level these interviewees were at, over a third of these women only considered themselves average?

Flora