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When I first read both articles, my first thoughts that came to mind were that none of these statistics were really surprising to me! Most of them bothered me, but i started to think about the fact that nothing was surprising me. After that realization, I decided that the fact that most of these statistics didn't surprise me was the most worrisome. Gender and its relationship to science should be something to be concerned about (not necessarily worry) but certainly something to analyze.

the statistics that was worrisome and surprising to me were both from the Sonnert and Holton article (both on page 67)

My worry: "Women in our questionnaire sample who had been affiliated with female advisers during their post doctoral fellowships later left science at a higher rate than those who had not (16.7 percent vs 9.7 percent), whereas the reverse was the case for men with female advisers (0 vs. 8.7 percent)."

I was worried by this finding because statistics like this make it seem like failing or not succeeding in science is more likely if you are advised by a female. Furthermore, one would think that women would help to propagate the importance of higher powered roles for other women. Unfortunately, science is not the only field with this sort of occurrence. In politics, women do not vote for other women. So this made me really upset and uncomfortable, but not surprised.

My surprise: "Do men and women 'do science' differently? Yes, said many of our interviewees. Somewhat more women than men (60.8 percent vs 49.4 percent) said that they believed int eh existence of gender differences in the work of scientists in general"

- I would have hoped (wishful thinking) that women would have said no. That sort of response has pretty much been ingrained in the minds of so many women, where as soon as they hear "math" or "science" they become intimidated and say "oh i don't have that sort of mind" I refuse to believe that rather than people having either humanity based thinking or science based thinking are divided by gender. I fear that the women who are saying these things are part of the reason of why it is near to impossible (or at least it seems to many) for women to succeed in science!