Disciplines That Expect ‘Brilliance’ Tend to Punish Women, Study Finds

By Madeline Will. Here’s a downside to our cultural obsession with genius: It might be a reason for the gender gap in certain academic fields. New research has found that women tend to be underrepresented in disciplines whose practitioners think innate talent or "brilliance" is required to succeed. According to the findings, that’s true across science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, the STEM fields; humanities; and the social sciences. More...