Thank you for your detailed reply. First, you refer to various types of longitudinal tracking studies related to precocious kids, who, not surprisingly have dazzling careers in whatever they choose to do relative to average kids. First, it does not logically follow that their subsequent success is wholely attributable to their cognitive abilities. In our society and particularly our schools, "smart" kids are showered with opportunities, encouragement, and confidence-building experiences (smart boys even more so, and it's christmas every freakin day for smart, upper middle class white boys). Second, noting that smart kids tend to achieve high rank in whatever they do is not even close to the same experiment as testing cognitive ability across, say, the entire academic staff of the U of C system and seeing how well it correlates with rank, citation rate, peer ratings, invitations to speak at conferences, journal editor positions, etc, etc.

The participation of women in science--and indeed in almost every aspect of our society--has increased steadily for the last few decades. We can say with absolute certainty that this is due to an increase in opportunity and a decrease in discrimination and exclusion. In countries where certain disciplines are less gendered, the participation of women is much higher than the U.S. We also know that our education system still favor boys (preferential treatment by teachers, more parental investment), and that sexual harassment, sexist behavior, and sexual discrimination still occurs within academia.

In science we look for proximal causes and parsimonious explanations. Sexism and discrimination are a fact, it happens all the time, everywhere. Men and women do it, not because they consciously have unfair assumptions about their colleagues and students, but because they are products of their society. And we know it affects female students and academics in a variety of ways. Why not fix it?

Pinker's quote trots out the straw man assumption that the disparity itself is the only evidence we have for discrimination. This is patently false, negated by thousands of sociological studies and the millions of anecdotal experiences of women. Until we have created a meritocracy, citing innate differences as a nebulous first cause in gender disparity is ridiculous and harmful.

You, I, and even Steven Pinker have no idea what women and minorities are capable of on a level playing field; to claim otherwise is a lie. I'm sure Pinker could tell us some convincing adaptationist stories about why humans instinctively stereotype individuals based on beliefs about groups. Hyping putative innate differences and assigning them more importance than is supported by evidence will directly lead to increased sexism in academia, sexism in primary and secondary classrooms, and the closing of opportunities for thousands of young girls. Science and our society will be poorer for it.