Re:It IS harder for them, in general (Score 1)

But when you look at the actual graph of the scores, you see two bell curves pretty damn close to each other, and if you remove the prodigies from the mix (which DO happen to be mostly male and rare), the scores for the sexes are virtually identical.

I absolutely agree.

While some members of the male population may have a slight advantage over women with regard to mathematical ability (as evidenced by a larger proportion of male prodigies in the aforementioned study), this does not correspond to the significant gender gap in IT employment today.

The large majority of males have very similar mathematical ability to females - in fact, females often outstrip men's mathematical ability as they are more likely to study. There was a Time mag article about this a couple of weeks ago that basically found that girls nowadays are generally better then boys at math/physics related topics because they actually bother to go home and do their homework!

Only in the last 30 or 40 years has it become normal for women to work indefinitey - as recently as the 60's and 70's, once a woman was engaged/married she was expected (and often forced by employers) to stop working.

How long has it been since women began to make up a significant proportion of science/technology workforce? Around the same time that attitudes towards women in these fields began changing. You don't think it might've been the machoistic sensibilities of the predominently male employers of the time that were holding women back...?

Doesn't it seem far more likely that the current gender imbalance in IT employment is related to ...

1. Long held stereotypes about what women should do as opposed to what they actually can do (e.g nursing/teaching instead of CS)
2. Society (still) expecting women to bear the majority burden of domestic chores. A woman who has to go home, cook/clean/watch kids/whatever often can't effectivly compete with a man who doesn't have those responsibilities.
3. Women being conditioned by society to feel bad if they don't live up to 2).

... than any lack of abiliy on the part of women? Can you show me objective, undeniable proof that women find the tasks associated with IT (as opposed to the attitudes that go along with it) 'too difficult' to handle??

Writing as a woman who (like Shalla) loved and aced mathematics/software development at uni, you might find it a little difficult to convince me.