still no answers

Nature Neuroscience published an editorial titled "Women in neuroscience: a numbers game." Basically, the magazine looked at the statistics of the number of women publishing in the magazine in various author roles. (Side note: scientific articles are generally published with multiple authors. The first is the primary author, the person who did the most work, both research and writing. Occasionally the first two authors will have contributed equally to the paper. The final name on the paper is the name of the person whose lab and grant funding is responsible for the research. Roles of middle authors vary.) Basically the percentage of accepted papers is compared between male and female submissions, both first and last authors. Bottom line is that no significant difference was found between the sexes.

Another interesting thing about the article is the fact that the number of female first authors (generally graduate students or post-docs) is more than double the number of female last authors (always faculty members). This brings the article into a discussion about the "reasons for this progressive loss of women from science careers." No definitive answer is reached, but my favorite line in the entire article is "it seems disingenuous to attribute the entire gender discrepancy to innate factors while female scientists remain demonstrably disadvantaged by the uneven allocation of career resources at work and at home."

I have nothing new to add to the article. Based on the indications good science comes from both men and women in equal proportion, women are apparently just as capable as men in neuroscience. My major concern is over the lack of fostering of interest in the maths and sciences of young girls. I would imagine that girls and boys at a certain age take to science like ducks in water in equal proportion. Most importantly, I still want to know why women leave science in higher proportion than their male counterparts. Society or Biology?