Slashdot Mirror
US Wins Math Olympiad For First Time In 21 Years
An anonymous reader writes: The U.S. won the International Mathematical Olympiad for the first time in 21 years. Gender diversity is brought up in this NPR article because the eight team members on the U.S. team were all male, but they made a point to mention that of the top 12 people participating in the U.S. Math Olympiad, 2 are female, which is better than last year when there were no females in the top 12. "I will say that it's not really a super-great spectator sport, in the sense that if you are watching them, it will look like they are thinking," Po-Shen Loh, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and head coach for Team USA says. "Although I will assure you that inside their heads, if you could spectate, that would be quite a sport."
The point is not that 2 were women, but that they won. If you treat people like they're special, they'll think they are.
See! H1-B and other immigration tickets do improve America!
Why has Slashdot been so focused on counting genitalia lately? Every day there's some story about how there are too many penises, or not enough vaginas, involved with some industry or activity. I mean, earlier today we had a shitty submission about the penis and vagina accountants not liking the numbers they're working with, which I thought would mean no more penis and vagina counting submissions for the rest of the day. But nope! I was wrong! Now we have this submission, which although it mentions mathematics briefly, is far more focused on counting penises and vaginas.
But by the content of their character ?
Really I am sure the diversity police would have been in heaven, if the team had quotas and lost. It's for the greater good after all.
a left-handed MLB pitcher is better. there's nothing wrong with being a rightie. same thing with this M/F thing that /. has.
...is mentioned here the first time at ./ since 1997 (birth of ./), here are the winners since:
2014, 2013, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2006, 2005, 2004, v2, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997: China
2007, 1999: Russia
2015: U.S.A.
2012: South Korea
2003: Bulgaria
1998: Iran
There are 2 types of people in the world - those who understand decimal and those who don't.
Diversity can go only so far. There are no women playing in the NFL and no men in the LPGA.
In this world you're supposed earn your way to the top. Let people be who the hell they want to be.
And I would have said the same thing if the math team were all females.
"Concerns have also been raised over the years about a persistent gender gap in U.S. math achievement."
You can be sure about one thing. When concerns are raised about it persistent gender gap it is never about something girls are doing better at.
1. US
2. China
3. Korea
4. North Korea
5. Vietnam
6. Australia
7. Iran
8. Russia
9. Canada
10. Singapore
Men and women's brains are wired differently and men are generally better at math. That is scientifically proven fact. Get over it.
From what I can tell from the IMO's page url:https://www.imo-official.org/country_team_r.aspx?code=USA only 6 people actually made up the team and competed in the worldwide competition. Being part of the group that didn't make it is like receiving a participation ribbon for showing up to run a race.
There are no scientifically proven facts. Certainty is the jurisdiction of religions. Science operates on skepticism and never eliminates doubt or alternate ways of interpreting data.
"So not by the color of their skin."
"Why is Slashdot so focused on counting penises?"
"Leftie vs. Rightie pitching."
"Diversity can go only so far. There are no women playing in the NFL and no men in the LPGA."
*DOUBLE FACEPALM*
The point, as so many have so persistently failed to grasp, is not simply that there are no female competitors on the US team. It's not simply that the top mathematics students overwhelmingly tend to be male. These are all true, but the point is not that this happens because males are intrinsically better at math. The point is that there is NO EVIDENCE to suggest that the brains of females are any less capable of developing mathematical proficiency and talent in this age group (or any age group, for that matter). Pointing to the existing disparity as evidence is a fallacy: once, not too long ago, there were no black baseball players.
Instead, the point is that there exists a systematic, cultural, and longstanding bias against encouraging and fostering scientific and mathematical proficiency in female students, and the purpose of bringing this up in the context of the IMO is to again remind Western countries such as the US, that this imbalance exists not because women just "happen" to be worse at math, but because women are DISCOURAGED from doing math and continue to be discouraged. And to be absolutely clear about this:
1. That does not necessarily mean that men are treated preferentially (in the sense of being given an easier time in STEM fields), but rather that women who attempt to persist in STEM paths tend to face a higher likelihood of varying degrees of sexism and sex discrimination from both peers and instructors that would not happen if they were male. Sometimes it is subtle, sometimes it is overt, but always, it is treatment that would not have happened if they were male.
2. This cultural attitude against women expressing interest in mathematics and science is not exclusive to men. In fact, it is very often women oppressing other women through peer pressure--in particular, the desire to conform to standards of behavior and personal interests that are more aligned with traditionally "feminine" pursuits. If you are a female teenager interested in math who had the remarkable fortune of not having had your parents ever ask you "why would you want to be a math major? Wouldn't that be too hard," or teachers who didn't think that "girls just don't seem to have the persistence and capability to do the kind of abstract thinking required for mathematics," you would no doubt find that your fellow female friends would almost invariably NOT want to be mathematicians or scientists. And that is also a form of bias that perpetuates the lack of females in mathematics.
The way a lot of guys react to gender inequality really fails to understand the basic problem. When someone calls out institutionalized sexism, that is not an indictment of individual male behavior. It is an attempt to call to attention a structural problem that is being perpetuated by continued obstinacy on the part of people (both male and female) who don't want to take the time to think about what it might be like to be in someone else's shoes for a change.
Actually it does. MRI studies show that male brains show a superiority in blood flow to the analytical problem solving parts of the brain when engaged in mathematical thinking over female brains.
it's most websites these days... they've been hijacked by a radical feminist SJW agenda and everything - EVERYTHING - must be, one way or another, about women.
i'm all for equality. who in their right mind is NOT? but if people are selected based on merit and women don't make it in, what is the story?
nobody is seeking to exclude women by policy. so if they don't cut it or if enough of them simply aren't interested, whose problem is that?
i know that this unpleasant movement won't last... it can't... it's too hypocritical and vitriolic. but man, the faster this brand of feminism ceases to be in public discourse, the better all of humanity will be.
No, it really is just about counting penises and vaginas.
The dear leader has many great students who can calculate rocket trajectories.
http://www.imo-official.org/results.aspx
I think that a lot of the problem in the work place is not institutionalized sexism, but the problem of high profile incidents that make people be worried about hiring female staff. Take the whole incident where the one woman put two guys on blast for making a stupid joke about the word "Dongle" at a tech conference. When you see high profile cases like that come up, naturally people in an already male dominated field are going to be more defensive and not as open to having females with them in the field for fear of being put on blast in public. Combine that with the worry and fear of sexual harassment lawsuits that can be filed pretty much on a whim and can be a death sentence for someone's career, it creates a barrier for women. I work in a place right now where I've been told to be EXTREMELY careful about the wording I use around the female employees. Our workplace will sooner fire me than hear my side of the story so that they don't get a law suit. And its happened here before. Twice. I thank god I work after hours support and I don't have to deal with the regular staff.
War is Peace my friends.
Maybe, just maybe, males, as a general rule, are genetically predisposed to being more interested in mathematics?
Slashdot is really getting annoying with the undertones of many of their articles these days.
I already modded but here is my 2 cents, too. Yes, there may be cultural biases against women going into math and hard sciences. If so, then women will be underrepresented in the fields in general. But when you are talking about the best mathematical talent in the country, as we are here, then I would think that if a girl/woman were really this talented (as in, the absolute top tier in the country) then a little cultural bias will not hold her back. Cultural bias will hold back the good but not great talents, but really great mathematicians do it as a calling not a vocation. I've seen a few brilliantly talented women, it's hard for me to believe a little bias would have stopped them. Maybe stopped them from becoming CEO's or some other parasitic position, but not exercising the talent of a true savant.
I was recently having a discussion about someone related to IQ tests (there was an interesting poll (who knew) on Slashdot a while ago) and was discussing Raven's Matrices as an example of a test that I thought was unbiased as it was free of any cultural context and had been reduced to abstraction, but a friend shared a study (PDF link)with me that pointed out that the test did have a built-in gender bias due to reliance on spacial analysis, which men do perform better at.
Given that spacial rotations, manipulation, etc. are an important part of many mathematical fields, it doesn't surprise me that men tend to perform better on average. Also, this does not say that all men are better at math or that women cannot be brilliant mathematicians, merely that if you look at the number of elite mathematicians, that more of them will be male because they are biologically predisposed to be stronger at some of the aspects that make an individual better at math.
Also, you should account for a person's own internalization of their abilities and how it affects their behavior. If women tend not to be as good at math from an early age, many of them will take a disinterested approach to it. This is hardly unique to women as children and people of all ages and genders exhibit this behavior. Because there are areas where women tend to perform better than men (along with any other brain wiring differences that produce different effects in people) they may be more drawn to other areas of study and focus there time there.
The problem is that there is evidence to suggest that men and women are different, but there are some who will not accept that argument. I don't know whether that is because the fall prey to some of the same illogical reason that you point to above and assume that it means women can't do something or if it's just a simple matter of people treating their belief as an article of faith that must be true and therefor anything to the contrary must be false.
While there's certainly no lack of sexism in the world, it's a lot harder to accept that there's some kind of pervasive institutional problem when you have no reason to suspect that you should see roughly equal number of men and women among the ranks of the top mathematicians. Also, given that women earn ~45% of B.S. degree's in mathematics in the U.S. it makes the claims of institutional sexism (at least in this area) even harder to believe. Interestingly enough, women early ~70% of the B.S. degrees in English and foreign languages. Perhaps that is related to the scientific evidence that shows that females perform better than males in terms of verbal abilities.
I don't think you'll find many people who are against providing equal opportunity (or as much as we reasonably can) to everyone, but you can't get there with bad arguments. You end up fighting a problem that doesn't exist or attempting to use a solution that isn't going to work. I think that people are just tired of dealing with other people who don't care to look at the science or will reject it because it doesn't mesh with their existing views. It's a bit like trying to argue with someone who believes in young-earth creationism.
Sorry you took such a butthurt when presented with an event which counters the USAsians are ignorant fad. Jealous much?
As usual, you and your kind also miss the point which is that it's not our problem. Go someplace else and find somebody to tell who actually gives a damn.
Seriously, you people are worse than Jehovah's Witnesses.
And dicks control all the /. mod points.
Instead, the point is that there exists a systematic, cultural, and longstanding bias against encouraging and fostering scientific and mathematical proficiency in female students,
Given that I can't recall any encouraging or fostering of myself for my chosen field of employment, I can't muster up anything beyond apathy for those who complain about the lack of fostering for going into one field or another.
I modded this insightful but it shows 100% flamebait. Not only is that not entirely appropriate (ok, maybe the tagline... "Here some cute pink cheeked marxist dupe is going to contradict me. I welcome it. Come at me." is deserving), but it's definitely not an accurate accounting of moderation.
Fuck off fascist. We're wise to your bullshit now. You don't give a fuck about women or their welfare. We know this is a political power play and we know the devastation your kind will wreak on our professions and hobbies if we let you in the door.
This story has been politicized. What should have been a celebration of the United States' winning victory in the Olympiad, and the evidence of year of math outreach paying off, has instead been turned into yet another attempt to kick mud into the faces of math nerds across the country for a crime they never committed. The math community has been pushing math outreach and education for women for YEARS!! DECADES NOW.
You are a liar and a closet cultural reactionary. Girls are encouraged to take an interest in and study math and those efforts were fucking paying off long before you and your SJW Stormtroopers decided to launch your blitzkreig on us.
You internet Nazis have turned women in tech into a third rail topic!!. Years of progress are being undone by your hysteria, stereotyping, shaming tactics, and culture war baiting. You are a cancer on STEM. We cannot even celebrate the MATHEMATICS OLYMPIAD!! without you people smearing your gender wars and identity politics all over a day for nerds, boys and girls both, who just want to geek out and be left alone.
This story summary is beyond disgusting. Beyond offensive. Nothing is sacred on Slashdot anymore. Everything we have, everything we built to be above the rotten stereotypes of mainstream society is being sucked down into septic culture wars by these mendacious hipster fakes!! Math is for everyone. It's above this petty politicization. Slashdot should be above this. But you bastards shitting it all up. Damn you! Damn you all to Hell!!!
the point is not that this happens because males are intrinsically better at math. The point is that there is NO EVIDENCE to suggest that the brains of females are any less capable of developing mathematical proficiency and talent in this age group (or any age group, for that matter). Pointing to the existing disparity as evidence is a fallacy: once, not too long ago, there were no black baseball players.
The average is about the same, but there is more variation on male IQ than female (which is exactly what you'd expect from knowing that humans are not a strict pair-bonding species: more variation on most measures for males than females). One of the implications of that is that you get more men who are very stupid. I'm sure you can figure out the other implication. Is that the full explanation? Probably not. How much does it explain, and how much is explained by other factors like that? Well, you don't know and I don't know, because investigating or even openly discussing that kind of thing would be offensive and railing at ratios that are not 0.5 is without cost.
The way a lot of guys react to gender inequality really fails to understand the basic problem. When someone calls out institutionalized sexism, that is not an indictment of individual male behavior. It is an attempt to call to attention a structural problem that is being perpetuated by continued obstinacy on the part of people (both male and female) who don't want to take the time to think about what it might be like to be in someone else's shoes for a change.
There is a difference between disagreeing with PAVA schemes and then not understanding that the people around you have an effect on your attitudes on things. Assuming that people who disagree with you must be idiots who just don't understand what you're saying is rarely a way to bring about whatever it is you want to bring about - not even if you are right.
The Republican control of /. is growing. Even in titles they're not pandering to the lowest common denominator. They're just trying to ruin this tech site and turn it into something for teenagers like Digg did. They hate us and they refuse to use proper English. They want us to die.
All of western societies has been hijacked by cultural marxism. Don't you see a genocide is preparing? They are dividing us with feminism non-sense and racial baiting. The conquest is imminent. In fact we might have lost already as I cannot foresee a way to get out this.
China has a much larger advantage by using a large team. I'm surprised the Math Olympiad doesn't have a restriction for max size and minimum size. If one member of the China team feels a little off there's a fair number of competent alternates. The US team only has 6, and that's the primary reason the US looses. I'd qualify it as a form of cheating, but we won even with the disadvantage.
Bullshit.
You're playing a persecution card that no longer exists, but is still happily cited when it's convenient to push feminist agendas.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
They said that it was the first American win in 21 years but they did not say which year was the last American win?
nt
you would no doubt find that your fellow [] friends would almost invariably NOT want to be mathematicians or scientists.
Doesn't this happen to all of us?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I mean, that's not since 1992.
It has nothing to do with capability! It has everything to do with interest. Women are certainly capable of many things, but few are interested in pursuing the same things that men pursue. Get over it. Damn.
it's most websites these days... they've been hijacked by a radical feminist SJW agenda and everything - EVERYTHING - must be, one way or another, about women.
Not on Slashdot (at least when Assange / Wikileaks is the topic). Then it is all about avoiding the mythical extradition of Assange from the UK to Sweden to the US. For some reason that makes sense to people when the UK would have to approve Assange's removal from Sweden. Why not just take him from the UK? Because it is all about the US and dissing the women that claimed Assange assaulted them.
Amen. This racist article doesn't mention the racial make up of the team. The team must b >= 20% African American. Blah Blah Blah. Everything we do in the world must be looked at in the context of race, and gender equality. Obviously math is misogynistic. We must ban math. Just like Amazon will not sell books about the civil war with confederate flags on the cover. We must now demand that amazon pull all books that depict or allude to the subject of math. Come on lets boycott amazon.
You must be from one of the European countries that um...... didn't even make the top ten. Sorry but we are happy and glad it makes you sad. Now be a good person and stop breathing because you are using air that could be better used by others.
Well why wouldn't they? The dicks are able to count the points better, obviously.
The people who read this site aren't the aggressive men who are TEH CEOZ!@#! They're the shy men who don't typically like conflict and the other stereotypical male characteristics. And the PC Police, of which you are a card-carrying member, seem bent on not relieving oppression on everyone, but rather increasing it and changing its target. The War on Boys is real.
The entire SJW narrative is based on a fallacy: that men and women are exactly the same. They aren't, and this is deeply rooted in our biology. A problem with SJWs is that they assume that their opinions are facts.
I usually describe this as: "Do as I say, not as I do." It invariably creates a blind spot for the "invisible" activity, but also undermines the ability of the mind to see the truth in general because the mind has become used to lying to itself so it won't see the things it is not supposed to see. Obviously, at this point, the mind itself cannot detect truth and falsity, because the mind would have to see itself lying. That's almost as much fun as the Who's: "Pinball Wizard" who became deaf, dumb, and blind to hide a family secret.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I don't know what it was like where you were a kid, but it's not like boys aren't discouraged by their peers either. Boys get bullied both verbally and physically for showing interest in STEM. I dare say most men in those fields were frequently discouraged, but their passion for their field allowed them to persevere.
If peer pressure is all it takes to keep a girl from going into a STEM field, it's probably for the best. That girl will probably be happier doing something else that she's really passionate about.
dom
You offer NO PROOF for your claim. In fact there is poor anecdotal evidence it is about the gender since it's consistently all male. There is no proof this is caused by "society peer pressure".
Personal opinion (with only anecdotal evidence) is that males are more motivated by math and as such get their talent developed further. I know several boys from my youth (myself included) that went absolutely bananas with math (and computers), studying more just for hobby and personal joy. I've known several girls that were very talented in math, but without the passion. It was just one school topic.
Thanks for taking the time to express what I've thought about the culture in slashdot comments for a long time. I also find the stubbornness and blindness to these issues among commenters strange, given the otherwise clear, open and logical thinking people here seem to strive for.
women who attempt to persist in STEM paths tend to face a higher likelihood of varying degrees of sexism and sex discrimination
It's interesting that everyone spins this in terms of women facing unfavourable treatment in STEM fields, and never in terms of women experiencing preferential treatment outside of STEM.
STEM is hard. Engineering courses in particular have a reputation for being the toughest at any given university, and mathematics is the go-to subject for "I don't understand this" jokes. To succeed in STEM you need passion for your field, certainly, but you also need an incentive. Despite the occasional complaints on Slashdot, programming is a comfortably middle-class profession, with the potential in some cases to be extremely lucrative. If STEM careers didn't pay so well, we'd have even less people in them than we do now.
But incentive isn't about how much you can earn in STEM: it's about the *difference* between your quality of life in STEM and in something else. And quality of life for a low-income woman (at least, a young one) is considerably better than for an equivalent low-income man. In particular, a low-income woman will find it much easier to find a partner to support them (and potentially children) than a man would in the same situation. This gives a man, on average, greater motivation to persevere with a difficult but lucrative field than a woman will have. It should be no surprise that this shows itself in the stats.
Many employers, no doubt, understand the above, and discriminate against women because they know that on average they will be less committed to the field, more likely to quit if mistreated, etc. And yes, that's wrong. What employers should do is to ask at interview (of both male and female applicants) whether the applicant plans to persist or to quit to look after a family, enforce equality of maternity and paternity leave (not of leave offered, but of leave taken), etc., to eliminate their incentive to discriminate against applicants simply for being women.
> The point is that there is NO EVIDENCE to suggest that the brains of females are any less capable of developing mathematical proficiency and talent
If you want to be literal: no, for that precise point there might be no hard evidence, but there is enough evidence that females don't actually develop it, and that's what counts. I might have all the talent to become the world's #1 short distance runner, but I am not.
Did any African country EVER win the Math Olympiad? Why not? Could it possibly have anything to do with African GENES? Say it ain't so!
Hi there,
I'm a long term reader of Slashdot, but I basically never post. I don't even have an account, which is why I'm an Anonymous Coward.
But I just can't face the constant onslaught of 'gender obsession' articles here on Slashdot. Can someone please recommend me another tech site where there's good commentary, and the articles don't spend their time continuously counting penises and vaginas?
Having around 5% of world population and average math skills, it is expected that the US wins, on average, once every 20 years.
Were actually 3rd or 4th generation Americans?
While there's certainly no lack of sexism in the world, it's a lot harder to accept that there's some kind of pervasive institutional problem when you have no reason to suspect that you should see roughly equal number of men and women among the ranks of the top mathematicians. Also, given that women earn ~45% of B.S. degree's in mathematics in the U.S. it makes the claims of institutional sexism (at least in this area) even harder to believe.
45% of B.S. degrees in mathematics in the states go to women, but 0% of US Mathematics Olympiad team members are female. You even point out that more generally there are fairly equal numbers of men and women in the top ranks of mathematics. So you have not answered the question of why there is this discrepancy. The institutional problem is with institution selecting and training team members.
Interestingly enough, women early ~70% of the B.S. degrees in English and foreign languages. Perhaps that is related to the scientific evidence that shows that females perform better than males in terms of verbal abilities.
I think that is far more likely to be due to social issues, specifically the repression of males who feel pressured to move away from "girly" subjects.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Instead, the point is that there exists a systematic, cultural, and longstanding bias against encouraging and fostering scientific and mathematical proficiency in female students
Fuck you. Prove it. I am sick of this shit. When I went to school way way way back in the mists of time, girls were encouraged over boys. My own son dealt with this shit too... and yet girls are STILL not at the top of the heap.
Stop abusing boys. You can not force girls to be on top of the heap... and this is nature: There will be a heap. Deal with it asshole. All you are doing is creating misogyny.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
"Institutionalized sexism?" How paranoid and delusional do you have to be to literally blame the entire world for your own failures and shortcomings?
Writhe your naked ass to the mindless groove.
>45% of B.S. degrees in mathematics in the states go to women, but 0% of US Mathematics Olympiad team members are female.
So call up those 45% and tell them to quit slacking. Problem solved.
Based upon what evidence? What studies have been done to show this? Who does a such a study without having some kind of skin in the game? Why doesn't anyone talk about how male students in high school get labeled as "nerds" if they are good at math? Arguably just as bad when it impacts their ability to date. I was the brightest of my friends and my guy friends never said "he is good at math" they said "he's a nerd!" I continued to do it because I had a passion for it, DESPITE the discouragement. And believe me, when your buddies want you to go out partying and you just want to finish up this last "feature" for your pet project the derision can be significant. Who is to say that your answer is the correct one? There are many possible reasons for the lack of female participation in STEM. Maybe females have a different chemistry that make them *less likely* to be passionate about such things. Maybe they don't like the competitiveness. Maybe they are not generally as good at it, -OR- maybe they are being oppressed in some way. Maybe all of the above. Maybe something completely different. The problem with your answer is that you are looking for someone or something to blame... and rather than looking at the entire problem you are pigeon-holing the entire issue to fit YOUR answer. An answer that has not been proven in any measurable way. Why are you so sure you have the answer? What evidence exists that allows you to be so certain your answer is right? Figure out why males who suffer ridicule and derision for their passions continue to do it and then see why the same model doesn't apply for females. There are many potential reasons for the imbalance of gender in the STEM fields. If you refuse to recognize that your aren't a solution to the problem.
Please tell to Donald Trump. Mexico won 6 medal in the Math Olympiad (1 gold, 2 silver, 3 bronze).
... It is an attempt to call to attention a structural problem that is being perpetuated by continued obstinacy on the part of people (both male and female) who don't want to take the time to think about what it might be like to be in someone else's shoes for a change.
Women's shoes are too narrow.
If we're going by anecdotes, I've heard plenty about guys getting offensive around women and getting away with it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
That was the case at my previous job. The lady I worked with was way more crude than I was, and that is an accomplishment.
The point I failed to make is you never know who is going to be offended, and if a guy gets offended, they are most likely told to man the fuck up.
You're misunderstanding what I've written. There are not fairly equal numbers of men and women at the top ranks of mathematics as if you look at doctorate degrees awarded, the numbers skew heavily towards men for that particular field. The data about B.S. degrees would seem to indicate that there's no substantial barrier for women who want to go into math in general as if there were, the numbers should be much, much lower. You could perhaps make that argument for engineering fields where the degrees going to women is around 20%, but trying to claim that significant cultural or institutional issues are keeping women out of math doesn't mesh well with the data.
The science suggests that if you have a team composed of the best mathematicians, it will feature more men than women. For what it's worth, the U.S. team has had women on it in previous years so it's not as though they're being excluded entirely. The discrepancy is due to biological differences between male and females that for whatever reason make men perform slightly better at math. If we were talking about power-lifting no one would be trying to claim institutional bias is keeping women out of the upper echelons of those competitions.
It's better NOT to have an answer than to have one that is most likely wrong merely based on the way you arrived at that conclusion: through ideology.
So no, I don't know why every single competitive tournament out there is vastly dominated by men both in skills and numbers. Every single mainstream video game tournaments are male dominated; LoL, Starcraft, CS, Halo, CoD, HoN, etc. Even competitive board games are vastly dominated by men. One classical example is chess where (spare the mental gymnastics please) all you really need to be good at the game is to just practice on your own. It DOES NOT depend an iota on what others do to you; it's all on your own.
If I were another person, I'd just cite some study on how men are more likely to be competitive due to some biological reason I don't honestly understand and can't be bothered to grasp, or how the (bear with me) distribution in IQs between men and women vary in such a way where men tend to dominate at both extremes meaning they're both the least and most intelligent. But that has absolutely NOTHING to do with the this AT ALL if it's what YOU are suggesting. The problem here is that the onus is not on us to find a problem where there's apparently none, but on YOU to demonstrate it's an "institutionalized" (whatever scope you define that as, it seems to vary from people to people) problem, i.e. not one of personal choice or ability.
Based on what little I've seen of your in this article, here's a quote you should SERIOUSLY apply to yourself, AmiMoJo: "He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts—for support rather than illumination." -- Andrew Lang
You are right. The fact that Slashdot runs these types of articles is because of Feminism. Sorry that girl didn't say yes when you asked her to prom in high school, but that is no reason to still hate women.
Actually, the dirtiest joke I ever heard at work was from a woman.
My point is that there are women who will take offense at anything, and men that will harass women. (This will hold true with any of the eight combinations of genders, but we're talking about this one.) We need some sort of balance here, and we don't have one.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes