An update on the Ada Initiative

Math skills have only recently reached parity in the US, over 40 years after widespread discrimination started being seriously addressed

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/education/25math.html

'Three years after the president of Harvard, Lawrence H. Summers, got into trouble for questioning women’s “intrinsic aptitude” for science and engineering — and 16 years after the talking Barbie doll proclaimed that “math class is tough” — a study paid for by the National Science Foundation has found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests.'

'The researchers looked at the average of the test scores of all students, the performance of the most gifted children and the ability to solve complex math problems. They found, in every category, that girls did as well as boys.'

'On the ACT, another college entrance test, the study said, the gender gap in math scores disappeared in Colorado and Illinois after the states began requiring all students to take the test.'

I think it could well take some more generations of students before programming interest levels catch up with the math skills, unless there is a big movement among CS/engineering fathers to start making up the difference by getting their daughters involved early with programming. If there were more fathers like Bdale Garbee, there would naturally be more girls getting involved in Free Software without having to run any special campaigns to attract them.