Sixteen years after Barbie dolls declared, "Math class is tough!" girls are proving that when it comes to math they are just as tough as boys. In the largest study of its kind, girls measured up to boys in every grade, from second through 11th. The research was released Thursday in the journal Science.



Parents and teachers persist in thinking boys are simply better at math, said Janet Hyde, the University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher who led the study. And girls who grow up believing it wind up avoiding harder math classes.



"It keeps girls and women out of a lot of careers, particularly high-prestige, lucrative careers in science and technology," Hyde said.

I'm shocked, I tell you—shocked: Math study finds girls are just as good as boys . (Nice headline. Snort.)Mmm. Yes, that— plus the "demeaning and condescending attitudes, lots of off-color jokes, sexual innuendo, arrogance; colleagues, particularly in the tech culture, who genuinely think women don't have what it takes—who see them as genetically inferior." Just off the top of my head, possibly there are so many men who see themselves as genetically superior because they've been erroneously told all their lives that they are.I always tested higher on aptitude tests in math/science than I did in language. Now that I have official reassurance that proximity to a calculator won't detonate my vajayjay, I'm giving up the blogging biz and setting out to fulfill my dream of becoming a mad scientist-cum-evil genius who will hold the entire planet hostage to my every whim under constant threat of death by Doomsday Laser [H/T Oddjob.]