At a recent Wharton presentation, a New Yorker cartoon flashed on the screen showing a group of women in what looked suspiciously like a faculty club dining room. The caption read: “I hear we’re all getting Valentines from Lawrence Summers.” The reference, of course, was to the Harvard University president’s famous remark that the lack of women in science and engineering might be caused in part by gender differences in aptitude. Stanford University economist Muriel Niederle used the cartoon to highlight some of her research into other possible factors behind the scarcity of women in top engineering and science positions. She focused in particular on a paper titled, “Do Women Shy Away from Competition? Do Men Compete Too Much?” co-authored with economist Lise Vesterlund.
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