The post that was quoted here has been removedYou're right. I'm from Sweden. Neither men nor women here performs very well in math nowadays.
But this 'proves' only that we belong to the 'same' culture with the same tradition. If we disregard the tradition - do men and women compete on equal terms in math?
In sports where muscular strength then the difference is a fact (although I know a lot of women who are stronger than me). But what about the cerebral strength?
For what it's worth, my opinion is that not as many women as men are interested in Math. However, I think that if a woman IS interested in math, she can do as well, and in many cases, better than her male counterparts. I majored in Psychology (who didn't?), but I took math classes up to advanced algebra and trigonometry. They were always my most difficult classes, probably because even though I could grasp the basics, the subject just bored me to tears. I never took calculus because by the time I got that far in my studies, other subjects were endlessly more fascinating than math.
The base of science is mathematics. If you cannot handle math, then you will never be good in science. You just don't have the means to be a good scientist. This is the fact today. Perhaps it was different in the times of Marie Curie, I don't know.
I am not god in math, and that means that the door is closed for me to a scientific career.
If, I say if, women are genetically indisposed toward math, means that they are also genetically indisposed toward science.
Nobelprize in physics? Not for women!
Right or wrong?
The post that was quoted here has been removedSweden's total population is only around 9 million, so I think it would be unlikely for Sweden's "best" to ever match China's "best" in nearly anything except the Winter Olympics and speaking Swedish.
And then there's the US, which tends to put together winning teams by poaching the best from other countries. Yesterday Germany's rocket scientists, today China's mathematicians. In this regard, if I may use a Star Trek analogy, the US is kind of like the Borg Collective.