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Notes -
Personal anecdote: I was in Australia's Chemistry Olympiad program twice. The setup of the program was that they put out an exam to anyone interested, best 21 people in the country went to a "scholar school" which was three weeks of extremely intensive university-level learning (we were all high school students), then based off a set of exams there and afterward they'd pick a team of four to represent Australia.
Now, I didn't get picked for the team either time (this was 07 and 08). But take a wild guess at the sex ratio, despite the total lack of any discrimination on the part of the program - it was simply "who had the highest marks on the exam".
Answer: I think there might have been one girl out of 21 one time? I know at least one time it was literally all boys. This wasn't unusual. Physics was similar; biology was typically something like 17:4 favouring girls (I was one of the boys in that one in 05 and 06).
The assumption that if you give everyone equal opportunity, the amount of men and women both able and willing to do X will be the same? It's not actually true. Usually it's not that dramatic, but under extreme selection (IIRC it was about 32,000 kids a year doing that exam? And that's, of course, just the ones who were interested and whose parents/teachers/etc. thought they had a chance) little tips to the balance become nearly pass/fail. And AIUI Harvard has roughly the same degree of selection as was going on there.
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