>the putative damage is itself illusory
>My opinion doesn't really fit on this axis at all either way.
lmao. here's a quote for you:
“It was, of course, nothing more than sexism, the especially virulent type espoused by male techies who sincerely believe that they are too smart to be sexists.”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
There's also a class of people who are so smart they see sexism uniformly everywhere, even where it isn't. You're being a jerk, not proving how wonderfully not sexist you are. Refusing to even consider the possibility that someone isn't sexist is itself a form of discrimination, and I reject your attempt to pigeonhole me in an effort to make yourself look holier-than-thou.
I'm also not going to fall into the trap of endlessly justifying myself, so go ahead, have the last word.
Discrimination is no longer the scary evil force you seem to think it is. It's the pause that precedes the quick end of the conversation after you say you're a mathematician (female or male), it's the changing of the rules by which you evaluate someone depending on whether they are male or female, it's the slight cognitive dissonance that leads someone not to talk to a black physicist quite as long (what am I supposed to say?!)... that subtle social cue that you're not what you are supposed to be. People on the street, at the bank, at the library are just plain nicer to me when I'm performing the pretty female role and are just plain not nicer, or ignore me, when I'm looking ugly or smart. Is it so far to stretch that I might perform better on that math test when I don't have to own it and put my name on it? There is no cost when it's not my name.
One of the problems I have with this whole debate is that people are so quick to jump down your throat if you don't simply parrot the party line, even when you mostly agree with it, that it isn't even permitted to deeply examine the problem. Nevertheless, step one, as in all engineering, is to figure out the problem. If you insist on short-circuiting that step, your solutions won't work. That doesn't change magically because it's a hot-potato topic.
If the damage can be undone by merely putting a different name on the top of the test, then that strongly implies that the putative damage is itself illusory. If the damage can be wiped away so easily, then it can't have been that bad in the first place. If this is the extent of the "stereotype threat", then it's obviously not holding them back all that much if even so their real skill is equal to the men's.
I can't help but think that this study was indeed ideologically driven, and in the zeal the authors had to prove their point about how women aren't worse than men, they didn't think about the fact this accidentally "proves" that the discrimination can't be that significant. But perhaps it is just a neutral study performed out of sheer curiosity.
And just to make it perfectly clear, I am taking their own logic on their own merits. I'm not inserting my own opinions here, excepting on the question of whether there was potentially an ideological drive here. (My opinion doesn't really fit on this axis at all either way.)