A female present at the top level of math achievement is not inconsistent with the 3 reasons Summers gave for the (average) lack of females there. It will still be overwhelmingly male at the top and the higher male variance in math ability is not going to magically go away.

Might not "magically" go away but if you actually look at the data it vanishes.

Im really, honestly, interested in what data you're talking about. Please paste a link.

The AMS commissioned a study a few years ago, and it was in the Notices in early 2011 or 2012.

It's funny though, that some political blowhard can pull a self-contradictory self-serving hypothesis halfway out of an orifice, and everyone bends over backwards to imagine a circumstance in which it possibly could be partially true. Anyone who disagrees with the blowhard had better bring some actual research.

Welcome to the Patriarchy.

It's pretty sad that my most salient recent exposure to that (as a white dude myself) takes the form of apologists for a particular stupid old white man who has personally annoyed me for years. Sorry!

So apparently it's impossible for the academy to have this problem that we all agree tech has? Please. Summers' comments were barely a sketch of a hypothesis. He blustered until some percentage of people just assumed he had a real point. (Basically his career in a nutshell.) A critical part of his hypothesis is "there is no Pareto-efficient change to current educational practice that would reduce sex differences in variability". That claim is ridiculous on its face. Nothing to see here! Move along people!

http://media.swarthmore.edu/bulletin/?p=145 (read past the first three paragraphs; why is the sex variability inverted for Asians? perhaps Nature doesn't so completely dominate Nurture after all...)