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Do you have a citation re:mathematics? As a person in mathematical physics, I would be /very/ surprised to hear that math is a more gender balanced field than physics.

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I do somewhere; I'll track it down and relay the numbers. But also I'll say that this matches my own personal experience: go to an academic cryptography conference sometime and note how many more women you see than in a generic CS conference. There are more women mathematicians than computer scientists and physicists.

I haven't attended any crypto conferences but, I do work a bit with high school STEM programs and I can tell you.. higher ratio of male to female, BUT, those female students are far more interested in the math / crypto fields than the males (which leads me to believe they will stick to it career wise vs the male students. So it's not too surprising your observations.

In Spain it is about 50-60%: http://www.rsme.es/comis/mujmat/estadisticas/facultades.htm

Note that the problem it is specific only to some degrees, in general women are advancing in most western countries: http://politikon.es/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/4.png

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