Being underrepresented on the IMO team, or the Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program (MOSP), is not, as you might assume, a girl problem. It’s more subtle and interesting than that. First of all, if you’re Hispanic, African American or Native American, it matters not whether you have two X chromosomes or one – you might as well give up now on any dreams of sweating for nine hours over some proofs. Then within girls, interesting patterns emerge. Asian American girls are not underrepresented, relative to their numbers in the population.
Clearly the real explanation here is that Asian American girls are genetically smarter than white girls.
