The data hinted at how marginalization worked: men and women often started out equally, but while women struggled against a thousand cuts, men were accruing small benefits—a modest grant here, a crucial piece of equipment there. No one had necessarily intended to discriminate; it was more what the department heads had defended as the entrepreneurial culture of MIT: you could get what you wanted if you knew to ask for it. The women did not know; they took what they had been given and assumed everyone was following the same rules. Or they were too polite to ask: some men received raises to keep
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