The gender gap is wider in fields associated more with 'brilliance' than hard work

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The gender gap in some academic fields is greater than others. What's the pattern behind it?

A new study being released in Friday's issue of Science posits one answer: It's based on which fields people perceive as requiring an innate "brilliance."

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Fields like physics and philosophy are harder for women to break into because women are not typically perceived as having raw intellectual brilliance, Leslie said.

Julie Kliegman

Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.