Gender differences also are small in the percentage of women compared to men who held research or teaching assistantships during graduate school. Despite these similarities, women publish less than men in science and engineering fields and are often under-represented as organizers and prestigious invited speakers at professional meetings. However, their abilities as measured by IQ are higher as a group than their male colleagues'. Rather, they are a consequence also of the characteristics and practices of the environments in which they are educated, and in which they work. Personal factors may play a role, but one does not exist in a social vacuum.
People connect with and reflect the elements of their settings.
However, across science and engineering fields, the higher the rank, the lower the proportion of women at that rank. Chemistry provides a good example of the dissonance between the number of women in full professorships and the growing percentage of women with doctoral degrees. She spent a year developing her survey questionnaire in two forms, one for faculty members and one for students. She pre-tested them among students and faculty in each of the fields surveyed. Male and female respondents were selected using true systematic sampling, such that each individual had a known probability of being selected.