Where to begin, where to begin . . .
I’m just a humble female programmer checking in here, but I can’t stay out of this one. Several points have been made about giving women equal access to education and equal credits for accomplishments, so I won’t add much more to those points.
Havel, you said,
Would it surprise you to learn that 100 years ago women were regarded as a civilizing force on society who made it less vulgar? This same opinion was used to deny women access to education on the grounds that they would become vulgar. Of course there was also a prevalent belief at the time that educating a woman would also make her uterus shrivel up.
Science was considered unfeminine and unsuitable for women up until quite recently, and I’m not entirely sure that belief has died out. As a result, to this day, the number of women majoring in the sciences in the U.S. is still quite low, I believe. You’ve cited figures concerning the percentage of Nobel prizes which have gone to women. What you have failed to do is compare that number to the percentage of women working in the sciences. Here’s an example of what I mean: if I say out of 100 Elbon prizes, only 10 have gone to women, you could correctly assume that the likelihood of a woman winning the prize was 10% and the likelihood of a man winning it was 90%. If, however, I were to tell you that 10 people per year were eligible, and of the 1,000 total who were eligible to win it, 10 were women, that would mean a woman who was eligible was 100% likely to win (10 times won out of 10 times eligible), while a man had only a 9% chance of winning it (90 times won out of 990 times eligible).
As a computer programmer, not only do I create programs, I sometimes write programs which create components of other programs. To do so, I have to be quite well versed in logic, not to mention having a certain amount of creativity. As has been mentioned elsewhere, ENIAC’s original programmers were women. They originally calculated the trajectories for missile attacks during World War II using pencil, paper, and slide rules, and had the job because they did it more accurately than men did. When ENIAC was created, they became programmers because, in part, they were already familiar with the complex equations needed to do this work.
With regard to intelligence, a couple of years ago, I got talked into joining Mensa, an international group for people who are in the top 2% in intelligence. Membership is roughly half male, half female, with a great many people who enjoy that ratio. 
Am I smarter than any man? Of course not! I do, however, have the numbers to prove that I’m smarter than most. (By the way, we’re at nowhere near having 2% of the population in the group, so Dopers, get in there! We need more interesting people!)
With regard to
I’ll offer you the same terms I offer everyone else. I’ll respect you when you indicate to me that you are worthy of respect. Part of that entails respecting me, something which you’re apparently not prepared to do because I’m a woman.
As far as your grammar and spelling goes, may I assume English is not your native language? As a former translator, I realize it can be quite difficult to learn, and I am willing to make allowances for that.
Finally, you also said “I’ll bet that this message board is mostly construched by men.” I’m sure our own Tuba Diva might disagree with you on that one.
Are men superior to women? No, and women are not inherently superior to men, at least not when working on a grand scale. Individuals, however, vary.
CJ
(By the way, does this remind anyone else of a certain thread about how giving women the right to vote ruined the US?)
