Okay, I finally got around to reading the various articles. I now posit two things: a) there is little present understanding of the brain, but one of the few things that is understood is that men and women have, as should be expected, slightly different brains*. For whatever reason. b) there's simply nothing sexist about trying to guess why. Did the mainstream media turn the issue slightly sexist to grab attention? Yep -- witness the Independent's "joke" about map-reading. Does that matter to scientists and should it? Nope. Should anyone intelligent even read that publication or care what it says? Course not.

Once again, if scientists considered scientific pressure when publishing or researching (any more than they already do/did -- see Newton et al.) we would never have had Galileo, to use the most famous of many examples. So: should the idiotic, sexist conclusions that people draw matter to scientists? No. (This is the focal point of our disagreement, as I see it, and it's one people have been debating for a long time.)

So, with that out of the way, we look for examples of actual sexism from the various scientists. If there is any, it's buried deep, and it cuts both ways. The bit you quoted could be construed that way, but I'd rather not be 21st-century PC, and just construe it as maybe they're trying to contribute to the debate. Never do they claim that one gender is better than the other. (It seems relatively clear and likely to me that men and women excel at different things -- generally -- and that this would naturally have to do with, among other factors, how our brains work. Both are good at lots of necessary things. Am I sexist? If I am, then I guess so are the U Penn people.)

*I guess it is pretty incredible how similar they are, really. I couldn't say for sure without looking at parallel cases in other species.