What about helping girls hack their Barbie dolls so that, instead of saying “Math is hard” they’ll say “Linear algebra is cool.”

Haelfix, that’s my experience too. In primary school you learn arithmetic and after spending a few years there you have mastered it. My father taught me some math when I was 10 years old. By age 12 I had mastered calculus. I could set up differential equations and solve them.

Thought experiment. Suppose you randomly select 100 average children of age 12. You then offer them $1000,000 if they pass graduate level exams on Quantum Mechanics, Electromagnetism and General Relativity at age 18. They will get all the necessary tutoring for free. How many will win the prize?

That only proves my point that women like interacting more with people, men like interacting more with things. And putting content online is about artistic expression, it just uses a new (albeit technological) medium. Women have always been doing that. The point here is that there is no indicator that women are going to flood science or engineering jobs any time soon.

It’s not that they’re aren’t smart enough or that they think differently. Hell, we could use more women in science and engineering. It’s just that they have different interests.

Its no coincidence one summer at say a math/physics/computer camp can put people like 3 years ahead of everyone else.

What about algebra, trig, and (sometimes) calculus?

This is mildly interesting but I’d have to see a lot more evidence to be convinced. I suspect what we may have here is much like the claims that playing Mozart to your baby will make it smarter (or at least a musical genius).
Was there, for example, a control population, that was also treated specially, but just not given “intellectually challenging games”. ie was the effect perhaps just the result of extra TLC in childhood? Or was it a selection effect, ie parents who are willing to enroll in and then sustain having there children in these sorts of programs probably have children that are going to do better than average anyway through either genetics or home culture.

One has to be really careful with these sorts of studies because what one finds is often really subtle. For example (properly done) studies have shown that yes, children from English speaking homes, if exposed to Mandarin Chinese when young, will find it easier to learn the language as they grow older. BUT, and who would have guessed it, certainly not me, the exposure has to be in HUMAN form, ie caregivers chattering to the kids, making faces and so on. Just hearing the language in the background, or even watching TV with various types of Mandarin content has a statistically insignificant effect.

Unfortunately education seems to be a field that is massively driven by what people believe HAS to be true, and more so than most fields (for obvious reasons) has a wide gap between the “consumers” of education (the kids), and those that pay for it (partially parents, mostly the state), so it is especially susceptible to “research” showing that whatever ails kids, the answer is to buy my product or hire my consultancy.
There’s precious little good research done in education, and that which is done is then buried when it turns up results people don’t want to hear (vide the lack of widespread adoption of directed learning in spite of the substantial evidence that, for the class of students for which it is intended, it works better than anything else currently known.)