<p>I’m one of those girls who does great in reading and poorly in math. But you know what? I know plenty of girls who excel at it, and I know many that could out argue (using logic, not verbal superiority) many guys. I also know guys who can perform literary analysis better than most girls, and I know guys who are great at pure memorization but suck at application. To say “men are just better at reasoning than women” is such a poor claim because of a. all the socialization girls go through that discourages them from learning math skills (and thus analytical reasoning) and b. variation among groups. </p>
<p>More girls than guys take the SATs, not to mention that the gap between the scores and genders are small. As others said, girls that would probably do worse (and haven’t been enthusiastic about math all their lives but have, perhaps, been encouraged to read a lot) bring the score down because others encourage them to take it. This is supposedly as opposed to guys, who are probably more likely to take the SAT because <em>they</em> want to.</p>