A recent Steinhardt policy breakfast, “Do Gender Differences in Academic Achievement Really Exist?” brought together Marcia C. Linn, professor of development and cognition in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley, and Joshua Aronson, associate professor of applied psychology, who has researched extensively the role of stereotypes, self-esteem, and motivation in learning and performance.

Following an introduction by Steinhardt Dean Mary Brabeck, who cited the reemergence of the belief in significant statistical differences in how the different genders learn, Linn walked the audience of policymakers, researchers, and educators through current research, which shows few, if any, differences in achievement attributable to gender. Aronson complemented Linn's presentation with a discussion of his own study of stereotype threat, which he and others have defined as the psychological discomfort that arises in a testing situation when an individual of a particular minority group becomes aware that his or her performance on the test may confirm an established negative reputation for that group. Aronson's research shows that performance is heavily influenced by mindset, which suggests that differences in intelligence or problem-solving cannot simply be attributed to gender or race, but to cultural and personal ideas about gender, race, and intelligence.