Viven Chen writes.  People believe genius has a gender—and it is almost always male.

That’s the pitiful news from two new studies about perceptions of intelligence. The attitude is pervasive among ordinary folks as well as those who toil in the ivory towers of academia.
In one study of 2,043 Americans by branding firm Edelman Berland, 90 percent of those surveyed said that geniuses tend to be male, reports Fast Company. What’s shocking is that women (93 percent of men v. 87 percent of women) largely share that view, too.
In another study, researchers from Princeton and University of Illinois surveyed over 1,800 academics in 30 disciplines about the profile of success in their fields, focusing on whether it depends on hard work or brilliance. Here’s how Live Science describes the finding:
The researchers found a trend: The more importance that the academics in a given field placed on being brilliant, the lower the percentage of women with Ph.D.s there was in that field.

Although the researchers found no evidence of an intellectual disparity between the genders, they say that cultural assumptions about intelligence could be keeping women away from certain fields and hindering their success. Instead of being innately brilliant, women are perceived as hardworking:

Women who are presented as intellectually accomplished tend to be portrayed as incredibly hardworking — for example, Hermione Granger in the “Harry Potter” series, Leslie said. “In this way, women’s accomplishments are seen as grounded in long hours, poring over books, rather than in some special raw effortless brilliance.”
And guess what other group is also perceived to be lacking true genius? African-Americans. The researchers also found that the fields whose members felt that a spark of genius was required for success were less likely to have African Americans with Ph.D.s.
“Like women, African Americans are the targets of negative cultural stereotypes about their intellectual abilities,” said study co-author Andrei Cimpian, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The stereotypes become self-fulfilling prophecies. “Any group that’s stereotyped to lack a trait that a field values is going to be underrepresented in that field,” said Cimpian to Washington Post.
So where does the legal profession fall in this spectrum? I, for one, have no doubt that women in law are saddled with similar stereotypes: Diligent and competent, perhaps, but not much more. Indeed, if you were to picture the ace litigator or ultimate dealmaker, you’d probably envision David Boies or Marty Lipton.

If you think long and hard enough, you can probably come up with some women who meet the smart quota. But off-the charts brilliant and awe-inspiring? Well, that’s still a man’s job.  And you’re still baffled why women aren’t getting ahead?