Women are often told not to "look" for sexism, to just do their work, keep their heads down, and everything will work out all right.  Sexism is a thing of the past, and focusing on it is a distraction that makes you a better worker.  Never mind about the patterns you see.  Don't compare yourself to others.  Focus only on yourself, do the best you can, and you will be rewarded. 

This kind of behavior is obviously convenient in a sexist environment.  It places the blame for any difference in treatment squarely on the shoulders of the individual.  Women are already conditioned to look within rather than blaming others for their problems.  The rare woman who does see and comment on a sexist learning or working environment is often accused of blaming the system when she herself is lacking.  She's a loser who's blaming other people for her own failings.

There's nothing so soothing to the establishment ear as a story about a woman or minority who didn't let anyone tell them they couldn't do something because they were female or a minority.  "I never paid any attention to that women's lib stuff, I just did the best I could.  The system rewards excellence."

Now it looks to me like there is hard evidence that an ostrich attitude towards sexism may actually hurt your chances of doing well in challenging male-dominated environments. 

From a new University of Missouri study:

http://www.physorg.com/news149865692.html

MU researchers examined the role of self-efficacy, the belief in one's capabilities to execute the course of action required to produce desired goals, to understand why women continue to be under-represented in engineering. Their findings suggest a strong sense of self-efficacy, especially for women students who are under-represented in engineering classrooms, can help students persist and succeed.

"Efficacy applies to any situation; it is particularly important in choosing and executing constructive action in situations that can be barriers to successfully achieving the ultimately desired outcome," said Rose Marra, associate professor of information science and learning technologies in the MU College of Education. "In engineering, these barriers might include negative stereotypes, active discouragements by peers or faculty, or scoring poorly on a calculus exam."

In the study, Marra evaluated 196 undergraduate women engineering students throughout a two-year period at five public institutions in the United States. The researchers examined the students' engineering career expectations, self-efficacy, feelings of inclusion, efficacy in coping with difficulties and math outcomes efficacy. The assessment provided a better understanding of students' overall self-efficacy.

"We compared the students' assessments from each year. The results indicate that women students show positive progress in some self-efficacy measures, but they show significant decrease in progress on feelings of inclusion," Marra said. "We hope that the results of the study can be used to influence engineering education practices, both in and outside of the classroom, which can impact the success of women studying engineering."

Marra's study, "Women Engineering Students and Self-Efficacy: A Multi-Year, Multi-Institution Study of Women Engineering Student Self-Efficacy," which will be published in the January Journal of Engineering Education, also found a relationship between ethnicity and feelings of inclusion, which Marra hopes to examine in future studies. The study was sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation.