First-Place Sweep by American Girls at First Google Science Fair - Gender not a factor?

And girls are doing so poorly in math and science? Article here. Note how one of the judges says gender was not a factor but that he was 'secretly very pleased' that all the winners were girls. Gender, not a factor? Excerpt:

'Girls swept all three age categories in the competition, a contrast to generations past when women were largely excluded* from the science world.

“Personally I think that’s amazing, because throughout my entire life, I’ve heard science is a field where men go into,” Ms. Bose said. “It just starts to show you that women are stepping up in science, and I’m excited that I was able to represent maybe just a little bit of that.” She will start her senior year of high school in the fall.

“At the end, we were like, ‘Yeah, girl power!’ ” said Naomi Shah of Portland, Ore., who won the age 15-16 category with a study of the effects of air quality on lungs, particularly for people who have asthma. Ms. Shah recruited 103 test subjects, performed 24-hour air quality measurements at their homes and workplaces and had each blow into a device that measured the force of their breath.
...

Vint Cerf, Google’s chief Internet evangelist and one of the judges, said that gender did not play a role in deciding the winners. “This was a gender-neutral evaluation of all the work that was done,” he said. Nonetheless, “I was secretly very pleased to see that happen,” Dr. Cerf said. “This is just a reminder that women are fully capable of doing same or better quality work than men can.”'

*"excluded"? Umm, what? Some names: Marie Curie, Joy Adamson, Maria Agnesi, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Virginia Apgar, Clara Barton, Laura Maria Caterina Bassi, Ruth Benedict, Elizabeth Blackwell, etc., etc., etc., and the list goes on. You'd think certain people actually *wanted* people to think women were in fact excluded from the sciences for... what reason? You decide.