Yes, I personally don't take too well to the sentence "No amount of sugar coating can hide that." The issue isn't sugar coating. It's the potential for societal bias against girls.
If all things were equal, then you might be able to use phrases like that. But all things aren't equal. We simply don't know what girls are capable of doing in math. We do know that the discrepancies aren't as big as we were led to believe. That's important.
It's also important to remember that any analysis of trends has NOTHING to do with the individual abilities of individual girls. Trends are often used to discourage individual girls from pursuing careers in math or science, and that's a shame.
It's like saying no woman can be a bus driver because the average woman is physically weaker than the average man. Well, test the individual person's strength if strength is relevant to the job of driving a bus. But don't use trends and averages as law. I think that's what has been happening to girls in math and science.
