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Stereotypes are usually the last thing to change in the face of contradictory evidence. A case in point is the long held belief that boys are better at mathematics than girls.
Well a meta-analysis to be published in the journal Psychological Bulletin can be added to the pile of evidence that finds no significant gender difference in mathematical ability.
Researchers analyzed results from two math tests that assessed nearly half a million boys and girls between the ages of 14 to 16, from 69 countries. They tested algebra, geometry, data analysis and number concepts. The study’s lead author, Villanova University psychology professor Nicole Else-Quest found “…that on average across all the nations the gender difference was negligible.”
But she and her colleagues did notice an interesting pattern, “When you look at the variability across nations you see it varies a great deal. There are some nations where girls do better than boys. There are some nations boys do better than girls.”
Countries that had larger gender gaps favoring boys included Tunisia and Korea. And those favoring girls were Jordan and Bahrain.
But most countries showed no gender gap including the United States, Sweden, Germany.
Else-Quest notes that there is some association between the status of women in each country and their ability to do mathematics.
“The percentage of women in parliament was moderately associated with the size of the gender gap in math such that in countries where there were fewer women in parliament males tended to do better in math than girls by a larger extent than in countries in which there was better representation by women in parliament.”
That connection would seem to imply that achievement levels are not innate and fixed.
"And that these gender differences that we are seeing are not because they have different brains.. It’s because of social forces--which suggests that they can be changed.”
—Christie Nicholson
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12 Comments
Add Commenti was expecting the differences to be within the different areas of mathematics such as data analysis and geometry.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWell, I didn't read paper , but I think the association between the status of woman in paliament and their ability to do mathematics is not acceptable with weak evidence, it is just a speculation, isn't it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think the association between the status of woman in the country, specifically in the paliament and their ability to do mathematics is not accentable with weak evience. It is just a speculation, isn't it?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis topic is so fraught with emotion, prejudice and political correctness requirements that it is difficult to write about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example, if we merely insist that men and women have different emotional and intellectual patterns, we are called sexists even though all of our scientific and cultural evidence supports us.
It is clear to anyone with an open mind that the major requirement for success in mathematics is a passion for doing it. Even people with various mental limitations can contribute to mathematics if they can discover a combination of passion, ambition and love that enables them to do mathematics 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year during a long lifetime.
All of this talk of mathematical talent is misplaced even though there are clear, inherited differences in all human abilities.
What seems clear to me is that every mathematician can contribute something that reflects his unique abilities, whether it is (simply?) passing on his own passion for mathematics through teaching mathematics, or producing theorems that result from the unusual constellation of his brain.
Women's brains are certainly different from men's and if men are able to do things women can't do, in mathematics and other intellectual areas, it is just as certain that women will excel in areas that reflect the different physical characteristics of their brains.
We should be happy about this because women have done so little mathematics until now. When their unique abilities come into play we should expect to find them doing things, relatively easily, that cause more difficulty, on average, for men.
Why not embrace common sense, ancient experience and modern scientific evidence that demonstrates the many differences between the sexes?
Passionate motivation, combined with talent, produces great success but, in most human endeavors, talent goes begging while raw ambition triumphs.
This topic is so fraught with emotion, prejudice and political correctness requirements that it is difficult to write about.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor example, if we merely insist that men and women have different emotional and intellectual patterns, we are called sexists even though all of our scientific and cultural evidence supports us.
It is clear to anyone with an open mind that the major requirement for success in mathematics is a passion for doing it. Even people with various mental limitations can contribute to mathematics if they can discover a combination of passion, ambition and love that enables them to do mathematics 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year during a long lifetime.
All of this talk of mathematical talent is misplaced even though there are clear, inherited differences in all human abilities.
What seems clear to me is that every mathematician can contribute something that reflects his unique abilities, whether it is (simply?) passing on his own passion for mathematics through teaching mathematics, or producing theorems that result from the unusual constellation of his brain.
Women's brains are certainly different from men's and if men are able to do things women can't do, in mathematics and other intellectual areas, it is just as certain that women will excel in areas that reflect the different physical characteristics of their brains.
We should be happy about this because women have done so little mathematics until now. When their unique abilities come into play we should expect to find them doing things, relatively easily, that cause more difficulty, on average, for men.
Why not embrace common sense, ancient experience and modern scientific evidence that demonstrates the many differences between the sexes?
Passionate motivation, combined with talent, produces great success but, in most human endeavors, talent goes begging while raw ambition triumphs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor decades, I taught math at secondary and tertiary levels. I could recall practically similar findings in the 1990s, except then the sample sizes were very much smaller.
The most significant of this study is that there is no significant difference in mathematical performance between the genders. This should clear once and for all the myth that boys are better in math than girls.
I am indifferent to the claims of this article, but it makes me wonder if ethnic origin played a role in the math aptitude differences. Can the researchers be sure that the differences were just social? Furthermore, why do people get so hung up on the concept of boys possibly having greater math or engineering aptitudes, but think nothing of the commonly held belief that girls are better at communication skills?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis is the type of study that can't be adequately assessed without close study of methodology. It needs to be gnawed on in the psych literature for a while.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBlah Blah Blah where is the supporting data? Boys? Girls? What age? What socioeconomic background? If this is all true why then are so few accomplished mathematicians women? Is this some sort of covert plan by men to discredit them? Maybe all of the breakthroughs in math were really perpetrated by women and men stole their ideas! Isn't this contra to study after study suggesting people tend to gravitate to the things the excel in? Why then don't women pursue mathematics more often? Advances in mathematics have been occurring for thousands of years and very few women are involved. I think this cause and effect idea is nonsense. Please repeat the article with some actual data and an outline of how it was collected.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisVery political correct. Only why there are almost no women among significant mathematicians? I know... Political correctness indicates one answer: sexism.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a lot of denial here. You might read the first sentence of this article again "Stereotypes are usually the last thing to change in the face of contradictory evidence. " Yep, it seems about right!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhere is the data? The original data lies in many separate studies, this is said to be a "meta-analysis" of them. (A meta-what? See wikipedia.)
If the study is well-done, and we readers have no reason to think it's not ... but we should read it to see what we think ... it still doesn't explain everything in this complicated mess of issues. No, it doesn't explain "Why so few (e.g. women in the Berkeley math dept)?" Hey, it doesn't have to. It's simply one, true little piece in a complicated puzzle about ability, preference, biology, society, ...
If you immediately reject this little article and claim the research is not properly done and/or not relevant because it doesn't answer question X, and only answers question Y -- this says a lot about your mindset, and not much about the study.
Christie: Here's a good paper for you to read. Perhaps a little research in the future would help your career:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/fryer/files/Empirical%20analysis%20of%20the%20gender%20gap_final%20manuscript.pdf