No Gap Found In Math Abilities of Girls, Boys

sciencehabit writes "For anyone who still believes that boys are better at math than girls, a massive new study published today in Science shows there's no difference. 'Among students with the highest test scores, the team did find that white boys outnumbered white girls by about two to one. Among Asians, however, that result was nearly reversed. Hyde says that suggests that cultural and social factors, not gender alone, influence how well students perform on tests.' But the researchers do note a disturbing trend towards omitting harder kinds of math questions from standardized tests."

Comments

I think xkcd sums it up nicely.

[biased_estimator]

http://xkcd.com/385/

Re:A root cause you'll never hear about

[Reality Master 101]

Not controversy, plain wrong

I don't know if you're just trying to be funny or not, but just in case, you'll note that Bobby Riggs was 55 years old and hardly the best male tennis player in the world, but gave Billie Jean King an actual competitive match. She only won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Of course, earlier Riggs had humiliated Margaret Court, age 30 and the best female player in the world, 6-2, 6-1.

Sometime in the 80s, Martina Navratilova was asked about this generally, and she was quoted as saying she would lose to the 100th ranked male player.

Re:I, for one

[drsmithy]

Do you have data to back up that claim?

When you compare the same jobs, same qualifications, same experience, same competency and same working hours, there is no meaningful difference between male and female salaries.

Note that most comparisons do *not* do this (eg: they frequently average salaries for men and women across the entire workforce), because they are trying to support an agenda.

Re:I, for one

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

When you compare the same jobs, same qualifications, same experience, same competency and same working hours, there is no meaningful difference between male and female salaries.

I don't think you are correct. I remember reading a study a year ago that compared men and women's salaries for the same jobs and levels of education and experience and the results were women paid 15% less overall (25% less when one only looked at the private sector).

I don't recall who the study was by and Google does not turn it up right away. Do you have a source for your claim?

I'd also like to note that even if there is reliable data showing men and women make the same amount for the same job (with the same qualifications, experience, hours, etc.) that does not necessarily indicate equality as it allows for it to be harder for women to get high paying jobs. For example, if you look at all the people who are CFO's for fortune 500 companies and determine that the men and women make about the same, but 90% of those CFO's are men, that could very easily be an indication that it is harder for women to get those jobs because of discrimination. Alternately, it could indicate that for social reasons women are less likely to go into a career track that would lead them to such a position. The point being, same pay for the same job is not conclusive evidence of no gender discrimination.

Re:A root cause you'll never hear about

[ElleyKitten]

Seriously. Anyone who has dated a geek girl knows that misogyny is a drop in the bucket compared to the problem that girls geared toward science and math face from other girls who will be absolutely VICIOUS in putting them down.

Unless you're only talking about high school (where most kids are vicious, whether you're geeky or fat or wierd or anything else they don't like) other girls are NOT the biggest problem for geek girls. In college, I took mostly geeky classes, so I was either the only girl or the other girls were just as geeky as me, so I didn't see non-geeky girls who would put me down to often. Once I got out of school, it became even easier to avoid girls who would judge me for being geeky. But you know who I can't avoid? Geek guys. So, even if more girls are cruel than geek guys are sexist, the geek guys affect me much more than anti-geek girls ever could. Everytime I try to explain something technical to a guy and he decides I must not know what I'm talking about, it hurts me and can (and probably has) hurt my career. When a more experienced tech at my current job started to take me under his wing and mentor me, and then completely stopped talking to me after I stopped wearing makeup (yes, I'm serious), that sexism hurts me more than all the comments girls made behind my back in high school. Now I get to wonder if it's worth stooping to the pettiness and wearing makeup again so I can get back in the good graces of someone who could probably help me a lot here, or if it would be wrong to try to move up solely on the base of my appearance, and I get to wonder if all the other guys here are just as sexist but less blatant about it. That's far from the only example of sexism I've experienced, it's just the most recent. Hands down, sexist guys are much more of a problem for geeky girls than anti-geeky girls are.