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The Myth of the Mathematics Gender Gap
Coryoth writes "The widely held belief that there is disparity in the innate mathematical abilities of men and women has been steadily whittled down in recent years. The gender gap in basic mathematics skills closed some time ago, and recently the gap in high school mathematics has closed up as well, with as many girls as boys now taking high school calculus. Newsweek reports on a new study published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that begins to lay to rest the remaining argument that it is at the highest levels of mathematics that the innate differences show. Certainly men dominate current academia, with 70% of mathematics Ph.D.s going to men; however that figure is down from 95% in the 1950s. Indeed, while there remain gaps in achievement between the genders, the study shows that not only are these gaps closing, but the size of the gap varies over differing cultures and correlates with the general degree of gender inequality in the culture (as defined by World Economic Forum measures). In all, this amounts to strong evidence that the differences in outcomes in mathematics between the genders is driven by sociocultural factors rather than innate differences in ability."
Certainly men dominate current academia, with 70% of mathematics Ph.D.s going to men; however that figure is down from 95% in the 1950s. Indeed, while there remain gaps in achievement between the genders, the study shows that not only are these gaps closing, but the size of the gap varies over differing cultures and correlates with the general degree of gender inequality in the culture (as defined by World Economic Forum measures).
Of course, the study was done by a team of female mathematicians/statisticians, so we really can't trust the results.
I'm kidding, don't flame me.
we've just beaten men down so much that we've lowered the bar on everything?
How about showcasing the widening gender gap in BA/BS degrees in Western culture? Women are earning more degrees almost across the board, and yet there is almost no measures being taken to call attention to that disparity.
How about we close that gap in CS now.
Im so lonely :(
...as many girls as boys now taking high school calculus
My problem is the number of **attractive** girls taking my class. There are girls, and then there are girls.
The only correlation between math and sex that I can see: I don't get either of them
In every field which was once exclusively male, but is now no longer, it's been claimed first, that no woman can perform alongside men; second, when the first claim is disproven, that hardly any woman can; and third, when the second claim is disproven, that maybe a few women can, but a majority lack the ability or the inclination. And every single time, as the residual sexism fades, the third claim is shown to be false as well. Business, politics, medicine: it's a familiar pattern. Now math is next on the list.
In short, if there's a difference, it's not the sex, it's the sexism. Anyone who can't acknowledge this is a bigot and a twit.
Men and women are different, yadda yadda. Yes, they are, and they may be even be different in ways that affect performance at certain jobs. But every time the issue is put to the test, we see that those differences are not nearly as signficant as the bigots desperately believe. The difference in means between the sexes, or any other groups into which people can conveniently be divided, is far smaller than the variances between individuals.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I don't really care whether there is a gap or not, but I am a stickler for accuracy. Taking the course is not the same thing as passing or excelling. It's an important metric, but not the only one. Perhaps we have a "traditionally disadvantaged" group being pushed, in the name of equality, into an area they dislike because it doesn't come natural, and they're barely passing. That's not success - that's a failure because these people probably would be more successful in life playing to their strengths rather than weaknesses.
I'm not saying that's the case. But it's a plausible explanation for the results in TFS, while not dismissing the myth, I'd say they have to do more work and study to proclaim this myth busted.
Obligatory XKCD:
http://xkcd.com/385/
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Does it really matter? There are countless abilities that differ between the two genders...
and between left and right handed people
and those with black or red hair
and those with blue eyes
or darker skin...
The list goes on, what of it?
Barbie said that "Math class is tough!" (often misquoted as "math is hard.")
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/10/21/business/company-news-mattel-says-it-erred-teen-talk-barbie-turns-silent-on-math.html
It's funny how these inaccurate stereotypes find their way into the stranges places.
We have a statistic, 70% of PhDs in Mathematics go to men and up to 30% go to women.
But does this tell us anything about the abilities of both men and women to compete at that level? It might, but it also could be social. Boys are from a very young age encouraged in Maths, Engineering, and Sciences while a lot of girls are encouraged to embrace their social and emotional sides.
If you look at a Psychology, Social Science, or English they have an extremely disproportional amount of women in them. Just as Maths, and Science often has a disproportionate amount of men.
PS - Too few women in Maths/Engineering is "broken." Too few men in Social Science/Child Care/Psychology is "fine."
So does this mean that it's hereby not only politically correct to say that females have better verbal abilities than males, but now also higher overall aptitude too?
(not meant to necessarily have any correlation with reality)
People seem to assume that what is happening is that previously, cultural norms dictated gender inequality when there was no biological basis, and now that those norms have changed, biological equality is restored. Couldn't it be the other way around? I.e. that there is a biological inequality, that is being altered by cultural factors to produce equality?
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
I was a sports broadcasting and psychology double major in my undergraduate studies. When I was taking sports broadcasting classes it was a total sausage fest. Thirty guys talking about sports in an academic environment as if it was a locker room. Meanwhile in psychology it was always majority female in classrooms ranging from 60% to 90%. It was because sports writing and reporting is a male dominated field, whereas psychology was a necessary field of study for many female students who wanted to teach elementary or middle school, a field traditionally occupied by women. Also my school was 60% female so a typical class would have 60% women which really emphasized how incredibly one sided sports broadcasting was a major regarding gender divide.
While men and women solve problems differently, our brains are made up differently so that is to be expected, most studies conclude that even though we solve problems differently men and women reach the same conclusions eventually but they take different paths. Both genders are equally smart but think differently to solve the same problems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_differences
In every field which was once exclusively male, but is now no longer, it's been claimed first, that no woman can perform alongside men; second, when the first claim is disproven, that hardly any woman can; and third, when the second claim is disproven, that maybe a few women can, but a majority lack the ability or the inclination.
. . . so which one applies to pissing contests?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If women don't know math they might fuck up recipes.
It might be sociological in nature, but that does not mean that it is due to bigotry of white straight males.. I know, maybe women dont LIKE math as much, statistically speaking.
In most fields with a gender disparity in either direction, the minority sex is generally, under any reasonable attempt to measure inherent "ability", just as able to do it. The real gaps seem to be in interest: fewer men than women wish to enter psychology as a field, and fewer women than men wish to enter mathematics as a field, to take two examples. Why is that? It's not entirely clear, but it starts pretty early. For example, boys are much more likely than girls to play ad-hoc games that involve numbers and math, even at ages where girls tend to do better in school. Boys are also much more likely to build electronics or program computers as a hobby. Probably much of this is cultural, but that's where the real disparity lies, and you're never going to get parity unless you figure out how to change interest.
On the other hand, changing interest is always tricky, because you run the risk of trying to tell people they ought to be interested in something they really don't seem to be interested in.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
if women were able to grasp basic mathematical skills my wife would know how to balance a freaking checkbook and understand why she can't buy a 300 dollar pair of shoes.
By the time you are 20, your brain has gone through several "windows of opportunity" which are the best time to learn specific skills. For example, the window of opportunity for foreign languages for most people is in preschool.
If a given culture discourages certain members from learning certain skills until after the window closes, these individuals are now stuck with what might as well be an innate disadvantage in that area.
For these individuals, it's not important whether they could have been good at this or that if only they had taken classes when they were younger, the important thing is that if they do try to learn it, it will be relatively hard for them.
Plus, there's the whole issue of experience, someone who starts learning a skill at age 5 will have a 15-year head start on someone who starts learning a skill at age 20.
--
As societies, we need to accept the fact that there are very few if any things beyond giving birth or being a wet-nurse that either gender has an inherent advantage in if both are given equal opportunity and encouragement when they are young. All or almost all "gender-specific" advantages are created by the environment in which we live.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
This is an extremely dishonest story which does not address the most basic issues involved.
What Summers said at Harvard is supported by the evidence and remains the best explanation
for the "gender gap." Indeed, he felt confident that he could "get away" with his statements
because the evidence is so overwhelming and the facts so obvious.
Consider any number of physical traits the measurement of which is not controversial
(for instance, height, weight, ratio of arm length to leg length, etc.) A few empirical observations
can be readily made:
(1) the distributions are roughly Gaussian --- this make sense as these traits are controlled
by multiple genes and some version of the central limit theorem is operational
(2) the means vary by gender and ethnicity
(3) the standard deviations vary by gender and ethnicity
(4) a pattern quickly emerges: for virtually all traits the STANDARD DEVIATION
of the male distributions is somewhat larger than the female distribution --- although
not by much. Again this makes some intuitive sense --- men are biological more expendable
then women so more variation in male traits can be tolerated.
I can hardly be expected to believe that physical traits (the measurement of which is generally
not controversial) are unique in having property (4). Especially when the observable
data available for mental traits exhibits a difference in standard deviation.
This difference in standard deviation predicts what we see in practice --- if we set
a high threshold and look at the number of men and women with ability above
that threshold we expect the ratio of men to women to be large. Because this
is an effect of differences in standard deviation, it is not observable near the
middle of the distribution --- only at the tails.
There are many many articles which conclude that there is no gender gap
in mathematical ability because the mean of the male and female distributions
are the same or similar. I am not familiar with every such article,
but every one I have read --- including the two famous Science articles ---
presents observational data showing a difference in STANDARD DEVIATION.
An issue none of them seem to address.
Incidentally, any one familiar with the error function can easily
see that the variations in the ratio of men to women whose
mathematical ability exceeds a given threshold by ethnicity are
also predicated by this approach (to startlingly high accuracy --
do the math!) This again follows simply from the fact that
the mean and standard deviation of biological characteristics
vary by ethnicity
Everything I have said can be verified to a ridiculously high level of
certainty by someone with basic knowledge of Stat 101 and a copy
of Excel.
Does the debate have to be who is better at math? Let's assume there are gender differences in brain physioogy and social conditioning, and that some of these differences will continue to exist even in an "equal" society. Isn't it possible that men will be "innately" better at some kinds of mathematics, and women will be "innately" better at other kinds of mathematical thinking. And isn't it possible that by understanding these potential differences and working together in productive teams, we can make better progress as a result? Wouldn't that be a win-win situation?
To say that there's no gap means that whatever statistic is being used for comparison, it has the exact same value for the population of men as it does for the population of women.
The likelihood of that being true is essentially zilch.
The real questions should be: (a) how big is the gap, and (b) is it big enough for us to care.
I think men are just getting less intelligent and they think differently than they used to. You see, in the 200+ year history of our country, we've sent our strongest, mentally stable and most intelligent men to die in wars and left the weaker and less intelligent and mentally unstable at home to breed. Through unnatural selection, we've thinned our own gene pool. The male gender has become more effeminate and now it seems they think like women instead of men. It's not the women who are getting smarter, it is us men are are getting dumber.
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
Why oh why would you ever want to change interests? That's my whole problem with this debate whenever it comes up.
The real "solution" to this "problem" is to allow boys and girls to go into whatever field they so choose and encourage them no matter what.
There is a branch of Applied Science where discrimination and outdated sexist attitudes still rule. The gender balance there is so heinously skewed that no other explanation is possible. There are those that suggest that perhaps persons of the under-represented gender simply aren't interested in this profession, or perhaps they lack the skills to do well, but clearly they are just making excuses for the sexist bigots that still dominate this field. I'm talking, of course, about the School of Nursing, where only 5% of the graduates are men.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with either side of the argument. I don't know, and I know that I don't know. But... What's the big deal? Why is it such a faux pas that men may be better at maths or something. It's like, there is a massive backlash any time somebody says anything about race correlating with IQ or something... Well, why shouldn't there be a correlation? There are lot of other physical attributes that are different in different races and sexes, and yet a lot of people (In yet another case of something politically correct or something) seem to think every single person is identical in certain ways, e.g. intelligence. (I have not RTFA, and I have no problem with researching the topic for whatever reason, I am just having a dig at people who instantly think pointing out any difference between people of different race / sex / ... is evil discrimination. Oh, and while I'm on the topic, if you want the door holding open, iron my shirt and make me a sandwich, bitch)
I'm still amazed that you can CHOOSE to opt out of high school calculus. I live in the US now and I know some youngsters that chose to minimize mathematics in their school schedule and then they wonder why they are stuck at pre-calc in 10th grade. Where I went to school in Europe, the girls or anyone didn't really have the choice. It was 8 hours of mathematics a week portioned between statistics (1h), geometry (1h), calculus (3h) and algebra (2h) and sometimes statistics was interchanged with small episodes of chaos theory or applied mathematics or whatever was necessary for a particular group.
I believe that the US schooling system needs a complete overhaul in order to create a better knowledge economy. First thing to do is add at least 1h per day to the school day. I see most kids get home at 2 or 3 in the afternoon even if they have to travel 2 hours because they're in an intercity exchange program. I remember being at school until at least 4pm and then you had to do homework and study for the next day too and if you were going to a specific specialty (eg. art, electronics, sports), traveling could also take 1 or 2 hours. The second thing to do is reduce sports activities during school hours to a maximum of 4 hours per week and fill those voids with science, mathematics and art. And for all those living in rural areas it would be interesting to expand electronic schooling so they only have to go to physical building two or three times a week (hybrid of home schooling and standard schooling). Those times should be devoted to a short overview, lab time and testing to make sure nobody is slacking at home.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_winners_of_the_Mathcounts_competition
Every single name on the list is either Male or Asian.
I think its too simplistic to put men and women on a continuum and talk about which is 'better' than the other. In my experience teaching math to men and women, they are approximately equal in skill overall. However, on the average they excelled in different ways. Women often organized their thoughts more clearly, while men seemed to get farther kludging their way through things. And at the very high end of the distribution, its not obvious what the differences would be.
In any case, there are obviously very intelligent mathematicians of both genders at the high end, so there needn't be any debate about that.
If fewer women become mathematicians than men, maybe women are just smarter about their career choices. Its not like there are a ton of non-academic jobs out there for people with math degrees.
Well I'm ending my first year of a Math degree (in Barcelona, Catalonia), and the ratio of men and women in my class is really near to 1:1.
Those who excel are also equally distributed. Perhaps this is an isolated case, but definitely times have changed (or at least seem to be changing) for good.
it's just that men are getting dumber. We have lower enrollments in college. We tend to sit around and watch TV/play video games more than women do. Just a thought.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The article is confused about where most of the real differences are purported to be.
No one credible claims that females have less ability to learn mathematics or crunch numbers in most cases, which is what this article is contesting. In other words, they built themselves a strawman. The differences involve application, not learning.
What *is* credibly claimed, in the sense that there is not insignificant quantities of direct and indirect evidence in literature, is that females are markedly poorer at certain classes of applied mathematical problems, notably applications involving complex, high-dimensionality metric spaces. Females understand the mathematics just fine, they have relative difficulty applying it to real-world problems when system complexity exceeds a certain threshold. This is largely attributed to male brains having more neurons dedicated to conceptualizing and manipulating spatial relationships.
There are real differences, but it is mostly in specific areas of the applied side and there is a relatively straightforward causal theory related to brain structure. That people feel it necessary to repeatedly trot out the strawman that women have less ability to learn math while conveniently ignoring supportable arguments for differences in practical ability reeks of a political agenda. There are other biases in application spaces strongly favoring females that also have straightforward causal links related to differences in brain structure but which say nothing about the ability of males to learn.
This story was used in the A-level general studies paper (Edexel, I believe?)
-- Lattyware (www.lattyware.co.uk)
When it comes to mathematical and scientific ability, I really don't care about someone's genitals. Stop checking. If a woman shows ability there should be no additional road blocks compared to a man who shows ability. There should be no affirmative action either.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Fact is, it's hardware for a woman to get her MRS in math than to get her PhD. Unlike, say, sociology or psychology.
In short, if there's a difference, it's not the sex, it's the sexism. Anyone who can't acknowledge this is a bigot and a twit.
I still have an open mind on the subject. Does that make me a bigot and a twit?
But every time the issue is put to the test, we see that those differences are not nearly as signficant as the bigots desperately believe.
I find the gender gap in mathematics interesting. While I would like to know why there is a gender gap, I really don't have any personal stake in the reason for the gender gap. Is it inate? Is it social? Is is a combination? All of those would be interesting results.
I have no desire to shut women out of lucritive jobs in science and engineering. However, I don't think that we are suffering from a shortage of scientists and engineers, and further more I think that these fields are wide open to anyone (man or woman) that is interested. And yet there is still a gender gap. Is this something that really needs fixing?
In order to prove that women or men are superior at ANYTHING let alone math, you'd have to have a male and female that were completely identical with the exception of their gender, and raise them in exactly the same social environment with absolutely no variation.
Since this is never going to happen, there will always be stupid people in the world that really think it matters.
There are more girls taking it, or just fewer boys?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'd say that's inaccurate, too. It would be more accurate to say that the top end of all women can't reach the level of raw strength as that of the top end of all men. There are many women who are stronger and faster than a number of men.
Completely accurate but incomplete. Men on average have significantly higher upper body strength than women. Aside from being simply obvious there is a vast amount of data to support this thesis. Men overall also have greater ability to build muscle than women. One simply has to watch a bodybuilding competition to see the difference in potential. There are some women that exceed many/most men in a given sport but no women that exceed all men when strength matters. Outside of a few niche sporting events, men hold virtually all athletic world records where strength is a meaningful factor. This holds true at every level of competition and every age past puberty. Even at relatively low levels of performance and even with adequate training most women measurably under-perform their male counterparts in most sports. If these differences did not exist, there would be little reason to have women compete separately from the men.
I cannot reasonably address the mental differences between men and women but there is NO question that men are physically stronger on average or in peak potential. It's ok to admit that there are at least some differences between men and women.
Men and women are different
No no no... you got it all wrong. It's "Women be different than men!"
Now personally, I was pretty strong in math when I was in high school - but the best math students were girls... So I never really thought of math as a guy thing.
Bow-ties are cool.
These days, white straight males don't like math much, either. Well, I'm a white male and I think math is just fabulous!!! Oh, wait...
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
You are a smelly pirate hooker!
The second thing to do is reduce sports activities during school hours to a maximum of 4 hours per week and fill those voids with science, mathematics and art.
reducing highscool extra-curricular / sporting time would only lead to an increase in the already rampant obesity rates. new plan.
Did you seriously just fall for that troll?
If women want to display equality, they need to compete on equal ground.
That presumes that the ground IS actually equal which I would argue it probably is not equal - not yet anyway, though it is headed in the right direction. Nevertheless I agree with your sentiment that for true equality to exist the playing field should be level and many old prejudices need to die. Personally I'll concede that things are equal or nearly so when women in the US have to register for the draft.
I've always found it ironic that most women who claim to be for equal rights never seem terribly eager for certain dangerous responsibilities that should go with those rights. For example I see no logical reason why women in the US are not forced like the men to register for the draft. Women clearly are capable of serving on a voluntary basis, and most of the jobs in the military apparently can be performed admirably by either gender. Yet I've NEVER heard a single self-described feminist clambering for the right to be drafted into military service. Sometimes rights come with ugly responsibilities. Seems like a double standard to me.
This is media propoganda, through and through. It's insulting even.
Women in math? The "gender gap" between women and men in math, even "basic" math has "closed"? BULLSHIT!
First, "calculus" is not "basic math". It's not needed for most academic majors, nor is it a requirement for entry to so much as a community college. Perhaps, "General Math" is a "basic" math. Perhaps, Pre-Algebra is a "basic" math. But, most certainly, any level of Calculus is NOT a "basic" math.
Secondly, I have been in five higher education institutions spanning two different countries and have majored in Math in particular along with engineering courses. I also took Calculus in High-school... when I attended a high school that even HAD the course (not all American high schools offer calculus).
First, anything past Algebra I and Geometry in highschool and you are officially a nerd or geek, therefore you probably have less options of having a girlfriend. The girls have no interest in that sort of thing, nor any male that has such aptitude. If they did, such classes would have a fair number of girls in them, just to be in social alignment with the males fully able of completing the courses. But, look no further than media entertainment, and frankly, being a nerd or smart isn't "hip".
Ok, so that's more of a social outlook on the issue, and it is. Can girls do the calculus? Maybe, but most don't even if they could, most don't even try or think such a task is even credible to endure.
As a result, any claims that there are a lot of girls in a high school calculus class, is just that a claim. I dare any of them to actually, physically, literally walk their ignorant butts into a random high-level math class and count with their index finger the number of girls in that class. (This will render a far higher count than if we subtracted the ugly girls from any "attractive" girls.)
Now, walk to college. This will be easy as randomly roaming the halls of a high school might have the police arresting you. But you can stand around and most colleges and universities. The gap is closing? Bullshit, if anything it's getting wider.
Of all the years and all the courses of math above Trigonometry I have took, maybe two girls total I might have personally dated . Including all "females", less than ten total. Two of them, were the professors. My Linear Algebra professor was a female, a rather attractive one too. But, the numbers are there, per raw experience. And it only got worse in college and at the highest levels of math females are virtually extinct.
My gripe about all this, is that they should actually do something to make girls look at being smart as an advantage to life. Instead, if one has a cute ass, they'll just leave Calculus to the nerds and hope her boyfriend becomes a NFL star. Regardless if she could have passed a calculus course, the fact she didn't makes her dumb all the same and since she's among millions of other girls the end result is well reflected that women can't be counted on when it comes to mathematical abilities.
They want people to believe there are females in these math classes even if they aren't actually physically present. For most people never take calculus, and now they face the few that have and might call them sexist if they announce "uh... I only saw a handful of girls in any of my classes when getting a Masters in Mathematics".
They want more girls in math? They need to come up with something that actually makes girls consider it as a useful tool in life. As it is now, 10,000 dollars for a hard and burdensome education or an easy and highly profitable breast augmentation? You decide, as inherently lazy humans, which many girls might opt for.
This was in a medium-sized factory city in Ontario. Not a university town or anything special. Big blue-collar suburbia.
I know from older siblings that girls in sciences were not taken seriously by that school just a few year earlier, but that attitude had vanished by the end of the 70s. What's this business about "recently?"
Yay, /., where if you're not PC, you're 'flamebait'...
What if OP had said "how many asian mathematicians are there"? That would probably not be tagged flamebait.
Both would be interesting statistics to see.
I'm 5'7". That's the same height as Florence Griffith-Joyner (aka Flo Jo). Back in high school I could run faster than Flo Jo did in her 100m and 200m world records. Two problems: (1) I'm not a woman, and (2) I wasn't quite fast enough to compete with the 6'+ men that dominate mens sprints (Hint: 5'7" is ~75%ile for women, but ~25%ile for men).
I've observed over the years that speed divided by height is fairly consistent for top performers(*), regardless of gender. So I'm confident in saying that I think a 6'2" to 6'5" woman could beat Usain Bolt's 100m and 200m world records. The problem is that there are very few women that tall, and most of the ones that tall aren't very coordinated.
(* Usain Bolt should be able to run 4% faster if he took some time to work on his stride; compare the videos of Michael Johnson's 19.32s 200m world record in 1996 vs Usain Bolt's 19.30s 200m world record in 2008, and then compare their heights.)
I tend to agree with the idea that gender has little to do with ability in math or science. As someone who has had to pull a team of 3 clueless guys through a programming project, I can tell you I have no problem keeping up in class. I do recognize that social pressures and conditioning do influence young girls to do other things. My classes average about 1 female to every 5 males. I once volunteered to help some brownies (younger girl scouts about 6 to 8 years old) through an activity in internet browsing at the computer lab at my college. The general impression I got from doing this was that they were more interested in fashion than computers. There was a lame flash game that let you pick a girl, backdrops and music to make your own music video. They went through the selections and when they got to one that looked very studious and wore glasses, they said she was ugly. It was just a cartoon drawing of a girl, so I did not think it was possible for her to actually look ugly, but the girls I was helping said they would never pick her and picked the "pretty" blond girl instead.
How come a 70/30 ratio makes this gap a myth ?
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
Hmm girls taking maths? Now lets just extend maths into physics for the moment. In my college there are just 2 girls in my class out of 20 and about 6 girls in the entire year of physics. Strange huh? Surely there's a correlation between maths & physics?
Over the years, teaching approaches have been altered to accommodate what are judged to be inadequacies based on race or gender. There has been a focus on providing better outcomes for groups that are perceived to be disadvantaged. I've read several articles in mainstream media about how teaching methods are allowing more girls to flourish and boys are becoming the ones who need more attention and encouragement.
It's a complex issue, and this study oversimplifies its analysis.
So the reason I washed out of college level math in my third year is because I'm a dimwit not because I'm a girl? The truth hurts.
and all you 20 somethings, wait till you hit 30 and you realise you've only got 5 years left in you to have kids. my partner was never that interested in kids and she's about to have her 30th and it's nothing but talk about babies all of a sudden.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This is missing an important point.
Males have greater brain specialization. (In particular, right handed males have the most.) This is why savants are more likely to be male. Head injuries to males (and especially right-handed males) are more likely to cause the complete and utter loss of some function.
So you can have female savants, you can have female geniuses, you can have just as many females doing just fine in math, but the overall likelihood is that at the very top of the field, where the people are often badly broken people who specialize in math and seem oddly incapable of anything else, the ratio of males to females will be higher.
Is this a societal phenomenon rather than a genetic one? While it might be a mix of factors, you absolutely cannot argue that male brains are just like female ones. You need only look at the prevalence of autism in males vs. females to see this. (Unless you're going to argue that autism is all about rearing technique -- in which case we ought to be dressing all our children uniformly in pink.)
"You know why women can't play Chess? They have small hearts...can't get enough blood to the brain. That's why Chess is a Young Man's Sport!"
-- Eccentric Chess Player to a bunch of college freshmen hanging out at the Union. I was one of the dumbfounded freshmen...
It's good to know that Math is not in this category :)
Whether you like to accept it or not, women and men are psychobiologically different. Meaning, there are observable, quantifiable and consistent physical differences in the brain and its chemistry based solely on gender.
As a result, women consistently perform worse at spatial-based tasks than men. Women consistently perform better at communications-based tasks than men. There are millions of well-conducted experiments and studies that re-prove the existence of these and other gender-based differences over and over again.
It frustrates the hell out of me that the loony 'Politically Correct' regime is so enforced on us and continues to reduce to denial any innate gender difference even in the face of hard evidence.
Most 'normal' people now feel they can't even openly raise the possibility, much less the FACT that we actually are mentally differently-abled BECAUSE of gender.
Society as a whole will not properly develop until we accept the existence of gender-based ability differences, including mental, as a fact and move on.
You (and all the morons who predictably moderated you up) only see the gender studies you WANT to see and ignore anything that doesn't fit into your pre-determined opinion. It's called confirmation bias and the interwebs is frankly powered by it.
Males
Frequency *
* *
* *
* *
mathematical ability -------->
Females
*
* *
* *
* *
mathematical ability --------->
less variation in females, at both ends
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
As a (male) high school student who has taken many advanced math/physics/programming classes, I must say bluntly that not only are the gender ratios very skewed in these classes, but the male students are the brightest. I'll go one step further. The asian students (I'm white) are consistently smarter than the white students. Now I don't know what amount of this is coincidence of my limited sample size, but I have very definitely noticed this.
This is so ridiculous. These studies generally tend to ignore so many relevant things including, but not limited to the following:
1) opposite gender inequalities (men vs. women in nursing or vetrinary)
2) years dedicated to a field (far more women than men take time off in their early 30s for family, this impacts average salary over time)
3) actual examples of "different" people actually being better at stuff, such as the way many autistic children are very skilled at math compared to their non-special needs counterparts (certainly not all, but includes girls)
4) ignores the question of preference vs. abilty
5) ignores the necessary butt-kissing involved in many fields and whether more women or men are willing to do it
6) ignores very low paying, dangerous, or unpleasant professions
7) ignores opportunity differences, especially in examples of areas where the gender gap has been "overcome" (e.g. there are very real differences in scholarships available to poor women vs. poor men)
8) slices groups of professionals however it is convenient to reinforce their notions (for example women vs. men MDs are always compared, but compare specializations such as Gastrointerology which typically include longer hours and higher stress and it is still dominated by men)
And any woman that thinks she has an unequal playing field just because she heard some sexist comment from some guy in school can kiss my butt. Seriously, we all put up with BS in school and it doesn't end there, it's part of many professions, especially blue collar ones (which is what most IT, programming, and math jobs end up being).
And if you want proof I'm a sexist, here ya go: I am a big guy, weigh well over 200 pounds, if a firefighter ever has to haul my ass out of a burning building I hope it's a dude, because I'm not sure most women firefighters could do it (yeah they're strong, but I'm really big).
Btw, I have a daughter, most of the sexism I fight against comes from her female educators, not the excruciatingly few male ones she has.
Show me the female equivalents of an Euler, Pascal, Leibnitz, Newton, Laplace, Riemann, Fourier, Gauss, Euclid, Archimedes, Poincare, Lagrange, or this article is only so much Dvorakian handwaving crap.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
sorry who care's this is the most irelevent and pointless article on slashdot to date, no one cares what the OP has to say as it's irelevent
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a mathematician] than a white male who hasn't lived that life. You know what I look for most in a mathematician? Empathy.
You're missing the point by a mile. TFA isn't about whether this is so, but rather about why this is so. There is a relatively prominent set of people who insist in attributing this kind of thing to innate differences between the genders; TFA is mentioning studies that rebut that claim, and rather support the counterclaim that the differences are due to culture.
There is a separate question here that TFA doesn't discuss, but which your quote does bring up: pay differences. I'm not going to argue this one way or the other, but there's a question to be asked as to what extent men gravitate towards those jobs because they're financially rewarding, versus to what extent the jobs are financially rewarding because they're done by men. I know it's hard to think of the latter alternative, but basically, it comes down to the power to set the relative prices for different kinds of labor being overwhelmingly in mens' hands.
Are you adequate?
This is good to hear. Now we can start to address other gender issues.
The 10:1 gender ratio in prisons is obviously driven by sociocultural factors rather than innate differences.
We need affirmative action to address this imbalance. To get the ball rolling, I propose a 12 month minimum sentence for parking across 2 bays.
From the abstract "The gender gap has significantly narrowed over time in the U.S. and is not found among some ethnic groups and in some nations ... It correlates with several measures of gender inequality. Thus, it is largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors, not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes." http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/06/01/0901265106.abstract
The president of Harvard was changed for ignoring this equality.
But the simple problem here is that everybody grows up in a culture, and that this throws the whole concept of "biological ability" out the window. There is no way to establish a baseline level of purely biological ability; all you can do is measure relative differences in the end-results of different cultures.
If you have Culture A with equal outcome, and Culture B with unequal outcome, there is simply no way of deciding that one of these outcomes is "more natural" than the other without making some value judgement about the cultures.
Are you adequate?
"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a mathematician] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." You know what is the best quality of a mathematician? Empathy.
There are a couple of things being conflated in this type of research, which to me muddies the water. One question has to do with performance of people not too far from the median. For this question, I believe it's reasonable to look at how achievement test scores vary with factors like gender, race, culture, nationality, socioeconomics, and so forth. The original research cited here involves data of this type. And the conclusion isn't so surprising: Female performance relative to males is very situationally-dependent. Anecdotally one only needs to look at the gender gap (if one exists) in east Asian students vs. the gender gap in white students. *Maybe* white women are at some genetic disadvantage relative to asian women -- again relative to their respective male counterparts -- but it seems unlikely relative to a cultural factor.
What these lines of research don't really show -- because there isn't enough comparative data available -- is what are the external factors that most correlate with the gender gap within different groups. Is it culture that drives the variation? (Asians have higher expectations on daughters? Asians don't propagate the "geek stigma" as much for girls?) Is it economics? (Poorer people cannot educate all their kids, so preferentially educate the boys?) Or something else? Who knows.
The second question being conflated is performance at the far, far, end of the performance spectrum. Fields medal winners represent the 99.999+ percentile. Who knows what defines people out there? There aren't enough of them to really study as a statistical emsemble. It's fair to say that at the high end of any performance curve, a lot of things have to come together simultaneously: Raw talent, motivation, opportunity, persistence, environment, dedication. It could be for example that men have no more innate ability than women, but are just more single-minded in their approach to life. I.e., more men than women are willing to do what Andrew Wiles did, namely hole up in an attic for 10 years to prove Fermat's Last Theorem (with a low probability of success).
Finally, I think with regard to this sort of research it's important to maintain a dispassionate attitude. When I get the feeling the authors are trying to *advocate* for a particular conclusion, that makes me a bit queasy. There seems to be this unstated assumption that an unequal outcome is indicative of unequal opportunity. Would anyone argue that the relative lack of white men in the NBA is indicative of low opportunity or discrimination? Probably not. Perhaps white women don't pursue math at the highest levels because they simply don't want to, compared with other uses for their time. Is this a bad outcome? Within the scientific enterprise it's a very slippery slope to start asserting value judgments about these things.
I see most kids get home at 2 or 3 in the afternoon
That would be because they got to school at 7 AM.
And someone who took stats to a graduate level and read TFA will respond with this quotation from TFA:
Mertz and Hyde looked for evidence of this imbalance - more boys than girls at the extremes of math ability - in international data, too. Again, they found that in some countries as many girls as boys score above the 99th percentile, and in others more girls than boys are extreme math dunces or math geniuses. In both cases, countries with as many or more girls at the upper extreme tend to be those with the greatest gender equality, such as Germany and the Netherlands.
Furthermore, in T(Actual)FA about which TFA reports, I read the following:
Notable is the fact that numerous countries had a normalized SD difference that was insignificantly different from zero, with 3 even having a negative value, that is, greater female variability. (Hyde and Mertz, PNAS June 2, 2009 vol. 106 no. 22, 8803)
In other words, statistical measurement shows that what you're seeing in the performance differences between men and women in mathematics are not innate differences but culturally-mediated differences. Same goes for the ability in language, verbal expression or other acquired skills, I would argue. Women aren't innately better communicators or writers. We're just kind of herded that way, as a group. Young women are, from very early on, acculturated to those skill sets seen as appropriately feminine. Young men are supported to learn and behave in ways that are considered appropriately manly. This socialization begins very early and extends quite a ways into the life-cycle.
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
I am the father of two girls. Just wanted to make that very clear. I think one of them is quite brilliant with mathematics, in fact, and she routinely outperforms her male peers. Top of her class.
Be that as it may, we appear to have one study here, and the rating on "gender equality" by the WEF, to which it is correlated, is a politically derived statistic at best, absolute chauvinist political posturing at worst.
What this indicates is we need to have many many more studies, until we can see repeatable results or a pattern, based on hard statistics, not political ones, before we start calling some very intelligent people who work in the field, most with an excellent grasp of statistics, perpetuators of "myth" and "stereotype."
And anecdotal stuff about who gets sent to the Math Olympiad doesn't imply they performed well at the math Olympiad, or that they belonged there. It implies that the countries were more willing to send women. Period.
Did they do well? That's the real question, the only question which addresses aptitude, and it is not answered.
I want to believe in gender equality as much as anyone else, perhaps more, but this article is shot through with correlative holes and shoddy thinking. It is bad science and political spin.
I am fully willing to believe that this is because mainstream journalism cannot competently cover science. Is there a more scientifically minded article covering this paper?
--
Toro
Some colleges and universities are preferentially offering more admission spots to male candidates than otherwise they would. Why? In order to redress the gender imbalance that's seeing fewer men than women enroll. (See this article from 2007 in US News & World Report.)
Last month also saw the 2nd Conference on College Men which also dealt with some of these concerns.
As an academic and someone who advocates wide access to all sorts of education, I want to see everyone have a chance to study for what they want to and can manage, men and women.
ancarett, historian and zombie gamer
100% of pregnancies are going to women, 0% to men.
Scientists confused.
Nevermind that 95% of *all* PhD's went to men in the 1950s. This statistic might be useful about women and education in general, but it's completely misleading and pointless with regard to math.
Have you considered the possibility that children actually don't acquire their values exclusively from their mothers? But rather, acquire them from their interaction with the culture at large? Have you considered the possibility that, just for example, schools are sites of sustainable transmission of values between the children themselves? So that kids end up learning a very large chunk of their values from peers and kids slightly above their grade.
And what about the constant portrayal of gender roles in the media? Are you also absolutely convinced that that has no part to play? Or, also, what about the fact that until relatively recently in our culture, licit sexual access to women was negotiated between the suitor and the woman's father? Are you absolutely sure that our culture contains no residues of that? Like, for example, are you sure that men's behavior toward women is always truly aimed at gaining the women's favor as an end in itself, and never as, say, a means towards winning an imagined competition between men?
You've considered all of this and more, and correctly discarded all of it, right?
Are you adequate?
Is that in those countries girls generally outperform boys in school. Yes, boys and girls seem to do just as well in math but girls substantially outperform boys on the reading/linguistic tests. Moreover, the difference between girls math and language scores seems to be fairly similar across all these countries.
I wouldn't read too much into this but if anything this is evidence for a biological difference in terms of math ability. Either you think that girls are simply innately better at academics in general or you think some other factor explains the generally superior performance of women in school in these tests. If so one would want to subtract out that effect (say maybe girls care more about achieving in school than boys) before trying to estimate any innate differences.
Frankly what nearly everyone says in this debate is stupid for several reasons:
However, it really pisses me off when I see people try to misrepresent the (still fairly hazy) data as obviously implying a position that they wish were true.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
But when I looked up the article on PNAS http://www.pnas.org/content/106/22/8801.abstract it was subscription only.
When I read the Science magazine article on girls and math, buried in the fine print they admitted that they didn't really have statistically significant data for high-performing girls.
So I won't take this seriously until I can read the original article.
NSF stats for all levels in science and engineering, broken down by gender and race for 2006.
open source modern art: laser taggi
Reducing fat intake will lead to a decrease in obesity. When parents give their kids fatty cheese or hot dogs or hamburgers with ketchup and mayonnaise as a snack something is wrong. Maybe more parents would become aware of the kids and their own obesity and do something about it (you know, like parenting). Right now there is just about enough activity for those youngsters to become slightly obese but not morbidly (there are exceptions) just enough that it's something to watch out for but not something to worry about.
Do you really think that in Europe, China, India, ... all those kids are fatty's? I think that only Americans are so much into sports yet so obese. Heck, I only had 2 hours of gym per week in my days but nobody in my class was ever obese nor am I now.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
So did we. In most countries, schooling is a full time (36 to 40h/week) activity. So worried about your kids when you have to go to work that you need to bring them by car: drop them off and they'll hang out in a study hall where they can work on whatever they need to work on.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
You seem to agree with article's premise, that the rising percentage of women in science is simply due to the diminishment of sexism. What if it is (at least partially) explained by the Affirmative Action instead?
Colleges do seek out female applicants for science majors — that's a very well known fact. So much so, female applicants are advised to specify Math major in their applications to improve their chances, whatever their actual interest — it is easy to switch major once you are in... Other things being equal, a girl will be admitted to Science program over a boy. I'm not saying here, whether that's good or bad in my opinion — only that it does affect the statistics.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Wow - some of those figures are very interesting. In 1998, there were 3.6 million white male students, and 500 thousand black male students. In 2006 when the study ends, there are around 4 million white male students and 650 thousand black male students. So a small, roughly proportionate growth in both, although white males are definitely more likely to receive a university education. Likewise for white females, who went from 4.6 million in 1998 to 5.2 million in 2006. So far, ratios are staying pretty constant.
Where it gets interesting is that black female enrolments rose from 850 thousand in 1998 up to 1.1 million in 2006 - a 30% increase in enrolments compared to around 12% for the other race/gender combos. Statistically, black women are well ahead of everyone else in terms of improvement in education.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
As an ex-mathematician, I can say there's a lot more to having a successful mathematics career than simply how your brain is wired. It is far more of a lifestyle choice than simply a job. If you want to solve the hardest problems your best hope is to have long stretches of peace and quiet where you can do nothing but devote yourself to the problem. Also there is the long hours culture, the regular conferences without available childcare, the amount of collaborative work done in the pub, the way everything has moved on completely if you have a few years out, having to move anywhere in the world to get the next job... None of that fits with family responsibilities. Some still manage to raise a family and make it as a mathematician but those are the exceptional ones who've made it through despite the handicap. Most women either don't go into it in the first place or else quit after their PhD's to settle down.
as many girls as boys now taking high school calculus
This particular observation doesn't really tell us much about the respective abilities of the groups, does it?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
I don't know which sex as a whole is better at maths but I do know that there are many people in each group who are promoting the idea that their group is best and highlighting reasons why their own group might not have faired so well, either in recent years or in the past.
It is impossible to have a sensible discussion on this subject while most of the people involved have an agenda.
It does seem so unlikely to me that two groups of people with such obvious outward differences overall should possess exactly equal average ability.
I have heard it said that boys tend to thrive in an environment where there is more discipline and competition, less coursework and less collaboration and so on.
Unfortunately we are unlikely to be able to conduct an experiment to establish the truth about this once and for all.
The summary seems to confuse innate differences with the gender distribution in the workforce. If the two were directly related, then a change in the workforce would mean a change in innate skills, which are pretty unlikely to have changed that drastically in the past 100 years.
If the argument used to be that the low number of women in math wasn't proof that women were poor at math, then the greater number of women in math now is likewise not proof that women are good at math; the number of women in math is much more strongly influenced by other factors besides innate ability.
I, for one, welcome our new math-knowledgeable overpersons.
"Peace time" recruits are not famous for academic ability, but "Peace Time" and small colonial wars (including every war the West has been involved in since 1945) do not significantly change the gene pool. The major wars (WW1, WW2) were very different; here in the UK most men were called up to fight except those who failed the medical. Every man in my own rather intelligent family fought in WW2 (and some were killed) except a grandfather who was only 5' 0" tall and who went on to have 7 children.
You must be new around here.
I'm all for equality in opportunity. ... But I think it's naive to think that, different as men and women are, that all careers will equalize out to a 50/50 distribution over time.
One eloquent way to put it I have heard in a debate about affirmative action:
"Do you want equal opportunity? Or equal results?"
Oliver.
You're ignoring the fact that women were actively, wilfully, consistently kept out of higher academics and especially from publishing -- even fiction -- until quite recent history. How are there supposed to be women equivalents if women couldn't even study beyond high school, were laughed at if they wanted to publish anything (unless they used a male pseudonym and had a male friend present it) and were being pushed to get married and have babies ASAP? (Keep in mind there was no birth control, so they'd have several, with the attendant responsibilities. Oh and, their husbands weren't expected to help them beyond finances.)
I wonder if they could already be indoctrinated by the time they're six or so.
BTW, I've heard a saying of some Girl Scout troops, "too much doily-making and not enough camping" (the way that statement was given, and common sense, implies that there are some out there that aren't, just sayin'.)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
In Britain the tests have changed so that you get more partial credit instead of exact answer only and this favors women and disadvantages men.
Perhaps the same thing has happened here.
How was that a troll? Guess a moderator with an agenda didn't like me pointing out facts!
This has been an ongoing debate in education for years. The only area where there does seem to be a real significant gender difference is in the ability to visualise 3D spatial relationships, and there is a reasonable explanation from evolutionary biology, in that this skill does seem to assist in hunting large mammals, and a better hunter would have been a more desirable mate. The effect (if it does exist) is not huge though. There seem to be as many studies showing the effect does not exist as that say it does, so the source isn't breaking any new ground.
Really? Why would anyone think that the abilities to do math are gender related?
Biology plays this little trick om women, it's called giving birth. The only innate thing, that is 100%, is the maternal instinct that will definitely leave a woman out of a chance to pursue a degree, in a not so easy field as mathematics.
The last 50 years have brought more possibilities to women to have baby(-ies) and pursue an academic career.
If the whole supposed male power structure is responsible for holding a supposed equal or greater number of female mathematical geniuses down, then it should be relatively easy to show with actual examples in a country such as the United States in the last 50 or so years, where these barriers are no longer in place. Or you could accept the more rational explanation, that the higher variance in IQ in the male means that you have more genius males and more dullard males. Of course, you will have a few genius females. There are going to be exceptions, and humanity is better off for their contribution.
Then you will get into subjective issues as to who is the greater mathematician and how do you judge this. Of course, you can look at similar intellectual endeavours (e.g. Chess) that are absolutely objective and have no barriers to entry for females. At extreme levels of skill, chess is dominated by males, as is the upper echelons of all cognitive endeavours that I can think of.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
Seriously, if there is a study on this I wonder if there is a study to compare driving between the genders
seems she was previous debunked, and is back for another swipe with dodgy data. http://www.geoffreyfalk.com/blog/June2009.asp#5 http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm the top 1% of students in general esp at a high school level are not what matters when it comes to mathematical genius anyways. its ridiculous to draw conclusions from that. and if asian/colored women outperform their men then they should continue to do so when it gets to the phd level/awards right? probably not addressed. i think what matters with these studies is they are published and get a headline, thats all that really matters, very few of the gender warriors that like your conclusions are going to check your work.
http://www.uaf.edu/northern/schools/myth.html it is amusing the language/reading gap that favors women is just accepted, when under the same viewpoint it should mean that boys are horribly discriminated against when it comes to that aspect of education!! look at the gpas, women outperform men in many areas other than mathematics. are we to conclude that men are being highly discriminated against as well? that is the logical conclusion from such thinking. "Grades: That females receive higher grades in virtually every subject is undisputed. In reviewing the literature on gender differences in cognitive tests, for the flagship journal of the field, American Psychologist, Halpern (1997, p. 1102) points out that "higher grades in school, all or most subjects" is an area of unquestioned female advantage. Another recent, comprehensive review of the research literature on gender differences in school performance comes to the same conclusion: Data from a wide variety of sources and educational settings show that females in all ethnic groups tend to earn higher grades in school than do males, across different ages and eras, and across different subject matter disciplines. Many researchers in past times and today consider this to be such an obvious fact that they treat it as axiomatic....Modern reviews of the subject are unanimous in their finding of higher grades for females (Dwyer & Johnson, 1997, pp. 128-129)." "Class Rank and Honors: Since girls receive higher grades in school, they should also surpass boys in class rank. This is exactly what happens. Examining gender differences in high school class rank and honors in a nationally representative sample from the 1970s, Adelman (1991, p. 3) makes this point, "No matter how one slices the high school class of 1972, women's mean class rank exceeded that of men by a minimum of 10 points." Caucasian women attained, on the average, the highest class rank (67th percentile), while African-American men attained, on the average the lowest class rank (44th percentile). African-American women ranked far higher (56th percentile) than African-American men. The same pattern of female advantage in grades and honors shows up in the 1990s, in a nationally representative longitudinal study of the high school class of 1992 (NELS Second Follow-up, cited in Dwyer & Johnson, 1997, p. 139). In the academic arena, high school girls outdistanced boys in making the honor roll, in getting elected to a class office, and in receiving writing awards and other academic honors. In the academic arena, boys outdistanced women in vocational-technical honors and in awards in science and mathematics competitions. While males are still ahead in gaining mathematics and science honors, females are making strong gains. From 1995-1998, close to 40 percent of the winners of the most prestigious science competition, the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, were female (Science Service, 1998). The Westinghouse Science Talent Search requires high school students to complete a project in science, mathematics, and engineering and submit a report communicating the results. The work goes on over many months, often with the assistance of a parent, teacher, or other researcher. The contest is notable for producing winners who later go on to win a Nobel Prize. Westinghouse finalists from the 1940s through the 1970s were overwhelmingly male. The number of females among the top 40 finalists has increased since the 1980s and is approaching parity (Table 2)." all this hand wringing over women is clearly missing the real problem eh?
more proof the bias in education is against men. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/8085011.stm Female students are ahead of men in almost every measure of UK university achievement, according to a report from higher education researchers.