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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.
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.
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."
(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.
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
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.
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.
Science should be exciting, and excitement attracts young men.
Nope, ease and money attracts young men in American culture now. Math is neither easy nor high-paying. So young men go into things like sports and multi-level marketing instead.
excitement attracts young men.
Whereas women revel in repetition and boredom?
Give me a break. Some people get excited about science. Most do not. This is true of men and women.
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.
Women tend to gravitate towards fields which there is a degree of socializing, such as education, medicine (Regular and veterinary), and communications.
Men tend to gravitate towards either exciting fields, or fields which they feel will be financial rewarding.
This is statistically backed up. This is well understood. This does not mean there are no counterexamples. There is a definite difference between the genders, and I don't understand why people feel we should artificially shoehorn people into career paths they don't want, in order to achieve 'balance'. What's equally baffling is that, despite Females in Veterinary College outnumbering males by 4 to 1 (!), nobody seems to be decrying that we need more males in that field...
Let people choose what they want to do. Stop trying to 'fix' it.
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.
I'd love to see the studies you claim make this a well understood fact.
I suspect the truth of the matter is that this is a possible explanation that has become popular, but without any rigorous work being done to see if this is true- and if it IS true, whether women choose certain fields because of some innate difference in preferences determined by biology or for some other reason, like the fact that being discriminated against and subjected to insulting comments at every step of your career is enough to drive many reasonable people to choose a different career.
No one is decrying the disparity in number of women and men in Vet school because there is no evidence that men are being kept out of Vet school due to discrimination. Show me some evidence of discrimination, and I'll be right behind you in arguing that this should be corrected. Heck- I'll even take you seriously if you can find me a male Vet student who has heard things like "it must be nice to be a man so that you can win scholarships" or "I'm sorry, I just don't think men make as good vets as women" or "I'll bet he slept with the TA to get that grade." Yes- I have heard comments similar to both of those as a woman in science. The few women who stick it out in math probably have even worse stories. Thankfully, my experience with the overt sexism displayed in those comments has declined as I have advanced in my career- but there is plenty of less obvious sexism still out there.
I think the issue has little to do with trying to equalize the balance of men and women so much as equalizing the balance in the opportunities to pursue the fields that people want. I think that the general agreement is that (especially since the percentages have been changing quite dramatically in recent decades) women don't have the same opportunity as men do. There are various studies showing that women make less than men for the same jobs, and this is blatant discrimination. I don't think anyone is arguing that men have less opportunities in veterinary medicine (although I think there is some framing that goes one as I mentioned below).
This reminds me of the way orchestra auditions have changed over time (described in "Blink"). Before, candidates would play in front of the judges and the judges would decide-- seems harmless enough. However, women have been consistently under-represented in orchestras, and especially on instruments deemed "better" for men (e.g. french horn). Now, candidates perform behind a curtain, so that the judges can't see the candidates, only hear them. Almost overnight, the number of women skyrocketed. I think it's essentially the same thing with women in math and science. People are predisposed to think that men are better than women at certain tasks/professions (even if it's subconscious) and this is reflected in the number of women we see in various industries. I don't think anyone is really immune from this, and in math and science, I think the framing effect is rather strong. Just read some of the blogs of women in science (e.g. http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/) and you'll see that there is still an opportunity gap.
Also, it's not entirely the fault of men. I think women have almost just as much to do with the problem. From mothers telling their daughters they're not smart enough to do science to an example from aforementioned blog: Isis took her toddler to daycare and the caretaker asked what she did; she said "I work at the hospital" and the response was "oh, a lot of the other mommies are nurses too." This does not help the problem...
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
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.
Also, it's not entirely the fault of men. I think women have almost just as much to do with the problem.
I don't know how I will be modded for this, but yes.
Statistics on child-rearing consistently show that women do the bulk of it (not a value judgement; that's what the numbers show). In my own case, my mom has more education than my dad, and I would say their relationship is pretty equal (if not tipped toward my mother in most things), but yes, she is the one who raised me and taught me values about the world, etc. My dad wasn't absent or anything, but he was the guy who taught me how to do stuff--build things, fix things, make bad puns. It seems that this is the norm, from the sociological data I've seen.
How is it, then, that women find themselves the victim of "social gender roles?" Men, I think, in a very real sense, do not make society. Women do. Women raise kids and instill values in them; men's behavior is almost entirely based on doing things that will score and keep women. If mothers raised children with egalitarian values and young, fertile women did not hook up with guys who had sexist ideas, guys would fall into line almost immediately. Think how quickly the American image of men changed from "strong and silent" to "soft and sensitive" in the 90s. We were told that's what gets girls, and next thing you know, guys are bawling over every damn little thing. Eventually this started annoying women and there was a backlash in recent years, asking where all the "real men" (look at that choice of adjectives, ladies) went, and guys of the current young generation aren't so weepy as we Gen-Xers were. Guys do what they are told.
Again, in my own case, every time I run into a sexist idea I may have, I think "hmm, where did that come from?" and I remember being taught it by my smart, well-educated, empowered mother.
I think women have a lot to do with the problem, and can do a lot more than men can about it, in the long run. Guys are puppets.
Finally, I also have to echo someone else's comment above: Just let people choose what they like. I want to be sure that people are all given equal opportunities so that they can do that, but I don't think that's going to lead to 50/50 gender representation in every field, and that's okay!
"There are various studies showing that women make less than men for the same jobs, and this is blatant discrimination."
Are those the same studies that also show that women at the same jobs work fewer hours per week, take more time off, drop down to part time more often and retire earlier?
Women do, indeed, make up the bulk of new vets, but the gender switch may have the odd effect of sharply reducing the number of active vets in the future. There are already shortages of vets for farm animals.
I'd love to see the studies you claim make this a well understood fact.
I'm not going to do a cited paper, so give me some latitude here with some well understood facts.
Its nice to believe that there is some equal playing ground in life, but its the differences between people that make things interesting. This perennial debate over the sexes being the same is quixotic. All sex based species have differences between the sexes for survival of the species. Humans have not evolved any more than the animals that they have domesticated. Dogs still bury bones in the corner of a carpeted room because its in their genes to do so. Cats kill birds and bring them home even though they have plenty of food because its in their genes. Dogs are not cats.
Humans are not genetically different from the hunters and gathers from around 100,000 years ago. Meaning they are not any smarter, even though some of them know how to do partial differential equations and some don't. In humans, its the males that typically did the hunting and females did the child rearing and gathering. Female humans have wider hips for giving birth which limits their ability to run and catch prey which is needed for protein in their diet. Hunting abilities gave men better spacial abilities, the ability to plan and execute a plan, and also men have a much greater upper body strength and lung capacity. These are well understood facts for anyone who knows a little about human evolution or biology. Gathering abilities enable women to have better periphery short range vision (eg, why they can find things in the refrigerator that were right in front of the man's face!).
To say that women and men are the same is nonproductive because by definition they are different.
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.
There are various studies showing that women make less than men for the same jobs, and this is blatant discrimination
I haven't seen those studies, so I don't know what methodology they're using. I have seen numbers like 70% bandied about (women being paid 70% of the amount men get for equal work).
So my question is: if that's true, why would any businesses bother hiring men at all? If you can get the same work by hiring just women and paying them 30% less (or even 10%) you have a crushing advantage over the competition, especially in low margin businesses. I can't believe all employers (including women business owners and hiring managers) are uniformly sexist. I'd expect the market to force the equalization of pay to work. So why the contradiction?