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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
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.
These days, women are intentionally given advantages over men, so it is NOT fair to say that women have proven equality with men.
For example, my school had all sorts of scholarships available only to women (not men). It had free math tutoring for women (not men). It had many programs available only to women to help them academically and financially.
If women want to display equality, they need to compete on equal ground.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
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
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.
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.
Chemically, testosterone and estrogen have different, powerful effects on the brain and body. Be careful not to call people "bigots" because they celebrate this diversity and seek out the advantages it contains, or you must call yourself a bigot for your intolerance toward anyone who thinks that any notable differences are an evil that needs to be squashed. Yes, with extra effort, one sex can almost always measurably outperform the opposite sex where the opposite sex is more fitted, biologically, to a purpose -- but that doesn't reinforce your point; it contradicts it. If a woman and a man can perform equally at math, but the woman has to study n% longer, then the man is inherently better at math. That's what inherency means. It's not politically correct, but it's nature... however, I vehemently agree that the product of nurture and identity should always have the /choice/ to agree with nature or to struggle to see if it can obtain something better. If a woman chooses to study n% longer than the man to perform equally at math, her identity shows that she would be the better mathematician -- because she's more willing to put forth the necessary effort-- but don't hate or belittle people because they accept what nature has given us as a gift, rather than viewing it as a curse.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
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.
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.
That comment is just as ignorant as anything a bigot would say.
I'd say it's not boys stopping girls from taking maths in school and it's not boys stopping girls from taking programming. In fact, from my experience in school, and what I've seen, most school aged boys would love to have a girl that was into something that they found cool.
Sure sexism plays a part in some instances but like everything else it's not black and white. A lot of girls don't do math because that's not where the cool boys are. Their social standing would take a hit if they were caught carrying a calculator and hanging around the nerds and yes believe it or not, a girl's self image means a lot. Hence the market for make-up, push-up bras, high-heel shoes, fad diets and anything else that will make them feel like they're something they're not.
And no those things aren't forced upon girls either. Which is why girls with a lot of image issues (and especially food issues) go through a lot of boyfriends because the guy gets fed up listing to them talk about what they're not going to eat today.
It's not the case with all woman, because again, not everything is black and white, but a lot of girls compete amongst each other to attract boys and math will only attract nerds in their eyes.
So let's not be ignorant and just blame everything on men being some sort of evil being because it's simply not true.
As a mathematician, I can assure you that the time a student must spend to learn the material is no indicator of their ability with it.
May the Maths Be with you!
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.
At a previous workplace there was a role in one of our sister IT departments for a new middle manager. There were 8 candidates, but only 2 ever real had a chance, one was male, the other female, the male far more experienced, a much better work ethic and simply much better suited to the job. The female got it however, the interview team consisted of 2 males and 1 female, the female was the existing helpdesk manager. The two males she'd spent day in day out flirting with (in fact, that's pretty much all she did, she was a crap worker). I got on quite well with the helpdesk manager and she said she'd actually voted for the male who deserved it, but was told by one of the other two (who was her superior) that she was to change her mind to the female to support equality in the workplace.
Realistically, situations like this I do not believe are massively uncommon. Some females argue that using their sex to get further in the workplace is fair game, but I do not see how this can be true when it puts males at a real inherent disadvantage - even if there were more female managers in the workplace for males to flirt with in reverse the reality is that males are far more receptive to flirting than females most the time.
Females then have to accept that if they truly want to see equality that they must refrain from this kind of view of things, they cannot on one had suggest they are treated unfairly in a bad way, then on the other take advantage of their sex to get treated unfairly but in their favour.
I'm all for equality, but a lot of what's sold under the equality banner is really just more inequality.
The only sexism I've seen in academia is anti-male sexism. The boys get done with class, head to work to make money to pay tuition, then come home exhausted and try to figure out their homework before bed. The girls get done with class, have all evening to do the homework, and get their hands held through the hard problems by tutors whenever they have trouble.
That's clear, direct sexism. I'm against sexism. Show me such sexism against males or females, and I'm against it. You endorse sexism. You make me sick. Male professors who give males As and females Fs for the same answer should be fired. The same is true for college administrators who give females money and help while giving males the finger. Fuck sexism, and fuck you.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Nah...
Male's natural advantage in aggression causes a difference over time unless society actively corrects for it.
Trivial case,
Two scientists make the same amount of money.
One asks for raises and pursues them.
The other hopes the boss will notice and give them a raise.
One leaves and gets a job paying 25% more.
The other stays and gets an 8% raise.
One leaves and gets a more prestigious position.
The other stays and competes for the few positions available.
Now run that cycle for a few generations and we are right back where we are now.
In the real world, in those fields where aggression matters, it still demands a premium or gains extra success over time.
Physical strength no longer demands a premium.
In some cases, aggression is a draw back-- in those fields, men do worse.
I agree there is a ton of built in sexism, racism, and historical privilege and that is slowly being rooted out.
But having gone from low aggression to high aggression- (via hormone therapy), I see the difference it makes for me.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
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.
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.
If I had modpoints I would certainly downmod you for injecting kneejerk hysteria into what should be a reasonable and empirical discussion. Preemptively calling anyone who doesn't share your beliefs bigots and twits is really incredible bad form.
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.
I think we can all agree that there has been real sexism in certain careers, and that it's been detrimental to society. We're moving to a better place now. It's not perfect, but it's getting better.
I'm all for equality in opportunity. But I cringe when I see people pointing to an unequal distribution of genders in a career as evidence of evil discrimination. It seems to be outside the realm of allowed possibility that perhaps men, on average, enjoy being computer programmers more than women? Or that women enjoy being preschool teachers more than men? We'd be absolutely wrong to hinder in any way people who wish to pursue any career path, whether it's traditional for their gender or not. And we should encourage both genders to pursue all sorts of goals, especially when there's institutional intertia in the equation. 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. Men and women are stochastically interested in different things. And that's okay.
Anyway, there's also the possible issue of differing standard deviations in traits between the sexes, which may or may not play into these questions of achievement, and is a scientific, empirical question (and a two-edged sword for any gender with the larger standard deviation, of course).
Malcolm Gladwell and others say that you are incorrect and that in fact practice is a huge factor. Now, I suspect that a certain level of talent or inclination is necessary for someone to be willing to put in the 10,000 hours necessary to become exceptional. People don't tend to put in that much time if they have no aptitude and show no improvement. But there is a strong indication that you can't rely on talent; you really do have to practice a lot to get to Carnegie Hall. Also read the first comment here.
Now, you can put in a lot of time without any progress. There's a saying that you have dancers who have been dancing for twenty years, and you have dancers who have danced for a year twenty times. One can even refer to the old schoolyard taunt, "Yeah, and I bet Grade 7 was the best 3 years of your life!". Time is not equivalent to effort. The GP referred to one and you confused it with the other.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
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.
"Are you really using the male-as-breadwinner stereotype to claim the existence of anti-male sexism?"
Stereotype? Breadwinner? What does that have to do with anything? No, the guys have to pay for school. The girls get scholarships. Hence the example of the guys having to work to pay for school. I'm sorry that wasn't clear to you. You seem like you have blinders on, so I doubt this message will get through to you, either.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
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!
For example, my school had all sorts of scholarships available only to women (not men).
Let me clarify this with a data point/anecdote. Here at UMass Amherst, there are a great many scholarships available for Computer Science students. The small minority that don't require that the applicant have membership in a racial minority or have female sex all explicitly state that they still prefer it. It's actively frustrating hunting for scholarships as a "white" male, since everyone figures that you must be rich, fat, and happy enough to pay for everything in life all on your lonesome, or at least that you deserve their money much less than someone who happens to speak Spanish natively or lacks a Y-chromosome.
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?