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New Study Concludes Math Gender Gap Is Cultural, Not Biological
New submitter germansausage writes "A new study was published today in Notices of the American Mathematical Society, looking at data from 86 countries, to test the 'greater male variability hypothesis' as the primary reason for the scarcity of outstanding women mathematicians. It concludes that cultural and not biological factors are the chief causes (PDF) of the gap in math skills between men and women."
In America, Math is hard.. so lets go shopping.
"His name was James Damore."
Wearing skirts is also cultural, not biological
You would have thought insight just from trans-people's experiences would have been enough to make this blatantly obvious.
I guess they're just too weird to consider.
I have seen an interesting counter argument to this.
It states that females are biologically equal to males in maths abilities, but superior to men in language ability. It this is true, men would tend to crowd into math heavy fields (Since they have a natural advantage there) while females would be more widely spread out.
Which is not exactly true. In rich worlds 80% of woman pile into 10 of the 120 job categories (Medicine, teaching, public service) while men are more evenly spread out.
I worked on a grant looking at math skills and correlating with language, gender, age, and other factors amongst three population groups (white, hispanic, and navaho). We followed a group of third graders through the fifth grade, and a group of sixth graders through the eighth grade. Very interesting stuff, and at least in my corner of the US it was very obvious that as students moved on in school they liked math less, felt it had less value, and also performed worse on the tests. In the third grade group almost everyone believed that math was important, that they would use it in their jobs, and stated that they liked math. By the eighth grade only a few still felt this way, and of those almost all were boys. I was the programmer, created the test instruments, database for the results, etc, so I never saw the entire set of results, but heard that the young cohort pretty much proved that there was very little gender or cultural bias against math aside from poverty (which interestingly seemed to indicate a dislike of it).
Proof please.
Men may multiply...
Women divide into two, or more.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
It was done by a man and involves lots of math.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Biology influences culture. DNA makes our brains, with well-proven gender differences, and our brains lead to our culture. Our culture is created directly by our brains, and also by the interaction with other people (brains).
Well, unfortunaly this "study" use statistc to prove the hypothesis and by experience you can manipulate any result you want to prove your point. Politician and ONGs know very well about this methods XP. ... and before I'm accused to be a "male chauvinist pig", I don't think its bad to men and women have same math skills, but I hate "bad science".
What do you say we go back to my room and do some math: add you and me, subtract our clothes, divide your legs, and multiply.
I was in a high-level math class in 8th grade that had just as many girls as boys, and many of the girls were very good. By my senior year in high school, most of the girls were no longer in the highest level math class offered, or if they were they had mediocre scores. I'm am sure much if this was cultural, but I believe by the time the girls got into high school they started focusing on the areas that interested them more. They graduated with high grades and were very capable to do any subject the school offered, but they pursued other AP classes.
In college, there were very few girls going towards math or engineering majors. The ones in my engineering classes generally just never seemed interested in learning the material or excited about the field, but they had decided it was what they were "good" at and could make a good career at. Many of the guys were the same way, but a substantial number of us really did take a interest in learning and doing the projects. I don't know if this "interest" gap is cultural or biological, but if you look at how you children are drawn towards different toys and behavior based on gender, I would say there is still a biologic component here that this study is missing.
(Sorry for re-post, forgot to log in)
A lot of facts that are chalked up to the effects of prejudice, or racial differences are far more likely to be due to cultural differences.
The effect of cultural differences as a factor in gender gaps within professions, IQ/academic performance differences between races, etc seems to be relatively unexplored.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Maybe true, maybe not, but what is certain is that a study that concluded the opposite probably wouldn't get published.
Or boys and girls? And Mathematics..or Arithmetic?
If the differences were biological wouldn't one want to wait until key biological differences between men and women had settled out more, say..I don't know..puberty?
I don't know if the differences are biological or not, but reading through the study it seems a rather flawed basis to back the statement "Men aren't better than women at math, biologically".
Those that understand ternary, those that don't, and women.
I don't buy it.
Women are accepted to have biological tendencies for wider hips, more estrogen, more fat storage in the front-upper-torso region, smaller than males, etc.
Women are mostly accepted to have biological tendencies for more compassion, more communication, etc.
It is controversial to say women have biological tendencies to be less aggressive, less ambitious toward leadership roles, and less attracted to hard science in favor of humanities.
The difference between these three categories is hardly in their level of correlation (p approaches 1 for all of them), but in how PC they are. If it is cultural, as the authors suggest, they have stumbled upon the most effective population control mechanism in history!
(note: paper was slashdotted; i'm going by the summary and having waded through too many of these types of studies before)
Dance like you're hurt, Love like you need money, and work when somebody's watching.
-Scott Adams
Knock yourself out.
While you are drunk, I will be putting her feet above her head.
When I have kids of my own, I'm raising them to be math and science nerds like the old man, especially any daughters.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Most intellectual gaps are the results of different culture and upbringing. ADHD and ADD is the result of kids playing video games 10 hours a day on their Nintendo DS.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
My Christian Comrades,
The Lord tells us that wives should submit to their husbands, and He granted men their greater ability to do math and science to help enforce this view. All of the neo-Nazi bra-burning feminists who wish to bridge this so-called "gap" are merely trying to undermine the Christian values of our nation. This is the way things are supposed to be, so there is no "gap."
Sincerely, Jake
My Fellow Mathematicians,
:)
http://www.purplemath.com/modules/bibleval.htm (cool stuff for math history geeks!)
The Calculus tells us that The Numbers should submit to their domains, and It granted mathematicians their greater ability to do math and science to help enforce this view. All of the neo-Nazi math-burning Luddites who wish to bridge this so-called "gap" are merely trying to undermine the Mathematical values of our scientific establishment. This is the way things are supposed to be, so there is no "gap.", other than the gaps between prime numbers.
Sincerely, The Troll Feeder
PS: I was going to find something witty about the bible calling pi = 3, but then I learned something new today
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
It's a good thing she's cooking the pies since she'll probably know you would put pies in the oven and not on the stove if you want them baked properly.
Hopefully at least your wife knows the difference between a stove and oven. Cooking is hard...
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
I mean, there is this big cultural panic that women don't go into STEM and everyone wonders why. They point out that they are force fed dolls, and shows about mothering, princesses and other assorted crud, where boys are fed high strength stuff like GI Joe and Bob the Builder.
But that isnt the cause of the divide. The culture inside public schools is almost as immobile as governments, because the younger children adopt the values of the older ones to try to fit in, be cool, and seem more mature. The effect of peers on kids growing up has more profound effects than any specific media they are consuming - it is more a product of their behavior around one another than it is from what they watch on tv
I dont have any sources off the top of my head, but from other discussions on this topic, the general consensus is a home schooled boy and girl completely cut off from peer influence have absolutely no real discernible preference away from math, that statistically if you introduce math in interesting and purposeful ways, both of them can like it, and develop interests in it. There is no genetic or hormonal effect prohibiting either from developing a fascination with any particular field. So of course it is cultural, but I believe it is in the in-culture of public schooling, must less the culture of society as a whole, that keeps this problem from being dealt with.
To be frank, in our culture we don't really encourage females to put much stock in rational thinking. Worse, it comes from all sides. Traditional conservative 'values' unashamedly discriminatory to the fairer sex. .. And from the left we have what we call feminism. For all the things that it is, good or bad, feminism is not what I'd call rational. I've hat plenty of discussions where self-described feminists reject formal, logical arguments as 'male' thinking and don't think women should be subject to it. I'm not sure what to think of it, but I know it /infuriates/ men that are a lot less forgiving than myself.
I've seen the catholic school girls in those short kilts, they fit the female anatomy quite nicely. Much better than the male anatomy.
Well... you are right, partly, I think, in pointing out that there's still a lot of bullshit around. However, it is known that culture is, in fact, a very powerful mechanism (I think you can come up yourself with a bunch of examples). It is sometimes quite difficult to distinguish between cultural and biological factors, however, what is interesting in this study, I think, is that did an international comparison of boys vs girls' math scores and compared these to different socio-economic factors. I have to admit, I didn't take the time to read all of it, but they actually show a pretty convincing scatter plot between gender equality index and girls' math performance relative to boys'. If you don't look at anything else, look at that plot.
What about other factors that are different between genders?
I don't know about relative levels of aggression, I guess it is pretty much established that aggression level is at least partly determined by testosterone level and related hormones. An elevated level of aggression (btw, Lorenz defines aggression as social dominance behavior) would affect professional (or leadership) ambition, but I would guess that a lot of that (missing ambition) has to do with gender roles and legislation (parental leave, etc). Language ability? I think, somebody should do a study showing that the more time female caretakers spend with the child, the bigger the gender gap. Sounds like a challenge.
And if you don't like this study there will be another one published shortly.
This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I've gone to many conferences for women in advanced mathematics and computer sciences and the number one thing I notice is how international they all are... even when they are supposedly for US women. I've said for years that the proof that there is no gender gap can be seen by looking at the mathematicians coming out of the former Soviet republics. Plenty of those mathematicians are women and they don't understand why so few American women enter the field.
By contrast, growing up in the US, I remember the "advanced" math groups in elementary school being pretty evenly split across genders. The disparity started increasing in junior high and was readily apparent in high school... and it wasn't because the math got harder. Many of the girls who picked up algebra quicker than most of the boys in fifth grade were opting not to take AP Calculus because "it wasn't really necessary." By contrast, a lot of the guys in the calculus classes hadn't been in advanced math before, but were taking calculus because it was "required to get in to a good school." That's not a biological difference... it's cultural. We have to stop teaching our girls that it's okay to be bad at this stuff.
That's saving the phenomenon - he chooses the outer diameter, but the inner circumference.
It is controversial to say women have biological tendencies to be less aggressive, less ambitious toward leadership roles, and less attracted to hard science in favor of humanities.
These are predominantly due to women being less competitive and more cooperative than men. However, this is not guaranteed to be biological. All minorities ("minority" here referring to political and social power) group together in tight-nit groups, and are raised with a more cooperative attitude towards helping those in your group to protect your already limited power. Women are typically discouraged from showing direct or active roles, and thus become well trained in... for lack of a better word, "manipulative" and "coercion". (Guilt trips, implied requests actually being imperative statements, etc).
Meanwhile, in another culture, where the women sit around drink beer, spit, play poker, and leave their growing-old husband for the "newer model", women are brash, open, aggressive, competitive, and take strong leadership roles. Although, despite all of the swapping of cultural activities demonstrating what is linked to the gender of power, and the inferior gender (referring respectively to the gender with the political and social power, vs the one that does not) the men are still the ones who usually go out to get food, because they have a biological basis for greater strength and endurance. But of course, when the men fail to get enough food, ("because they're wimps") the women go out and catch food using their brains, demonstrating "why women are so much more powerful than men".
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Background: 1. I'm a math wunderkind (college classes in elementary school). 2. I spent ~20 years teaching math and programming to all levels of students. I read most of the study, and as far as I've been able to tell... A. They don't seem to reject the null hypothesis (Male IQ stdev ~= 16.5, Female IQ stdev ~= 13)... B. They don't seem to address my major analysis, which is differing attitudes towards risk. The best female students in the class are always the ones who do EXACTLY what you tell them to, perfectly. The best male students in a class are the ones who don't do what you tell them to, but try other things, and succeed brilliantly. C. Option 3 for reasons for variance is interest. Anyone who's ever had a boy and a girl, tried to be gender neutral with them, and watched the boy chase trucks and guns, and the girl chase dolls...there are questions of focus. D. On average, 1 of 100 guys is willing to spend 100 hour weeks trying to win. Girls have higher sanity scores. 100 hour weeks attempting to do a single thing is nuts...40-50 hour weeks is more sane, especially if you care about other things (like kids, friends, etc). however, Hours spent on a topic is roughly equal to skill. And so the insane people are the best.
This study is flawed because it includes data before puberty. it is well understood that most of the math varience appears after puberty.
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math2.htm
I do remember reading about the differences between home schooled and regular schooled kids. If memory serves, and it might not, there was neither a big math nor reading gap.
The study looks at 4th and 8th graders. This makes an implicit assumption that later brain development (which continues on at least till age 21) does not cause non-cultural changes in the math ability of men and woman. Late bloomers anyone?
Just amazing, what statements you can make about such clear data. Many, many studies to date have shown that male and female abilities in mathematics are roughly the same. Nearly as many have shown support for a higher variance amongst males, meaning there are more stupid and more brilliant men. This has been (and is) used as the explanation for the predominance of men at the very top levels of STEM fields.
So...this paper claims "greater male variability...[is] largely [an] artifact of a complex variety of sociocultural factors".
Look at Figure 1.B. in the paper and read their discussion of it. With three only three exceptions - two of which are outliers for other reasons, all of their data supports the variability hypothesis. The same can be seen in Figure 1.C - with the same three exceptions, all of the variance ratios are above 1, with an average around 1.16.
In the end, their data plainly supports the same conclusions drawn by all of the other studies. The sincere desire to reach a PC conclusion apparently blinds the authors to the plain meaning of their own data.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
The article lists five hypotheses:
They claim that all but #2 are ruled out by their data. What I can't figure out is the distinction between 2 and 3. 3 is that the gap is "due to differences in opportunities available to males versus females." 2 is defined in their reference [2] http://www.jstor.org/pss/2112795 as being about access to jobs and higher education. I don't understand the distinction.
I got interested in this stuff recently because I teach physics, and our statistics showed that women had a lower success rate in our classes than men. This was kind of worrisome, since women generally do better than men in college, and women do better than men at our school in math, and in the other sciences besides physics. Turned out that if we controlled for what class they were taking, the effect vanished. Lots of women were taking the physics class for biology majors, which has a low success rate. Almost no women take the physics class fo engineering majors, which has a higher success rate. In the class for biology majors, women actually did better than men. It impressed me with how subtle this kind of thing can be.
Find free books.
Well, your first category is all physical traits the formation of which is well understood by biology.,
Your second category is a set of positive personality traits. The formation of which is not well understood by biology, but there is no incentive for women or feminists to disprove a link between these traits and gender.
Your third category is a set of negative personality traits. The formation of which is not well understood by biology, and which women and feminists have a vested interest in disproving any link with gender.
Why are there so many studies out there based on the premise that we need to promote female equality and seemingly none based on the premise that we need to promote equality regardless of gender?
When 57 percentage of the people enrolled in college are women(and just 43% are men) and when more women than men have been graduating from college for over 20 years now, wouldn't it be reasonable to have some studies that look at improving males' education instead of going on the decades-old assumption that women are being underserved?
The means were about the same so that contradicts the greater male variability theory? The authors clearly didn't understand what "greater male variability" means. Greater male variability addresses why there are more males at the tops of industries, it says little to nothing about the average male. How about this, we encourage people to do what they are interested in and are good at (often correlated) instead of trying to steer men or women into fields? If it ends up 60/40, 30/70, or whatever doesn't matter. Equal opportunity is important, equal outcome is not.
The summary misses the point a bit. The study's conclusions are that some cultural factors (chiefly gender equality) correlate with mathematical success, while biological factors and other cultural factors (such as national income and religion!) do not.
(disclaimer - I actually read the conclusions and know the author)
This is nothing new, just a new study that confirms what has been said before.
Previous studies have found that, when adjusted for economic differences, geographical, ethic, racial etc..... the only consistent difference in math achievement was found to be between people who believed that math was a ingrained talent and those who believed it was a learned skill.
That this attitude is partially cultural is hardly surprising. Even the original study noted that cultures which had the highest percentages of people believing math was a learned skill, outperformed people in cultures with more people believing that it was innate.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Read a book, read a book, read a motherfucking book
Do your math, do your math, do your goddamned math
Blame yourself, blame yourself, not your skin or dick or cooch
Dumb's a choice, dumb's a choice, so SUCK IT UP if you drop out.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
Nutshell: While there may be no biological gap for the math potential, the may be a biological bias to what we find fun/interesting.
New Study concludes that the majority of published studies find what they are looking for.
I was curious about what they used to measure "gender equality", so I took a look. They use two things. The first is the World Economic Forum's GGI, where the scale goes from 0 to 1. If I am reading it correctly, it can only register inequality when women don't rise as high as men. For example, there are a lot more black women in the US going to college than black men. This would register on the Education Attainment portion of the GGI as gender equality, despite being quite unequal.
The second was Social Watch Group's GEI. It goes from 0 to 100. Unless I'm missing something, it too is unable to measure inequality favoring women as inequality. In fact, "The way the GEI is calculated is a response to the need to reflect all situations that are unfavourable to women" is what their web page says about it. Also, "The final value on the index depends on the degree of negative inequity for women prevailing in a given country or region regardless of whether there may also be inequities that are positive for women (that is to say negative for men)."
In the study, I don't see anything acknowledging this.
Amazing... Why is it so controversial that the ability to push out a baby from your insides would not have broad-ranging emotional and mental impacts on a species (let alone easily observable physical impacts).
Oh please tell me you aren't serious. That sexist "wives should submit to their husbands" is a bullshit view fostered during a time when a male-dominated society was prevalent. Christianity needs to grow up (and yes I say that as a Christian myself) and learn to live in this century. These views that so many of the faith hold from centuries ago are the main reason that we are so hated now in the world. Do you want that? I don't.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
You're right. However, I must say that as a public school math teacher I chafe a little at the "inside public schools" comment, only because most of us inside really, really want to change, but it's mostly not inside factors stopping us, but outside influences (things like the math wars in the 1990s).
I have a colleague here who is a veteran top-notch math teacher who did his masters thesis on gender segregating his 5-7th grade math classes at a prestigious secular private school. Not only did the attitudes and engagement of the female student improve, but the male students also showed higher satisfaction and achievement.
The people who didn't like it? The parents. After the study concluded they couldn't keep doing it because parents fought to keep them from segregating the classrooms, facts be damned
Do we really need a new study for this? Do people really think the null hypothesis is that there is a biological difference between male and females when it comes to learning math?
I was having a good day. I'm a little depressed now.
Next study: white people not actually better than black people.
*No Trollo*
Hi Jake,
Are you, by chance, a friend of one Dr. Bob, DC?
Pussy Faaaaag!!! Huhuhuhuhuhuhh!!!
Hey let's take his books and pencils and throw them in the mud and dunk him in the toilet in the gym. Yeah all he needs is to get found there by coach and get his ass raped huhuhuhuhh!! Not before I do it first!!!
Huhuhu youll be poor all your life and never get the hot pussy, stupid pussy maths faaaaag!!!
Maybe you can help outline exactly what "plainly supports" what you say? See, I rather thought that when evaluating a hypothesis you looked at p-values rather than inferences from means, with "outliers" (hint, that doesn't mean what you think it does) removed. The section shows p-values of less than .05 and .01 for their two tests, which meet the general acceptability for rejecting the null hypothesis. Is there something missing here?
Your first set of examples are all physical traits, so obviously there is a biological basis for them. With regards to your second and third set of examples, if you actually investigate feminist theory, you'll find that both sets are generally considered to be socialized traits, not biological traits, by a great many feminists. How "PC" they are doesn't enter into it at all.
Warning: Following post is politically incorrect.
Although IQ tests do not directly correspond to the math abilities, there is very strong correlation between these two.
If you make "average" math tests (that is approx. 50 % of population can gasp the problem/solution), I believe that the results would be comparable for men/women. If you would use test which 70 % of mixed population can solve, it would be more favourable for girls - probably about 85 % of them could solve this. Simply speaking, there is fewer idiots among women.
However:
Apart from low-level everyday math (and "banking math" - you see where we got with this kind of counting) there is very few "math" jobs where an average math abilities would be good enough for the job. That means that these jobs (usually in academia) rely on - say - top 5-10 % of population with highest math abilities. And from the bell curve you get that 85% of that 5% are men.
PS: Posting as AC - I work in academia and similar public chauvinistic comment costed at least 1 academic his job.
Kilt:
From Old Norse kelta or kjalta, meaning one's lap.
Cheers,
There's some of that, and then there's the gross stereotyping on TV. The best thing that parents can do is keep their kids away from kids' shows (or any shows) on TV. Think about it - dads are always portrayed as bumbling nincompoops, attractive girls are either bitchy or bubbleheads, smart kids are always pencil necked geeks, and the cool people are the stupid rebels without a clue.
No wonder our kids adopt those attitudes. You want to be attractive to boys? Be a bubblehead. Want to be cool? Ditch school. GAH!
I don't think that women's predilection toward cooperative behavior is completely an effect of socio-political cause(s). As tired as thought experiments in evo-psych may be, you can see in other animals that gender roles do not require social structures, let alone civilizations. Humans and their primate ancestors doubtlessly had gender roles before both, and before the political power hierarchy established by civilization, the gender roles were pretty simple. Males provided physical protection, keeping mate(s) and offspring safe, females provided emotional protection, keeping family and tribal groups together for more competitive advantage.
When rudimentary civilization came along, based more often on brute force than deep cohesion, these roles were subverted. Physical strength was used to make women second class citizens at best and chattel or war prizes at worst (though the latter was probably always a problem, since humanity has long issues with extending in-family or in-tribe respect to 'the other' outsiders, who may even be viewed as sub-human regardless of gender... which leads to societies permissive of cannibalism and human sacrifice). This led to the subversion of women's social talents, which were now divided between nurturing and conniving, so as to be able to position themselves by playing people off each other, having no direct power to wield effectively.
The problem with your hypothetical culture of women who act like men is that it is a fantasy that has never been known to have existed in human history. The closest thing was probably Sparta (at its cultural peak), which was renowned for having women who were almost as rough and tough as Spartan men, and perhaps not coincidentally it is historically considered one of the most gender equal societies of the time, but at the end of the day it too was a patriarchy, and "more equal" is not equal, let alone a reversal. The whole concept of Amazons is a masculine conceit, which praises masculinity by holding 'masculine' women and a society created by them in awe and respect.
The point here is that the structured political hierarchies which led to the marginalization of women are fairly new social constructs in terms of the broader human history, having been present only a few thousand years. The biological imperatives, niches, and predispositions as they relate to human genders developed over tens of thousands of years, and those too were outgrowths of the development of hundreds of thousands of years of primate development. On these scales, social development is almost if not completely exclusively a function of subverting earlier biological tendencies. As another poster said above, cultures come from biology, specifically brains, and they reflect all of the hormones by which each gender is influenced.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
About the time I was nine or ten my parents gave up on giving me dolls and started getting me the stuff I really wanted, including a nice model of the space shuttle and a word processing machine. Some little girls are girly-girls and love their dolls and pink ponies and teddy bears. Some are total geeks and would much rather play with an exploding rocket. Kids should be encouraged to pursue what interests them, not what their gender stereotype dictates they should like.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
For those who don't know already, soroban is another word for abacus. :)
And, FWIW, you can learn to do some pretty intense computation on a soroban -- I once knew how to calculate cubic roots just using a soroban. The only limit to how precise these things can be is how big they are -- essentially the same as for any calculator, where the limiter is the width of the display screen.
Cheers,
The gender of the person that conducted this study. Because if it was done by a woman - That just negates their results.
. .
Perhaps the collapse of the society began before it became matriarchal. The patriarchs might have just fouled up the whole system and given up. The fact that societies collapsed shortly after becoming matriarchal does not mean the two are causally related. There is not sufficient evidence to do more than hypothesize about it.
Hmm. At least 9/10 females I've worked with in the technology industry, during the past 20 years, were extremely incompetent. Perhaps your analysis suffers from small-sample bias
Interesting thing is that when looking at history societies tend to become matriarchal shortly before they collapse. They may stay around for 100-200 years of being matriarchal but collapse they do. The interesting thing is that the same societies were around for many more centuries or millenia prior to that as patriarchal societies. Makes one think.
Care to back that statement up with some examples?
I also believe brain scan studies (MRI I think) showed male and female brains working differently when confronted with different kinds of problems, like math. Researches were looking at diagnosing something else completely but found by accident that they could differentiate between male and female based upon their brain scans.
It has also seemed in some ways like math might be easier for guys (not necessarily better at it) because males tend think more in terms of objects than females do – they like toys and gadgets, they watch porn and objectify women, etc
Is there a skill gap in math between gender? I thought it was a gap in the interest in maths. If women have a biologic predisposition towards language, where do you think there interest will go? Not into math. I am really not sure that the fact that women succeeds less in maths to be cultural. It does not mean they fail in maths. I think they are just less likely try, and it is likely to be biological.
I want to see a study that compares interests in maths. Not skills.
After all, women will outperform men in all other academic fields. It can be cool to have very few fields that women do not like so that we can feel kind of useful in the society other than fixing cars, producing semen and opening sealed jars.
uh, biology expressed phenotypically as described in any evolutionary psychology text?
Oh *rats.* Now I'm confused again. Where's Gloria Steinem's fact free views when you need them?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
You are using spread as in “greater male variability hypothesis” (see article.) This is saying that while the average math skills of men & woman are equal, men have a higher variance (more genius & dunces). This would explain why Field prize winners are men (must be a natural born driven genius), but would not explain why most actuaries are men (Strong math skills are a must, but not mad genius). The authors, in the end, say they can explain the “average” difference via culture, but could not address the variability part. And I personally think you are right.
However, I was saying something different. Woman have been avoiding areas that they should be good at (such as being accuracies) but they tend to clump in few fields. I think that’s mostly cultural.
"But that isnt the cause of the divide. The culture inside public schools is almost as immobile as governments, because the younger children adopt the values of the older ones to try to fit in, be cool, and seem more mature. The effect of peers on kids growing up has more profound effects than any specific media they are consuming - it is more a product of their behavior around one another than it is from what they watch on tv" A good book to read is Unlocking the Clubhouse. While the book is about Computer Science and not Math in general, it has a lot of insight into why the culture continues.
Mens' duties originally involved hunting large animals and going to war against neighboring tribes, things which male physiology was more suited for.
Women, who lacked the physical strength of men and spent much of their adult lives pregnant or nursing children, were expected to raise children, gather food, maintain households, trade, and all the things that needed to be done at home while the men were out fighting.
However, as mens' work became less dangerous and required less physical strength, our deeply-ingrained cultural beliefs kept men in the position of the specialist, who focuses on one field to earn as much wealth as possible, while women were left in the role of the generalist, who raises the family, maintains the household, and generally fills the gaps left by men.
Of course, a generalist is never as good at any one task as a specialist, and thus men were perceived as being "smarter" than women, reinforcing the cultural belief. Ingrained cultural beliefs define a society's morality, and the notion of training women as specialists was soon considered not just pointless but sinful and subversive—further separating the genders and reinforcing the prejudicial beliefs even more.
This sort of vicious cycle is by no means limited to gender, and indeed there are far more egregious examples. For centuries we treated slaves like cattle, separating children from parents, denying them education and expecting them to work from early childhood. Intellectually, they regressed as we progressed, and it became easier and easier to separate them from us until the most refined rational thinkers were convinced slaves belonged to an inferior subspecies.
While slavery was finally outlawed in most countries, this problem still exists in other forms between developed and undeveloped countries, majorities and minorities, higher and lower social castes or classes. We assume that intelligence, skills, rationality and wealth are products of innate talent, rather than education and circumstance. Those that lack are considered unworthy and denied opportunities for advancement. We become trapped in feedback loops, mistaking cause for effect, disadvantage for inferiority.
But science has made it possible for us to break out of these loops by proving that there is no biological reason to esteem one group above another. We are all different, but so long as we are given the opportunity, we are all, on the whole, equally capable.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Just amazing, what statements you can make about such clear data. Many, many studies to date have shown that male and female abilities in mathematics are roughly the same. Nearly as many have shown support for a higher variance amongst males, meaning there are more stupid and more brilliant men. This has been (and is) used as the explanation for the predominance of men at the very top levels of STEM fields.
So...this paper claims "greater male variability...[is] largely [an] artifact of a complex variety of sociocultural factors".
Look at Figure 1.B. in the paper and read their discussion of it. With three only three exceptions - two of which are outliers for other reasons, all of their data supports the variability hypothesis. The same can be seen in Figure 1.C - with the same three exceptions, all of the variance ratios are above 1, with an average around 1.16.
In the end, their data plainly supports the same conclusions drawn by all of the other studies. The sincere desire to reach a PC conclusion apparently blinds the authors to the plain meaning of their own data.
If you bothered reading the text rather than just looking at the pretty pictures, you'd find that they were not disputing that variance exists, but that it's innate. Read the second sentence of that section:
If true, the variance ratios (VRs) for all countries should be greater than unity and similar in value.
But they're not:
In fact, the VRs calculated using the 2007 TIMSS eighth-grade data set studied in detail here varied widely among countries, ranging all the way from 0.91 to 1.52 (Figure 1A).
Variances for girls and boys also varied widely throughout a threefold range (Figure 1B). Countries with small variances typically had VRs within 0.2 of unity. Most of the countries with large VRs were ones that also had unusually large boys’ variances.
And you know what that means?
Therefore, we conclude that both variance and VR in mathematics performance vary greatly among countries.
And since the Y chromosome isn't different in each country, that indicates that it's not the Y chromosome causing those variances.
In the end, your sincere desire to slam the article for disagreeing with your beliefs apparently blinds you to the plain meaning of the study.
Kinda like how Bush Jr. destroyed the economy, then handed the keys to Obama, and now everyone's blaming him.
(I must apologize, I generally try to avoid turning everything into a political debate, but I couldn't resist this time.)
Is 1563649 a prime number?
In other words, it seems pretty clear that having a female head of state makes your country far less likely to undergo a revolution or to invite the invasion of a foreign power. Of course, this is one of those correlation does not equal causation things. It could be that women are less likely to do things like get involved in wars with other countries, or to run repressive regimes. It could also be that free, open, egalitarian societies are more stable, and more likely to elect women. I suspect it's probably a combination of the two. Personally, I happen to believe that there are profound biological differences in men and women that tend to be reflected in how they govern... but if there really is a difference in the sexes, there's a strong case to be made that the women should be the ones in power.
Christianity needs to grow up (and yes I say that as a Christian myself) and learn to live in this century. These views that so many of the faith hold from centuries ago are the main reason that we are so hated now in the world. Do you want that? I don't.
Hated by who? The Islamic population or the Hindu population? Their views on women's rights make the Christianity look like a Gynecocracy.
From the Economist, Female Labor Markets, http://www.economist.com/node/21539932
"In Sweden, Finland and Denmark, where women make up roughly half the labour force, their share in public-sector employment is a remarkable 70%."
&
"Women are concentrated in teaching, health care, clerical work, social care and sales; they are underrepresented in manual and production jobs, maths, physics, science and engineering and in managerial jobs, particularly at the senior end. They are also much more concentrated than men in just a few job categories. Half the employed women in rich countries work in just 12 of the 110 main occupations listed by the International Labour Office (ILO). The jobs in which men work are spread far more widely, from construction workers to top managers."
and
"Rich World" = ODBC
Cite: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/7/5/48111145.pdf
See page 47 for more details.
Correction: 12 of the 110, not 120
The goal of this study, AFAICT, is to prove Summers wrong in the name of PC. The fact that they mention the Summers controversy in the first paragraph kind of gives that away. Summers was talking about why 'women may have been underrepresented "in tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions"'.
It's telling that the authors of this study chose to include data from 86 countries in order to prove their point. In fact, they choose to focus on countries like Tunisia and Bahrain to make their point. Why not the USA, where most of the people in the tenured positions are coming from? Because when they do, the best that they can come up with is a statement like this: "For example, Hyde and collaborators ([20], [25]) reported that girls have now reached parity with boys in mean mathematics performance in the United States, even in high school, where a significant gap in mean performance existed in the 1970s. Likewise, both Brody and Mills ([3]) and Wai et al. ([51]) noted a drop in nonrandom samples of students under thirteen years of age, from 13:1 in the 1970s down to approximately 3:1 by the 1990s in the ratio of U.S. boys to girls scoring above 700 on the quantitative section of the college-entrance SAT examination."
3 to 1 is still huge, and they are trying to make the case that this result might keep going until it is 1:1 like the mean result already nearly is. In fact, that the result of boys:girls in SAT score above 700 (a measure of variance) is still 3 to 1 while there is gender equality in the mean result is an indication that probably 3 to 1 is the most female favorable result that they are going to get. Because the SAT is a proxy IQ test, this is basically saying that while the mean is equal there are 3 times as many men as women in the IQ stratum from which the people who are gifted enough to enter tenured positions in science and engineering at top universities and research institutions can be drawn from.
But let's ignore that and focus on Tunisia and Bahrain, shall we?
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I thought about this and came to the conclusion that you are in fact retarded.
Interesting thing is that when looking at history societies tend to become matriarchal shortly before they collapse. They may stay around for 100-200 years of being matriarchal but collapse they do. The interesting thing is that the same societies were around for many more centuries or millenia prior to that as patriarchal societies. Makes one think.
Care to back that statement up with some examples?
pshaw. Examples are for democrats. I can refute this on pure gumption and old-fashioned crotchety-ness.
Keep on dreaming about your egalitarian utopia: it will never come true.
Relating the experience of someone I know at a prestigious grad school, women were basically tormented and pressured to get out of the math program. Unless the had friends in the dept. or slept with a professor. It was nothing less than harassment, with teachers actually forging test results to get students to drop out.
Men and women quite literally have different brain structure. Men have, on the average, bigger brains and women's brains are on the average more interconnected. That this might lead to differences in specific talents, is unsurprising. It is probably why more men are autistic than women.
are women truly as good at math as men are? does prototypical gender biology have an effect on mental biases and skills? Most likely, but I wouldn't trust any studies like this for the details. There's just too much political contamination in the cultural environment for anyone who honestly wants to know to truly come to an objective conclusion. it reads like yet another 'study' pushing the gynocentric-yet-equal culture we apparently 'have' to have when men are now doing poorer than women in almost every aspect of life. this damage starts with what the 1980s institutionalized gynocentrism in elementary school is doing to boys and continues through college (and, recently, even beyond). When stats like this are depicted, it's 70/30 men/women and the women are assumed to be victims, but when it's 30/70, suddenly it's a victory for women and the men are left holding the bag. who cares about them right? the analyses in this so-called study aren't even capable of showing areas where men do worse. I suspect the reason why would be quite telling and is the main reason I have a problem with it. Also, the heavy contamination I mentioned makes me wonder about the authors' objectivity and intentions as well.
the males the feminists whine about are the last of the old guard. what's replacing their dominance isn't 'equal' in the slightest, but that's to be expected when broad ideological DC-biases are institutionalized into culture under the guise of 'rebalancing'. there is never anything 'equal' or equitable with politics like this. several generations of men were brought up with this claptrap, and the ubiquitous presence they help maintain is as repressive to them as the old culture and stereotypes were to women. just read the posts here and you'll see plenty of guys falling over themselves trying to out-feminist each other. meanwhile, the same stats trumpeted by the media when they want to prop up womens' issues often imply that men are the ones falling behind now. the recent fact these sidenotes are stated openly, (minus the shock'n'horror show they put on for women of course) suggests just how bad it's gotten for men. these men should realize that if feminists were truly after social justice, they'd be institutionalizing the right and desire of men to be themselves into the culture just as much as they do for women. They're not. They're pushing for redefinitions of maledom while they demand that men not define what women should be. In many cases, they're actively pushing for men to become as womanly as possible. The ones that don't comply are stereotyped as animals. A nice false dilemma don't you think? Evidence for this can be found in the recent male interest in traditionally female fashion behavior and choices. (straight) men are going for manicures/pedicures now, and marketers are pitching traditionally female grooming products at them. The men depicted in catalogs and commercials are highly feminized. Men's fashion itself has become incredibly effeminate.
If you want more broad-spectrum evidence of the cultural bias, turn on the TV and watch a few commercials, sitcoms, or cop shows. When a scapegoat or character stereotype (especially a negative one) is needed, it's always male. When they have a woman in a bad light, there is almost always a man in the background supposedly pulling her strings while she flaps like a hapless puppet (I guess the ironic juxtapose with the 'hear me roar' mantra is lost on them). if the role is traditionally male, the directors go way out out of their way to 'prove' their feminism by always, always, always placing a woman in the role, often making her character out for 'retribution' against every male she interacts with. Even in situations where a man is in charge, he's gotta have a flock of females around him ridiculing at every turn. Meanwhile positive male roles are depicted as either soft and submissive to the women around them, like good lapdogs, or as captain-save-a-ho's. flip on the news and see what the differences in coverage are when men and women achieve/sacrifi
What the heck are you talking about? While you're right about the Muslims, how on earth are Hindus bad with women's rights? If you're talking about the arranged marriage thing, that's equally bad (or good, depending on your perspective) for both sexes. It's not like the man gets his choice of hot chicks (his choices are limited by his family background, profession/income, and looks too, as the women these days usually have just as much say in whether they want to proceed with the marriage as the men), plus men should know that many times, hot chicks quickly become a PITA after their hotness gets old and their high-maintenance qualities become more prominent and annoying. The simple fact is: if you marry someone without spending much time with them, it's likely you won't like each other that much, and there's nothing beneficial here for either sex. Of course, the flip side is that when you do marry someone after spending lots of time with them, you frequently get tired of them or grow apart anyway; just look at the divorce rate in Western countries, now that it's not culturally taboo to get a divorce unlike 100+ years ago.
If you want to see something eye-opening, check out the enrollment and graduation rates of Hindu women (practicing or not; lots of them it seems are only nominally Hindu these days), both in India and in the USA, in traditionally "male" subjects (from our western point-of-view) like electrical engineering and various sciences, and compare those to the rates for western women. Go into some senior-level EE classes at highly-ranked universities, and you'll probably find zero American women, and a bunch of Chinese and Indian women. It's only here in the "advanced" west where these subjects aren't interesting to women, but Indian women flock to them in droves, and there doesn't seem to be any negative view of this by Indian men (who consider highly-educated wives to be an asset).
As for the Muslims, yeah, they're backwards, and they've been that way ever since they turned to fundamentalism many centuries ago. Similarly, the US is headed the same way, with a weird brand of fundamentalist Christianity taking over here which preaches a bunch of crazy corporatist BS about how Jesus loves The Invisible Hand and rich people. Muslims used to be the world leaders in science and learning, back when Europe was mired in feudalism and superstition, but that all changed when the fundamentalists took over. I expect America will be the same way before long.
Where is this culture that women have trophy husbands? I would like to move there and be kept as the toy of a rich woman until I grow wrinkly.
So the ridiculously flagrant persecution complex the author of that page opens with in the very first paragraph didn't set off any alarm bells for you?
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
By the majority of people in the US, for starters. And probably hate is not a good word. Misunderstood is a better one. Many people I meet assume that I'm a die-hard fundamentalist like the Westboro Baptists (spelling).
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
If they truly did the same work for less money, they wouldn't need positive discrimination to get hired. Moreover, it just happens that women don't hire women if they can avoid it. Note that it's actually illegal in Europe to pay someone less for doing the same work, which is why feminists here have to LIE in order to complain about wage disparity.
Yes, makes me think. Think that you are an idiot who doesn't know how to evaluate data.
Hell, you probably can't even understand statistics.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The other side of that is "men should take responsibility for the well-being of their wives". Women demand that but want to back out of the submitting part. Which means there is no union, just 2 people trying screw each other over.
That's a good point.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Why should it when the rest of the page checks out properly?
How it works.
What are YOU talking about?
Many money are forced out of school at a young age.
Thousand of women die for 'Dowry deaths'; even though Dowry has been outlawed.
Selective sex abortion. Again outlawed, but they still happen frequently.
High levels of domestic violence against women
Less educated, especially in rural India
Huge amount of trafficking girls.
In India, a woman has NO reproductive freedom
If you are a widow? you are basically shunned.
All of which can be more forgiving depending on what caste you are.
It's getting a lot better, especially compared to Muslims.
Arrange marriages where almost always better for the man. He could go on and do what he was doing, where the women is now confined to a specific role.
" hot chicks quickly become a PITA after their hotness gets old and their high-maintenance qualities become more prominent and annoying."
doesn't really apply to a country where the man says how it must be and the women has no choice.
So the pain in the ass gets cut real short when the man can divorce his wife and she basically becomes an outcast.
Yes, Indian women go to where the appropriated money fro their caste is.
Yes, the ability to do those skills is very much cultural based. That in no way indicates there isn't sexism among Hindu, and people from India.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A skirt is a piece of material that's wrapped around something. The includes Dress, skirts on tables, skirts on beds, and, yes,, a Kilt.
What kind of wussy hides from an actually term because some people might think it only applies to women?
Personally, I have noted that the more popular the kilt becomes with the riff raff, them more the riff-raff gets upset about the word 'skirt'.
If I see one more fat bearded jackhole in a kilt, I am going to strangle the guy who invented utililkilts.
Skirt
noun
1.
the part of a gown, dress, slip, or coat that extends downward from the waist.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Think of all the recent examples of governments collapsing or suffering major revolts. The collapse of the dictatorship in Tunisia, the collapse of the Egyptian government, the Libyan uprising, the ongoing revolt in Syria, the ouster of Saddam Hussein, the Taliban government of Afghanistan, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the various Soviet satellite states. In every single case I can think of, the government was headed by men. And there are currently about 20 different countries with female heads of state- Ireland, Finland, Germany, Argentina, Brazil, Thailand, Liberia, India... hell, Iceland is run by a lesbian.
In other words, it seems pretty clear that having a female head of state makes your country far less likely to undergo a revolution or to invite the invasion of a foreign power. Of course, this is one of those correlation does not equal causation things. It could be that women are less likely to do things like get involved in wars with other countries, or to run repressive regimes. It could also be that free, open, egalitarian societies are more stable, and more likely to elect women. I suspect it's probably a combination of the two. Personally, I happen to believe that there are profound biological differences in men and women that tend to be reflected in how they govern... but if there really is a difference in the sexes, there's a strong case to be made that the women should be the ones in power.
Society != Government
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Two... Two feet! Ahahahahahaha!
Unlike here in the US, there's giant differences between the middle/upper and lower classes in India, so what I wrote was really about the middle/upper class ones, especially those who move to the US for education and/or work, as those are the ones I have experience with. So while much of what you wrote is indeed true for backwards villagers, that doesn't make it true for the upper-middle-class people working in Bangalore, for instance.
Evolution isn't about "making sense", it's about heritability of advantageous traits. Traits don't develop to suit "convenient" behaviour, they shape behaviour after being developed (by chance) and are kept (or discarded) by a species based on their influence over reproductive success.
Tetrachromacy is a very fuzzy field with very dubious advantages (since the supposed 4th human cone overlaps the same spectrum range already covered by the other three cones - no humans have exhibited extended-range tetrachromacy, like some other animals have, and in fact no human has ever been actually proven to have 4 types of cone cells).
And colour-blindness at the physical level is never really an advantage. If ignoring the input of one of the cone type was advantageous, that is something we could develop neurally, during our lives, without having to rely on chance mutations. I have yet to see a real-world image where a dichromat can "spot a camouflaged enemy" that trichromats can't spot. The supposed military advantage seems to be (at best) an urban myth or (at worst) a ploy to prevent colour-blind men from avoiding conscription. On the contrary, there are plenty of example of camouflage that only trichromats can see through (ex., "hunter orange", which dichromat animals can't distinguish from brown - and similar colours can be used to make something harder to see by dichromat humans).
Men suffer from colour blindness more than women simply because women have two copies of the X chromosome and, even if one is defective, chances are the other still manages to trigger the production of all cone types. In other words, colour blindness is a defect that women have better protection against, not a positive trait "developed" by men (in which case it would depend on the Y chromosome, not the X).
If dichromacy gave us a significant advantage, it would be a dominant trait. It's not, on either gender. Less than 10% of men and 1% of women are dichromats (or monochromats). As to tetrachromacy, there's no conclusive evidence of any humans actually possessing it (it's only conjectured to exist because women have two X chromosomes, but we know they can't see infra-red or ultraviolet, so even if they do have 4 cone types, the 4th type simply overlaps the other ones).
P.S. - Colour blind people don't see "GB instead of RGB", there are multiple forms of dichromacy (and there's also monochromacy).
can we have an article about gender differences in math that instantly devolves into a discussion of Kilts.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Oh please tell me you aren't serious. That sexist "wives should submit to their husbands" is a bullshit view fostered during a time when a male-dominated society was prevalent. Christianity needs to grow up (and yes I say that as a Christian myself) and learn to live in this century. These views that so many of the faith hold from centuries ago are the main reason that we are so hated now in the world. Do you want that? I don't.
If you read the epistle it's taken from, it's "And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. For wives this means... For husbands this means..." Explicitly called to submit to each other. (If you read the verses you'll see he goes to greater lengths to persuade the men, setting it in their context and using a very dramatic example -- perhaps we can surmise he thought the men might be harder to persuade. He certainly does not call men to subjugate women as people who only quote the middle bit and then yell "sexist" like to claim.)
The study also has proven that length of the legs has no effect whatsoever on the sprinter time, size of the brain on the intelligence, size of the muscle on the strength . There were also scientific studies in history that has proven beyond doubt that earth is flat and in the center of Universe, Aryan race is superior, machines heavier than air cannot fly (that one was in fact mathematically proven).
JAM
evidently, whoever is in charge of utf support for this site
was more interested in the "math is hard" sort of toys.
Oh please tell me you aren't serious. That sexist "wives should submit to their husbands" is a bullshit view fostered during a time when a male-dominated society was prevalent. Christianity needs to grow up (and yes I say that as a Christian myself) and learn to live in this century. These views that so many of the faith hold from centuries ago are the main reason that we are so hated now in the world. Do you want that? I don't.
Christianity is a religion, not a buffet. The whole idea is that it's a faith based on eternal truths revealed by Jesus of Nazareth. It's not a trendy club. The rules aren't supposed to change with the ages to fit trends and fashions. If you don't believe in those rules, then abandon the religion. But to insist that Christianity "get with it" is the worst kind of trendy relativism. If the man is who he said he is, then why would the truth of his teachings change? Either he is what he claimed to be, or he is not. Make your decision to follow Christianity based on that and that alone. But to think you can "modernize" what is supposed to be ageless truths (according to the Bible) doesn't say much about your faith.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The problem with your hypothetical culture of women who act like men is that it is a fantasy that has never been known to have existed in human history.
I cannot find the video that we were shown in my Sociology 101 class. However, my statements were based on a real actual culture that has been studied, and documented. For the life of me, I cannot find any references about it. Your most appropriate position is skepticism of this, until provided evidence, and unfortunately, I cannot find any of the evidence that I know to exist.
You're free to doubt me, but the culture does actually exist.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
I found a video purportedly of the of the Hibitoe people in Papua New Guinea. link here. I cannot however substantiate the material with anything else. (Searching Google for "Hibitoe" turns up nearly nothing.)
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
A lack of women in Math isn't a problem. Women should go into whatever career they enjoy and desire to go into. I guarantee you that there will be less women interested in joining the police force than there would be men, in any country. That's not a problem. It is only a problem if there is a woman who wants to be a police officer and is prevented from doing so against her will by some intentional or unintentional bias.
Women make of ~50% of the population; therefore, they should make up 50% of every profession... This is not sound logic.
Women should be able to excel in whatever career path they choose. There is only a problem if there is a barrier that prevents women from entering the Math fields. If there is no barrier and women just statistically enter such a field in lesser numbers, there is not a problem. It is only a problem if they are interested but unable to enter such a field due to conscious or unconscious discrimination.
HP is a great example of a company that shows that women leaders are just as selfish and terrible as men.
Choose the individual, not the gender.
You're accusing the GP of the cardinal sin of drawing conclusions from qualitative inspection of the data. But what he's doing is eyeballing the data to see if it, in broad strokes, supports the conclusions drawn.
I only looked at it briefly, but.... The paper has some pretty weird elements. They considered p0.1 significant (!?). Basically all their p-values are so much el toro poo poo anyway because they've done zillions of tests and haven't made any corrections for multiple comparisons.
Their experimental design (such as it is - at the end they thank a statistics class for suggesting comparisons they could do) seems to be aimed at showing that the observed gap between girls' and boys' math test scores is correlated with various measures of gender equality, with samples taken from a variety of countries. Some of their plethora of tests suggest this is indeed the case (not surprising). From this they suggest (they do not conclude, as the Slashdot summary suggests) that there is no real gap between boys' and girls' scores that isn't explained by equality differences. They also say that their data is not consistent with the increased variability in men hypothesis.
Now, even if your p-values are valid, a non-significant p-value isn't a negative result (I know everyone seems to think it is). It's an inconclusive one. If you want to get an actual negative result you have to calculate confidence intervals on the observed effect and show that it's confidently less than some pre-chosen significant value. Very few people do this. These guys certainly haven't.
Their data DOES look to be consistent with the hypothesis that men and women have similar mean abilities in math but men show greater variability (the variability ratios they measured were greater than one in almost every case).
PS: I was going to find something witty about the bible calling pi = 3, but then I learned something new today :)
http://www.purplemath.com/modules/bibleval.htm (cool stuff for math history geeks!)
In the book 'A history of pi', the author looks at this passage. I forget the details, but this argument of outer vs. inner circumference has been used before, but the justification is invalid: a few passages later, there is a clarification that shows that they meant the outer radius.
Probably because Donna del Mondo is a prime example of Italian mondo films. Today it would be called the film equivalent of "Jerry Springer".
IE, mostly faked and what isn't faked is misrepresented to seem more titillating. That's the reason very little turns up for "Hibitoe" except for references to that film.
Probably because Donna del Mondo is a prime example of Italian mondo films. Today it would be called the film equivalent of "Jerry Springer".
IE, mostly faked and what isn't faked is misrepresented to seem more titillating. That's the reason very little turns up for "Hibitoe" except for references to that film.
Figured it was something like that.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Generally speaking, I am in the 'the data don't support your hypothesis camp', but to give an answer to your question a stab:
I think the problem is that a statement like 'the average of population A is different to the average of population B' should be merely a statistical statement, of interest but with no impact on any individual in population A or B. Unfortunately, the reality is that people internalise that belief and dismiss the abilities of individuals in one population without a proper assessment. And the brain loves evidence that backs up things it already knows (i.e. confirmation bias), so already having that belief makes you pick up on evidence which highlights the difference, and hand-wave away evidence disagreeing with it (as we're seeing in this thread now).
There's also the problem that until the nature/nurture thing is understood, 'men are (on average) better at ' is a fairly meaningless statement. Does it mean 'people with Y chromosomes are better at ', or 'people raised with the social conditioning and expectations applied to men in this culture are better at '? Knowing which of these is true is important, because if it's the latter, we should really be doing something about it. And if it's the former, we should still be doing something - making sure individuals are judged on their *individual* merit!
Addendum: I didn't notice the contrast with 'women are better at' being acceptable, which is a different issue to the one I addressed in my above post. But I think the reason for people being offended by claims that men are inherently better at something is related to what I wrote above.
A few obvious mistakes:
- They knew in advance what they wanted to prove, yet created the formal hypothesis only after they got the numbers.
- They tested children here. The most important biological differences develop at a later age, so the results cannot be generalized to adults.
- The title makes it clear this paper is meant to draw attention, but not to publish scientific results.
For the folks who whine about there not being enough female engineers or scientists, consider this FACT:
Most of the prisoners in the US (and elsewhere) are male yet no one decries that we need more male prisoners nor is there any sort of impetus for being a criminal
If you want to make your own observation, walk into a high school and count the number of fe/males in the top AP classes and then go and count them in the bottom-tier classes. You end up with the same ratio.Far more males to females. That's wider variability due specifically to the Y-chromosome. In fact, if it is biological, then getting rid of all cultural influences whatsoever should result in 1/3 and 2/3 ratios of women to men on the top ends of behavior (STEM) and on the bottom, too (prison).
The flaw in the analysis is doing a study in countries where people do not have equal access to education.
If only the rich can get educated, then their children, equally represented in genders, will form the population that is being studied.
Only if all children have equal chance at education does measuring educational achievement tell you anything about the general population.
The variability IS the Y-chromosome.
It's difficult to fathom how the authors interpret the data on page 14 as *not* supporting the hypothesis that there is a male/female variance ratio of about 1.1. Figure 1A is a bell-like curve which is clearly centered around 1.1. In Figure 1B, almost all of the points are below the 1:1 line, whereas if you plot a 1.1:1 line, its a perfect fit for the data. In Figure 1C, the x value where the regression line intersects a zero gender gap (i.e. no evidence of cultural bias), is at a variance ratio of about 1.1. All of the evidence the authors present points to an underlying variance ratio near 1.1, yet somehow they conclude the opposite.
I should thank that AC, whoever he was, but suffice to say this is a case of simple modernization of Amazon-esque mythology. The Greeks were neither the first nor the last to fantasize about a society of masculine women, but the source of the fantasy is almost always men for the implicit purpose of glorifying masculinity as something women would want to possess and express if they could only do so. (This foundational assumption of the Amazon mythos by extension eschews femininity as an expression that women would actually reject if only they could do so.) This fantasy has on occasion even been coaxed, by men, into reality. For example the Dahomey Amazons, who were a female military unit formed at the express desire of the king of the now-dissolved African state of Dahomey. (I grant that the scale is not analogous to a society.)
Now it's likely that people will mistakenly infer from my commentary that I believe in pigeonholing/stereotyping vices/virtues/behaviors by gender role. This could not be further from the truth, I think virtues and vices are universal, and that one of the primary barriers to understanding between genders is an unwillingness to embrace virtues considered to be 'across gender lines' or worse to marginalize or rationalize vices within one's own gender group as simply misunderstood by the other(s)*. However to assess the history of culture and society as it relates to gender, one often has to be able to see it through the lens of the majority, so to speak. Even if I don't agree with exulting or marginalizing gender roles/identities/expressions, it must be understood that these were the motivations (subconscious or otherwise) of the cultures which spawned these fictions and their sentiments.
I hope my dense ramblings have some merit for you, and I apologize if they are rather too pretentious or officious, but it's something I can't really turn off when I hit my 'academic' stride. I have to say I do rather appreciate your intellectual honesty in not merely accepting but expecting skepticism as the default response to claims. This is a rarity of character in anybody anymore, and you are admirable for it.
*I personally feel that MtF, FtM and "genderless" persons constitute separate genders, but at present they are so few in number within the population as to have very little noticeable effect. (Much to my own personal chagrin, as I have a weakness for MtFs like you wouldn't believe.) I also understand that this is frequently in direct opposition with the feelings and goals of transgendered persons who strive desperately to be accepted as the gender expression they emulate as their identity. While I am more concerned with realities than feelings, at the same time I think the sincerity of the effort deserves genuinely respectful treatment as though they were the emulated gender, but that is not the same thing as accepting as a fact of classification that they are the emulated gender. (They are not their "original" gender either.)
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I understand what you are saying about the Amazonian depictions and I agree that these depictions of Amazon societies are a construct of men.
In the same way, Bayonetta is not "embracing her sexuality", because she never actually lived. She is fictitious, and her actions are not her own informed choice, but rather her "actions" and "choices" are thrust upon her by the male programmers and game designers, who threw every sexual fantasy that they had upon her.
However, the depiction of Bayonetta does not mean that every real-life equivalent of Bayonetta is a sexist representation of masculine fantasy. In fact, were Bayonetta actually alive, she would be a feminist depiction of a woman embracing her sexuality.
It is thus important to realize that while Amazonian depictions project a masculine fantasy that women in power would respond the same as they do, it does not actually mean that were such a gender-role reversed culture be found that it would be a fantasy of masculine ideals. Neither does the actual existence of such a culture show that the masculine fantasies are not fantasies. (A bit of an example of "true knowledge" vs. "belief that just happened to be true".)
Again, I assert, there exists a primitive culture wherein the men are the subjugated gender, and as they are the subjugated gender, it falls upon them to be attractive and entice a mate to marry them. Regardless of this apparent full reversal of gender roles, the thing that makes this distinct and different from masculine fantasy, is that the women of this tribe do NOT do the physical activities of providing for food on most occasions, because there is a recognition in the culture that males do in fact have better muscular strength and endurance. The men get food by climbing trees, and other physically demanding actions, while the women obtain food in shortfalls by using their brains.
What makes this specific and extant culture interesting is not what gender roles are reversed (wearing make up, and being pretty are obviously cultural inclinations that would be exploited by a subjugated gender) but rather what gender roles are NOT reversed, but simple recontextualized, or reframed, in order to fit their believe system that women are the superior gender. (i.e. Men are stronger physically, sure, but who cares, they're idiots, and would be nothing without women to guide them.)
Addressing your "transphobia", the distinction of transgender vs. cisgender is something that should only ever matter between a person and those providing them medical care. There is no justifiable reason for society to treat them differently from cisgendered individuals of the same gender. Your statement that transgendered people are "emulating" the other gender belies a wrong assumption, and a hateful position similar to suggesting that black people are lazy. What are the "realities" of transgendered people not being of the gender that they IDENTIFY with? Genes, gonads, hormones, phenotypical traits? What of these apply to transgendered individuals but not Caster Semenya? Genes, and gonads. What of these narrowed traits do not also apply to women with CAIS? None. So, a woman can be a woman, and still have a 46-XY genotype, a man can be a man and still have a 46-XX genotype. A woman can still be a woman and have testies, as a man can be a man with ovaries and/or a uterus. A woman can still be a woman and have hormone levels consistent with men, and a man can be a man and have hormone levels consistent with women. A woman can still be a woman and have masculine features, and a man can still be a man and have feminine features. So, what really makes a woman a woman, or a man a man? There is no answer you can give that excludes the transgendered, without unnecessarily excluding intersexed individuals.
Your position that transgendered people are "acting", or "emulating" their identified gender implies that they are not genuinely the gender with which they identify with, and what does any of the gender of another person have to do wi
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
While I was trying to think of good counter-argument to the possibility of a society where physical strength is subservient to mental prowess at all social levels, I started with the premise that such a balance would be untenable over time, then I remembered slavery. Considering the nature and outcome of such things as the Servile Wars and Helot rebellions, I have scuttled my own argument in that dimension. However, there is another aspect that is more difficult to assuage, namely the pressure and momentum of surrounding cultures and the nature of cultural exchange (and envy). Any such society would have had to have been very isolated, otherwise consistent interactions with patriarchies probably would have inspired the males therein to realize that their physiological strength would enable them to reset their society by simple force. At the same time surrounding societies would have potentially held them in disdain and dealt with them less fairly if not with outright hostility (there are modern and ancient examples of this, for the former it is known that the more heavily patriarchal societies in the Middle East have been bigoted in their relationships with female representatives of foreign governments and businesses. As an example of the latter, the Shang Dynasty was overthrown because it was considered to have become too 'feminized' and willing to accept women in roles that wielded political power). This would have put the culture at a competitive disadvantage with virtually all others, which over any reasonable length of time would have led to its ultimate collapse.
"Transphobia"? Wow, that actually got a laugh out of me. Let me be frank, I'm as close to being trans as a cis can be. I have been through years of psychiatric therapy for gender identity issues. I've come so close to transition that I was pricing homone treatments and working on vocal training regimens to try to find a voice for myself that I thought would pass (the fact that I couldn't contributed to my not transitioning, but like anything so radical the ultimate decision was a patchwork of far more serious reasons). To this day I have this nagging fear that I'm going to end up regretting my many-faceted cowardice as some kind of middle age crisis, and try to transition at a bad age, and end up hideous (if you don't transition while you're still growing somewhat, in your teens/twenties, but rather while you're aging wholesale... ugh... the results are... seriously unflattering).
Furthermore, while I don't conflate gender identity and expression with sexual identity and expression, I think it bears mentioning that I am also pansexual (if the whole "I like FtMs" wasn't a big enough clue, which apparently it wasn't).
So, with all that background being aired, you have to understand that my positions on gender identity are the result not simply of study and theory, though I have plenty of both, but from living with a personal gender identity problem all my life.
This is really quite a layer cake, and the potential to oversimplify is great. In the first place, all identity is ultimately self-selective. A person may suppress their own identity in favor of an appearance that conforms better to societal norms, but that to is ultimately a decision made by the self within a framework of cost-benefit analysis with regard to impact upon personal and professional relationships and goals. (This is assuming a modern liberal society, not a brutally oppressive one where "abnormal" gender behavior is criminal.)
The problem with an identity that is contrary to physiology is two-fold. First, the biological topology can be pushed and pulled and bent, but even with HRT and SRS it never fundamentally changes. An MtF is still going to need to be screened for prostate cancer, unlike any biological woman. Second, and more germane to the issue, is that a desire for a gender-specific mental/emotional/psychological development and end state are not the same as an actual intrinsic possession thereof. Many MtFs lament their lack of
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
That... took a lot out of me.
Bleh "magically resolving" should be "magically resolve" and I'm sure there more typos.
Not enough sleep.
Goodnight.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I am not saying, as you think I've said, that transpersons' gender identities and expressions are not genuine.
The word "emulate" carries a connotation that the emulating person is not being genuine.
Your whole "best effort" paragraph does little to make this sound any better. If a young girl from birth were raised as if a boy, and later decided to shurk this rearing and become a woman, would she be putting on her "best effort" to "emulate" a female, because she doesn't share a girlhood?
For your argument to work, it would have to apply equally well to children who have (abusively) been forced to conform to the opposite gender. That physiological conditions are not relevant, but rather the life experiences of those individuals. And what of children who transition early in life? Is this child emulating being a female as well? Even though she has lived full-time as a female since the 5th grade, and was afforded the courtesy of being gender-non-conformant even before that?
That is not a condemnation, or indictment, or any sort of projected negativity, but an acknowledgement of demonstrable developmental difference.
It would be folly for one to argue that trans people experience the same upbringing and development as cis people of the gender with which the trans person identifies. However, that does not invalidate the genuine nature of the trans person's gender, and certainly does not warrant the term "emulate". If a transperson is acting genuinely and honestly, then there is no "emulation" going on, they are being an honest representation of a woman, or man.
A transwoman is a woman, a transman is a man. They are not "emulating" their gender. Do they share identical developmental histories? No, but then gay people experience different developmental histories as well, sometimes gender non-conforming even. There is an incredible amount of variation in the world, and singling out one group of people and accusing them of "emulation" of their behaviors is offensive and wrong.
You claim to have trans history, yet you clearly don't show any obvious deference towards the feelings of those people. Black people are not immune to racism against blacks, and women are not immune to sexism against women, and homosexuals? All one need do is point to the all of the anti-gay politicians who turn out to be homosexual to demonstrate that homophobia is not limited to the heterosexuals.
Do transpeople have different histories from cispeople? Yes, they do. But there is no reason why that should depict them as less than genuine, especially considering how vast the differences in development of cisgendered people that can occur without even considering the transgendered.
(BTW, it was abundantly clear that your sexuality included a fetish for MTFs. I just didn't touch on it, because it's entirely irrelevant.)
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS