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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 rich worlds 80% of woman pile into 10 of the 120 job categories (Medicine, teaching, public service) while men are more evenly spread out.
Which is also cultural.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Girl's toys: Plastic tits and the phrase "Math class is tough!"
I still haven't figured out whether dysfunctional society caused the toys or dysfunctional toys caused the society, though.
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).
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.
Which is also cultural.
Traditional roles take a while to break down. About 100 years ago it was scandalous to even consider a woman going through medical school or writing a scientific thesis. Even in the 1950's the prevailing view among Sci-Fi audience was women were incapable of writing Science Fiction, so we had writers like "James Tiptree, Jr." Women were directed towards nurturing roles, so they could be good mothers when they married and retired from their profession.
Not quite the same today. I've worked with DBAs, Business Analysts and coders who are female. Highly competent professionals for the most part. Glad they didn't settle for less.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The phrase you are looking for is â feedback loopâ.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
When I have kids of my own, I'm raising them to be math and science nerds like the old man, especially any daughters.
My experience with this is you can control which opportunities they get, but they decide what they actually like. Don't turn in the math equivalent of the screaming sports parent.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I find it interesting how many people are apparently completely willing to accept that women's superiority in language ability is biological.
Men and women are not biologically the same, obviously. There is far more too it than what is between your legs though. Men produce more hormones that encourage competitiveness, women produce more that encourage nurturing. This is not unsurprising since natural selection favours men who have as many partners as possible and can protect them from harm, and women who are able to form strong relationships with strong men and their offspring.
A lot of people seem to think that feminism is arguing that men and women are the same, but that is wrong. Feminism merely argues that men and women are of equal worth, that they both have equally valuable roles on society. The fact that historically the role of women and home makers and mothers has been seen as less important that earning a wage is the cultural bias, not the idea that men and women are different which is a simple fact.
To give an example there was a programme on the radio about female surgeons finding it hard to get into the field. One of the major problems was that they were expected to be just like the male surgeons, available at all hours and largely free of other commitments. Since it takes a long time to become a surgeon and reproduction becomes increasingly difficult as women age they were finding that having a family life and a lack of day-care facilities as hospitals was a problem. We should value female surgeons equally and make an effort to support their needs which are different to male surgeon's, rather than expect them to be just like men.
Of course gender is not a clear cut thing and there are men who excel in things that women have some natural tendency to be better at and vice versa, but I don't think maths is one of them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
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.
Wait a couple of years. There will be another study suggesting that it's biological again. Of course, some of the problem here lies in us starting with the assumption that these things are either nature *or* nurture, instead of entertaining the possibility that it's a complex mix of various factors that are both biological and cultural.
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!