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Girls From Progressive Societies Do Better At Math, Study Finds (sciencecodex.com)

An anonymous reader writes: (edited and condensed)Research by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) has found that the 'maths gender gap', the relative under performance of girls at maths, is much wider in societies with poor rates of gender equality. Published on Monday in the American Economic Review, the research shows that the performance gap between girls and boys is far less pronounced in societies that hold progressive and egalitarian views about the role of women. The researchers analyzed the relationship between maths scores of 11,527 15-year-old living in nine different countries and the Gender Gap Index (GGI) in their country of ancestry. The GGI measures economic and political opportunities, education, and well-being for women. The researchers found that the more gender equality in the country of ancestry, the higher the maths scores of girls relative to boys living in the same country. The findings were significant and robust even when the researchers controlled for other individual factors that may affect youths' maths performance. In particular, the results show that an increase of 0.05 points (or one standard deviation) in the GGI is associated with an increase in the performance of girls in maths, relative to boys, of 7.47 points -- equivalent to about one and a half months of schooling.

35 of 280 comments (clear)

  1. Because they do it at all by kheldan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Non-progressive societies don't encourage girls to do things like science and math in the first place, they expect them to adopt 'traditional female roles'.

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    1. Re:Because they do it at all by myowntrueself · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Non-progressive societies don't encourage girls to do things like science and math in the first place, they expect them to adopt 'traditional female roles'.

      Should do a comparative study of marriage stability as well!

      Perhaps women from such progressive cultures make terrible mothers and wives, perhaps men from such progressive cultures make terrible husbands and fathers...

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    2. Re:Because they do it at all by thaylin · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In terms of evangelical conservative views, of course they make terrible wives and mothers, because they actually want to do something other than be in the kitchen or on their backs. Girls in those types of households are not going to do well at math because they are expected to learn specific roles, that do not include it.

      Personally I would take an engineering wife.

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      When you cant win, ad hominem.
    3. Re:Because they do it at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      doubtful

      That's the beauty of the scientific method. It gives us a framework to actually test such things, so we don't have to rely on "well I doubt it, therefore you are wrong and we should not study this further".

    4. Re:Because they do it at all by TWX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I expect that things like divorce happen in progressive societies because we allow the individual to leave a marriage, and we allow either individual to make the choice.

      Societies that either do not let marriages end, or else restrict who can initiate such a divorce, or even societies where such a divorce is possible but where one party may end up without any of the resources gained during the marriage. All of these conditions either prevent divorce, formally restrict divorce, or otherwise make ending a marriage impossible or impractical.

      --
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    5. Re:Because they do it at all by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      This study already provides evidence that parents in progressive societies are better parents, because they are at least better at educating their daughters in math.

      Disclaimer: When my daughter was in elementary school, she placed 2nd in the district in the Math Olympiad, but now that she is a teenager, she thinks I am a terrible parent.

    6. Re:Because they do it at all by tnk1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Define "better parent". Parenting skills probably don't hinge on whether a child is a math genius or not, but rather on the children being provided the opportunity to be functioning adults and to have the opportunity to excel at whatever they are interested in.

    7. Re:Because they do it at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Of course. You’re so enlightened.
      Except did you ever think that a woman would want to be a stay at home mother and raise her kids. Probably not, because you're so force fed progressive garbage that the actual wants of the woman are obsolete. It's a two ways street. Society currently force feeds woman that they need to be a working woman to be seen as strong and empowered, when some of the strongest woman I've seen gave of 6 figure jobs to raise their kids.

      I bet you'd like an engineering wife, then she could pay all your bills and you can play video games all day. I like your word usage to "take", guess her wanting you is of little interest. Like a piece of meat.

      One of my best friends growing up, she came from an evangelical conservative home with a stay at home mother. She works for NASA now as an engineer. Your stereotype views are pathetic and shallow.

    8. Re:Because they do it at all by cayenne8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not surprised. How many times has she pleaded with you to stop 'ruining her life'? How many times has she confessed that her 'life is over'?

      Those are some pretty dramatic consequences! You must be some horrible tyrant who 'never lets her do anything'.

      In the old days (not THAT long ago, say 20+ years back), this used to simply referred to as being a parent.

      A parent is NOT there to be a child's friend.

      I became great friends with my parents when I was in my mid-20's or 30's or so....but when raising kids, you have to sometimes be unpopular and be the rules maker and enforcer.

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    9. Re:Because they do it at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Stereotype much? My wife decided to stay home. She isn't unfulfilled. Her main complaint with doing so is it makes it harder to afford things. I'd encourage her to return to employment if she wasn't finding fulfillment staying home, but I'm not going to tell her to go drudge away for a nicer car or a bigger house while she pines away at the time missed with the kids like I do. Society nor I should tell her that she has to stay home, but they can f#@$ off telling her how to feel if she makes that choice. Especially when the pressure on that choice is an attempt to draw twice as much profit from the things my grandparents had with just one salary.

    10. Re:Because they do it at all by fche · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ... then, if both parents are engineers, more than half their income will be taxed to pay for others' kids' kindergartening

    11. Re:Because they do it at all by unimacs · · Score: 2

      Not exactly. For example, in Sweden it also goes to pay for health care, university level education, and other social programs while in the US much of that is coming out of your own pocket along with retirement savings. You could argue that it comes out even in the end or that maybe we even come out ahead in the US but that wouldn't be true. The average Swede has about 10% more disposable income along with about twice the amount of vacation per year.

      Along with that Swedish families get 480 days of parental leave per child, - much of which is paid and can be taken anytime up until the child is 8 years old.

    12. Re:Because they do it at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Reactionary positions aren't necessarily wrong. Those traditions weren't 'terrible', just rigid, and they were needed for society to function. The difference between survival and starvation depended greatly on the manual labor capacity of the family. Thus she was on her back or in the kitchen preparing food, and meanwhile he was out in the field maintaining the next harvest. This narrative of oppression needs to stop. It was hard for BOTH. Stop lying about history for the sake of your 'progressive' narrative.

      This situation imposed on men just as much as it imposed on women. Back in those days, while men were considered head of the family, they were also held accountable for their wives' behavior. If she cheated in the marriage or was unhappy, it was HIS fault. Unfortunately, while we've 'liberated' women, the culture still holds men responsible for her behavior and choices, just without the power to do much about it (eg her body, her right, her choice, his responsibility). Society assumes that any negative outcomes for conflicts, sexual behavior, or face saving is his fault and that she's a victim. Feminists play this card up quite a bit

    13. Re:Because they do it at all by GuB-42 · · Score: 2

      I think there is some truth in it.
      In societies with a high gender gap, women are typically taught to be good mothers when men are more career-oriented. This not only make good mothers but also keep couples together because there is a real necessity since they have different roles.
      In societies with a low gender gap both women and men do the same thing. And in western societies where career is often more highly regarded than families values, there will be more and more career women and less and less good mothers. Problem is, the reverse is not true for men : they are still expected to be career oriented rather than become good fathers. And because both parents can function independently, there is less insensitive for them to stay together.
      Just look at what kind of example we give for "progressive" societies : almost always career women, almost never stay-at-home fathers. This is not a progressive society, this is a productivity oriented society with little regard for the family.

    14. Re:Because they do it at all by myowntrueself · · Score: 3, Informative

      My point was that for people who are bound to be at the top of the middle class payscales, they would be made to contribute far more to the state treasury than their own costs pull out.

      If the GP poster had referred to a family of janitors, it wouldn't be so. But he/she said engineers.....

      The family of janitors would require at least 3 janitors working for every one child in daycare. It would be more effective to have one stay-at-home janitor and the rest working.

      This is where things break down badly; the 'entitled', middle classes have so little idea how the low-end of the pay-scale lives they think their 'engineer' lifestyles give them some kind of insight into how society functions.

      Poverty in places like the US and Canada is just fucking massively worse than the poverty in any European country, maybe except some Eastern European countries, the extreme ends of which which still wouldn't be as bad as the extreme ends of poverty in Canada. This is why Bob Geldof can criticize Canada for not being ambitious enough in its foreign aid spending; because he imagines Canadian poverty to be about the same as Irish or British poverty.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    15. Re:Because they do it at all by jedidiah · · Score: 2

      It is also not true that women didn't do backbreaking manual labor. Maintaining a household in the absence of modern conveniences is no trivial matter. Even simple things like the laundry become a major chore. Modern people in general have no clue and can't relate at all. That's not getting into whether women worked on the farm or factory.

      A lot of people have this "Father Knows Best" view of the past that didn't even exist for the working class then.

      --
      A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
    16. Re:Because they do it at all by unimacs · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In the US, it's not being taken from you to begin with. You can also live off a single income if you're engineers. If both of you work, you can just bank the 2nd income.

      Your claims are absurd. They sound like old Soviet propaganda.

      They aren't "claims". Those are the laws, policies, and the stats. You pay less in taxes in the US, but you're getting less in return and just having to pay somebody else (more) for those services. For health care, you're paying insurance companies and your paying with lower wages because your company is paying the insurance companies. Your either saving for your kids' college education or they're going into debt or both. Instead of the government managing a pension fund on your behalf, you have to pay into a 401K, IRA, or equivalent.

      I guess if you consider health care, retirement savings, and college tuition for your kids to be optional expenses, then yes, you come out way ahead in the US.

      I'm an IT director at a 100 person non-profit. I'm making a decent wage, but not a fortune. My wife works part time (less than 20 hours a week). We have what's considered to be an upper-middle class income. She was working very little when our kids were really young. So it's not like the lifestyle you're describing is foreign to me. But, by the time our kids get through college I'll be just a few years from retirement and I wish we were socking more away. We don't live extravagantly and we have virtually no debt. If 50+ percent of our income went to taxes and we didn't have to worry about health care costs, college tuition, or saving for retirement, I would take that deal.

      I know lots of people my age and older that have virtually no retirement savings. 68% of working age people in the US are not participating in an employee sponsored retirement plan. Presumably some of them don't need to, but I'm guessing that's a small percentage. We are headed for a real crisis.

    17. Re:Because they do it at all by TemporalBeing · · Score: 3, Informative

      In terms of evangelical conservative views, of course they make terrible wives and mothers...

      Until you realize that an Evangelical Conservative view a husband and wife are co-equals, differing responsibilities but equal and submissive to each other (Ephesians 5:21-6:4 and Genesis 2:20-25, among other places.)

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    18. Re:Because they do it at all by narcc · · Score: 2

      this used to simply referred to as being a parent

      Obviously. Anyone who's dealt with teenagers has heard all of those things I've happily put in quotes. Every teenage thinks their parents are horrible and often say those very things when confronted with the typical boundaries their parents have set for them.

      I thought it was pretty obvious, but judging from the moderation and the AC below, the intent has been lost. I assume it's because neither you or the AC below have any experience with kids that age.

    19. Re:Because they do it at all by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2
      There was a study a while ago (more than 10 years) which pointed at a self-perpetuating circle in the USA:

      People expect the government to be incompetent. This makes it hard to hire competent people for government jobs, because no one competent wants to work somewhere that is organisationally incompetent (if nothing else, it will make it hard for them to get the next job). This means that, in the absence of competent people, even the competent government agencies trend towards incompetence. This then leads to people expecting the government to be incompetent, and so on.

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      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Helps boys too by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

    There seems to be a correlation with boys doing better too. Of course correlation is not causation, but anecdotally teachers say that girls being more engaged in maths helps the whole class.

    --
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  3. Practice makes perfect! News at 11. by Narcocide · · Score: 4, Funny

    Discover how hundreds of millions of women elevated their intellectual capacity beyond that of their stone-age ancestors using just this one weird trick !

  4. Study Authors need to learn math by jd.schmidt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have seen the data, yes girls do better in math in progressive societies, relative to boys, but they also do better in language and all areas of schooling relative to boys. In other words, girls do better in school overall and of course one of the measures of a progressive society is how well girls do in school. Thus they found that in societies where girls do better in schools, they do better in math also. What people should ask is how to get the best performance out of boys and girls and which countries have found a formula for that.

  5. No shit sherlock? by ilsaloving · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If this were The Register, this article would have the no-shit-sherlock icon posted all over it.

    I bet research would further demonstrate that girls do better in pretty much everything, from STEM to driving, in more progressive societies. That's what happens when you don't treat females like cattle.

  6. Re:Math you incompetent twit! by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 2

    Ebonics is fine for California but for the rest of the world stick to the proper American MATH!

    You need to go back to school. Ebonics is a dialect of English. Math is not a dialect of English. As for proper American MATH, it uses Arabic numerals and Algebra (Arabic "al-jabr" meaning "reunion of broken parts"). God is great!

  7. Gender equality vs. marriage stability by mi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Except there is no data on that troll hypothesis

    Huh? Of course, there is... The average duration of marriage in a country and the number of children born to single mothers is quite well documented in most countries. In fact, it is probably better documented, than the pupils' Math-achievements.

    A number of such studies have been done, in fact — but all I'm hitting are "paywalled" results, for some reason. As a matter of fact, TFA does not link to the actual study either... Khm...

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    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
    1. Re:Gender equality vs. marriage stability by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      The average duration of marriage in a country and the number of children born to single mothers is quite well documented in most countries.

      If you look at those studies, what they actually say is more along the lines of, "In progressive societies, women are not considered chattel slaves and can actually divorce abusive husbands without being set on fire or having their heads chopped off."

      There are societies in the world that are not becoming more progressive. You could probably find your way to one, but they'd almost certainly drag you through the street by your heels before making you the star of a beheading video.

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    2. Re:Gender equality vs. marriage stability by dywolf · · Score: 2

      so you're saying that in more regressive societies that frown on feminine independence and advocate staying in oppressive marriages...that more women stay in marriages they might rather leave?

      earthshattering news doctor.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    3. Re:Gender equality vs. marriage stability by dywolf · · Score: 2

      to be clear, you are equating "good wife" or "good mother" with "doesnt leave abusive husband."
      holy fuck you are stupid.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  8. Re:Everyone does! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This whole article is progressive propaganda.

    Girls are doing better in school nowadays because schools are engineered for girls. For example, most young boys do not have a 30+ minute attention span. They rather be DOING than taking in information and being strictly obedient to authority.

    So girls can have their schools... they NEED it as a measure of self worth. Men don't for the most part. Remember than the world evolved mostly because of men... the explorers, the scientists, the engineers, the warriors, and the husbands. I am in no way diminishing the role of women. Far from it. However, women have had a role to play and they've been very effective at that.

    "Progressives" like to tout their meaningless metrics (e.g. grades) but they don't want to talk about all the things that are lost in their utopian fantasies.

    People need to educate themselves. Progressives are horribly uneducated. Their are just "indoctrinated". In the end, as "progressives" grow up, get jobs, get families, and have real responsibilities, they realize the error of their ways. This is always true.

    So progressives... if you want to unleash your social experiments on the world, feel free to do so in your own house, but don't force the rest of us that don't agree with you. It should tell you something if the only way people follow your wishes is if you pass laws forcing people (e.g. Obama forcing schools to integrate bathrooms) or if you do it at gunpoint.

  9. Being engaged in class by Solandri · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I took my nephew to volleyball practice last week. There were only 3 boys in the class, and for whatever reason the instructors put them into their own group during practice. Their group performed the worst at practice - the three of them goofed off, fought with each other, didn't listen. The girls' groups OTOH went smoothly, with the instructor hitting the ball to a girl, her hitting it back, then moving to the end of the line so the next girl could hit.

    Then practice was over and they played a game. I was surprised to see that the boys were focused and played together well as a team. The girls meanwhile spent a lot of time talking with each other, and three of them ended up being hit by the ball because they weren't even watching it.

    It's just one anecdote so I wouldn't draw any conclusions from it. But I'm starting to form the opinion that girls do much better in structured educational environments where the kids sit quietly in place while the teacher dumps data onto them, while boys do better in immersive, chaotic trial-and-error environments where they learn by doing and experiencing. Unfortunately, it seems schools are busy eradicating the latter type of instruction in favor of the former.

  10. Missed opportunity by Solandri · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I was gonna post pretty much the same thing. It's pretty common that boys outperform girls at math, but girls outperform boys at reading. I assumed summary was just repeating an interesting highlight from a general study, and read TFA only to find out that was the extent of the study. I think it would've been more insightful to see if the boy/girl inequality in reading mirrored the pattern for math, or if it followed a completely different pattern.

    As any systems engineer can tell you, weighting one control function (affirmative action) can help return a system to a desired state more quickly (in this case, equality between boys and girls). But this by design creates an underdamped system which will overshoot your desired state, or even arrive at a stable state offset from the desired state. You have to be ready to remove the weighting when the system begins to get close to the desired state so as not to overshoot, and allow it to quickly stabilize at the desired state.

    Unfortunately, that isn't happening. TFA is another example - taking one of the few (only) areas where girls still lag behind boys and highlighting it as something which needs to be corrected, while ignoring that girls have far exceeded boys in all other areas. There's always going to be some natural variance with any system. If you insist that one group in that system never lag behind another group, that's not going to result in equality. You're going to end up with a DC offset where that first group never lags because its average is so much higher than the other group's average. i.e. You're going to create a huge inequality opposite the one you were originally trying to correct. That's pretty much the state we're currently in, with girls far outperforming boys in all aspects of education except math. These educational programs favoring girls should've been dismantled two decades ago (date on the CBS article is 2002).

  11. Re:Wholly F^W^WTRIGGERED by your delusion by jedidiah · · Score: 2

    I looked at that Gender Gap Index and I was intrigued where the ex-Soviet countries fell. They were VERY egalitarian but they rank poorly on that list. It really makes me wonder what's feeding that chart. These kinds of things often end up being highly skewed by a particular metric that may or may not be all that relevant. Examinations like this also tend to magnify the negative and ignore the positive.

    The whole thing seems meant to feed someone's ego and political agenda.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  12. Re:Wholly F^W^WTRIGGERED by your delusion by s.petry · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why is it that you can only talk about the extreme minority of "raising rich men's kids"? Why is it that you can only paint being a parent as this pathetic lowly task? Is there any job more important than raising the next generation of humans? No, but people fall into the delusion trap because they are told that the only thing that matters is having stuff that you buy from a store.

    You don't have to think very hard about the debate to figure out that someone, mainly the consumer class, has been getting fucked over by this rhetoric for decades.

    Men are completely incapable of growing a baby inside a uterus and giving birth, they are also incapable of breast feeding that baby. Meanwhile women _DO_ have a choice of having kids and raising a family. They also have a choice of working and getting educated. Discrimination laws already exist, and have for nearly half a century covering all possible aspects of work and education equality. Men are the ones given no choice (because "biology"), yet they are consistently painted as the evil oppressor. Delusion is rampant in this country.

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    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  13. Re:Gender Gap Index by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

    That's not even a half-rhyme for "Yemen".

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