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

Posted by msmash on from the mathematical-relation-about-mathematical-performance dept.

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.

14 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...

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      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    2. 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".

    3. 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.

    4. 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.

    5. 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.

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    6. 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.

    7. 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.

  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. 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.
  7. 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.