Study of 1.6 Million Grades Shows Little Gender Difference in Math and Science at School (theconversation.com)

A study of school grades of more than 1.6 million students shows that girls and boys perform similarly in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) subjects. From a report: The research, published today in Nature Communications, also shows that girls do better than boys in non-STEM subjects. Our results provide evidence that large gaps in the representation of women in STEM careers later in life are not due to differences in academic performance. One explanation for gender imbalance in STEM is the "variability hypothesis." This is the idea that gender gaps are much larger at the tails of the distribution -- among the highest and lowest performers -- than in the middle.

Comments

Equal abilities

[hcs_$reboot]

Boys and girls have both the same abilities. However boys tend to be more inclined to pursue studies in science.

Re:Equal abilities

[olsmeister]

I was always pretty good at street biology.

Re: Equal abilities

[c6gunner]

The study confirms a biological difference despite the misleading summary. They're saying they found no difference in the top 10% in STEM but:

1. Not only the top 10% go into stem. More than 20% of degrees are in STEM fields.

2. They admit that the "grade cap" means that even within the top 10% males might actually be better, but there's no way to know because the math/science scores are capped so that a top-level genius will score only as well as someone who is just very smart.

Furthermore their study confirms greater variability between men than between women which definitely indicates that the grade cap is probably handicapping top end male scores more than top end female scores. More importantly, the fact that girls do significantly better OVERALL in school, but only slightly better in STEM, indicates that the school environment is probably not the best way of determining suitability/ability in a given field. Unless you think that girls really are biologically better than boys at everything. If we assume that, as the feminists would have it, girls and boys are equally capable on average, then the higher performance of girls in school would be attributed to environment, and the fact that they don't do as well in STEM as they do in other subjects would still suggest that boys have an edge in those fields.

Lastly, they mention that the ratios are different in university than in highschool, with women losing a lot of their edge in university. However I don't see a breakdown of university vs high school scores, which seems like a curious omission.

All in all it's an interesting study which doesn't really support the conclusions being drawn here.

Re:Equal abilities

[guruevi]

Most people in psychology and biology do accept the fact that people are different and are predisposed to certain directions in life - women tend to be caretakers for example and thus score higher in traits associated with that; men tend to be more aggressive and conscientious thus scoring higher paying jobs.

People in sociology and women’s studies don’t believe the science, but then again, most of the papers in their field are virtually never cited.

Re: Equal abilities

[AmiMoJo]

Furthermore their study confirms greater variability between men than between women which definitely indicates that the grade cap is probably handicapping top end male scores more than top end female scores.

That assumes that the variation is biological. How do you exclude social factors?

And even if it is biological, does that mean it can't be overcome? There is much debate over how much boys maturing a little later than girls is due to biology or social influences, but in either case adjusting the curriculum and teaching methods a little can negate this difference by the time both genders reach adulthood.

If we assume that, as the feminists would have it, girls and boys are equally capable on average, then the higher performance of girls in school would be attributed to environment, and the fact that they don't do as well in STEM as they do in other subjects would still suggest that boys have an edge in those fields.

That logic doesn't really work though, because school isn't the only factor in their lives and school isn't one single environment but rather a whole number of different experiences. I remember the atmosphere in some classes being very different to others, for example.

I agree that's it's a very interesting study though.

Re:Equal abilities

[cayenne8]

It might be that these new findings are due to the long term dumbing down of males that we've essentially been undertaking over the past decades.

We've been pushing females so much lately, and ignoring the males and what made them excel in the past, so...these new findings aren't that surprising.

Re:Equal abilities

[mysidia]

Boys and girls have both the same abilities.

That's not been shown by the research.... only that the performance of the people that choose to take the STEM classes are on average: Mean performance basically the same across genders.

As mentioned in the summary: There may be gender-related differences among the tails of the distributions --- those that performed much better or much worse than average, for example the top 10% of performers in STEM courses and the bottom 10% might represent one gender more than the other, and this study would not have been able to rule that out.

Re:Equal abilities

[bob4u2c]

Most test scores only measure the ability for someone to remember the correct answer long enough to get it on paper.

Interest on the other hand determines what field people go into.

For example, I had A+'s in Art, but it never appealed to me. On the other hand I had B's in Math, which did interest me. Guess which career path I took?

Re: Equal abilities

[c6gunner]

That assumes that the variation is biological. How do you exclude social factors?

There's no absolute way to exclude them, that I'm aware of. But that's not really how science works. We don't have to exclude every single possibility before drawing a conclusion, or we would never be able to draw any conclusions at all. As someone pointed out below, when we are talking about differences between sexes biology is a default explanation. If you can exclude biological factors as the explanation, great, then we know they're not at play. This study doesn't do that; rather it reinforces what every other study has found: greater variability in males than in females. You can claim that this doesn't prove that the difference is biological, but given the persistence of these findings across cultures it's a fairly safe bet that biology is a significant factor.

And even if it is biological, does that mean it can't be overcome?

I don't know. I think the better question is whether it's something that we should be trying to overcome in the first place. That's where this stops being a scientific discussion and starts being an ideological one. You seem to think that, if girls are underperforming in some areas, there is a moral imperative to bring them up to par. I disagree. Just like I would disagree that we need to bring boys up to par in areas where they underperform. I'm perfectly fine with having diversity and letting people focus on the things they're actually good at rather than wasting time and money trying to force them to improve at everything else. I see no reason why the sexes need to be identical in every respect, any more than individuals would need to be identical in every respect regardless of sex.

That logic doesn't really work though, because school isn't the only factor in their lives and school isn't one single environment but rather a whole number of different experiences. I remember the atmosphere in some classes being very different to others, for example.

That's true, but it's just another confounding factor in this study which isn't (maybe can't be) ccounted for.

Re:Equal abilities

[gweihir]

Directly, no. But indirectly, yes. The thing is that what body you happen to live in does shape your perception of reality. Simply wanting to conform to biological roles will put more men into engineering and more women into medicine (for example). Unless we manage to overcome fundamental biological realities, this will not change.

So in the end, all we can do is to allow people to make their own choices and not put up any artificial barriers. If the numbers are still skewed (and they are), we have to accept that. This is "equal opportunity", not enforced equality and I am perfectly fine with it.

Re:Equal abilities

[lgw]

"Giving up on helping" is orthagonal to "biological difference". Insisting on equality of outcome (such as perfect gender balance) is tyranny. The goal should be enabling those who want to be a software developer or a nurse or whatever become that without placing gender-based obstacles in their way. Twisting people's arms to make them want to pursue a given field should never be a goal.

Re: Equal abilities

[AJWM]

Higher variability in males than females (in almost any category) should be expected in anything that might be even partly gene-linked.

Males have only one X-chromosome. Any genetic variation on that will go unchecked, whereas females have a second X-chromosome which can help even out any variations. (Obviously I am oversimplifying genetics, but that's the gist of it.)

Not all factors in academic (or any other) performance are gene-linked, of course, and of those not all are on the X-chromosome. But minor differences tend to show up at the margins. Both good and bad.

But yes, let people - male or female - focus on what they, as individuals, are good at. Don't whack the heads off the tall-standing flowers so they're all the same height.

Re:Equal abilities

[lgw]

Why even assume that, it's bizarre.

Because we seem to be measuring against "equal outcomes" as if that were the goal. That's a particularly shitty goal.

Re: Equal abilities

[goose-incarnated]

when we are talking about differences between sexes biology is a default explanation

That isn't justified when science is telling us that it's mostly social,

Science never said that. Social "science" says that, and they often say it with next to no evidence.

Re:Equal abilities

[guruevi]

It is because it means you're producing science that nobody bothers to even build upon. The problem is that sociologists build corporate rules (eg. equality and bias 'training' in HR departments) and laws (eg. in Canada and Europe) surrounding papers that have never been cited and are not logically or scientifically supported.

Re: Equal abilities

[c6gunner]

Found the women's studies major ...

STEM jobs

[110010001000]

There isn't a big financial incentive to go into STEM jobs if you are a college-educated professional. The pay is good, but there is a limit to your professional growth and you have to actually do work and produce results. In reality, sales and marketing at tech companies make as much or more as STEM people. So unless you really enjoy STEM, it is better off avoiding it as a career. I think many women have figured this out.

Re:STEM jobs

[110010001000]

"I would rather shovel sludge in sewers then work in sales or marketing"

Great. So go do it. The point is that rational people would rather work in sales or marketing than shovel sludge.

Re:STEM jobs

[Wycliffe]

Great. So go do it. The point is that rational people would rather work in sales or marketing than shovel sludge.

Luckily there are a lot of different types of people in the world or we would be in trouble. I have a coworker that quit an office job to go back to pouring concrete because he hated being inside all the time. The show Dirty Jobs is full of millionaires who do essential work to keep the world running, it just happens to be gross at times. Related to the topic at hand, there are very few women on Dirty Jobs. Men are more inclined to fill a need and do a dirty job than women and they get paid well for doing it.

Re:STEM jobs

[Wycliffe]

With all due respect, it's overwhelmingly women who become primary school teachers and nurses which are two of the absolutely most dead-end and poorly paying careers relative to their education level.

Teaching yes but not nursing. Nursing is a fairly highly paid job that only requires 2 years of school. My ex-wife had a bachelors in english and went back for an associates(RN) in nursing because nursing pays much better than almost any job you can get with a english degree.

Re:STEM jobs

[the agent man]

low pay for teaching is mostly a US phenomenon. There are many countries where teachers, including elementary school teachers, are earning quite well.

Re:STEM jobs

[commodore64_love]

> sales and marketing

I cannot watch movies or listen to audiobooks with those 2 careers. As an engineer, I can.

> I think many women have figured this out.

I read one time that most women choose careers they LIKE and enjoy (such as healthcare), whereas most men choose careers they don't really like, but they know the higher pay will support a wife + kids.

Apparently the theory still exists: https://www.theatlantic.com/ed...

Re:STEM jobs

[commodore64_love]

> I would rather shovel sludge in sewers then work in sales or marketing.

Huh. I worked sales at JCpenney for 10 years. I worked in a clean, air conditioned environment, and met tons of beautiful young ladies.

I would definitely not trade that for shoveling sludge.

Re:STEM jobs

[commodore64_love]

> $125K in annual compensation (inclusive of insurance and benefits)

That's a bit misleading. If I included benefits into my engineer salary, I could claim $200,000 a year.... which goes back to the main point: Teachers are underpaid (75,000 less) compared to other professions with Bachelor degrees.

Re:STEM jobs

[serviscope_minor]

With all due respect, it's overwhelmingly women who become primary school teachers

So? That's a very recent phenomenon which is as good as proof as you'll get that it's entirely social factors.

So, when are we going to do somethign about this?

[gerald.edward.butler]

>> also shows that girls do better than boys in non-STEM subjects.

So, we need to have a massive influx of cash, capital, action to ensure that boys catch up to girls in non-STEM subjects. Boys go to and graduate from college less frequently than girls. There needs to be massive encouragement and support for boys to attend college. Something must be done. It is unconscionable that boys are being left behind like this. There seems to be a massive, systematic, institutional prejudice against boys that is causing them to fail. Something must be done. Boys are 50% of the population, but, they are not 50% of College graduates. Something must be done. There should be scholarships and camps and meetings and web-sites and discussion forums and bridge groups. This is absolutely unfair and shows a great prejudice and discrimination against boys and maleness.

Re:Have Mercy!

[AmiMoJo]

According to this, the only area that men can compete with women is in STEM. In all other fields, women are markedly superior to men.

No, that's not what it is saying.

Academic performance is not a measure of raw, innate ability or intelligence. It depends greatly on many, many factors. Quality of teaching, availability of resources, diet, all sorts of stuff.

Under-performance of boys is mostly thought to be due to social factors. The same reasons that girls used to do significantly worse in maths, but with some effort the gap was closed. Now effort is re-focusing on helping boys reach the same level.

Conclusion highly suspect.

[supercell]

Considering the authors, the funding source and even that they get funding to study gender issues, smells of a biased result.

Re:Conclusion highly suspect.

[Anonymous Coward]

Affiliations
        Evolution and Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, NSW, Australia
                R. E. O’Dea, M. Lagisz & S. Nakagawa

        Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, 2601, ACT, Australia
                R. E. O’Dea & M. D. Jennions

Contributions
S.N. and M.D.J. conceived the study, R.E.O. and M.L. collected data, R.E.O., M.L. and S.N. conducted analyses. All authors contributed to interpretation of the results and writing the manuscript.

Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.

Is there some specific bias that either the University of New South Wales or the Australian National University is known for in these subjects?

Re:Brace yourselves...

[110010001000]

So women don't get STEM jobs because their applications get discarded because they are female? What are you saying? Just come out and say what you think, you know you want to.

Girls better in non-STEM

[Roger W Moore]

Boys and girls have both the same abilities. However, boys tend to be more inclined to pursue studies in science.

...or less inclined to follow arts-based courses. This study also shows that girls are better than boys at non-STEM courses by a far more significant margin than the reversed difference in STEM courses at school. So perhaps the deficit in STEM degrees is because more women choose non-STEM degrees where they do have an ability advantage, on average, over men?

Re:Girls better in non-STEM

[Nite_Hawk]

There is supporting evidence for your hypothesis:

http://journals.sagepub.com/do...

I think the explanation that high-achieving women tend to be proficient in both verbal and math abilities while men are more likely to be proficient primarily in math abilities is pretty compelling. It's possible that preference is the primary driver, but I'm not sure you can really separate preference and ability so cleanly.

Look at the gender breakdown of medical specialties here:

https://wire.ama-assn.org/educ...

Notice how men tend to gravitate toward roles that involve less human interaction? Surgery, Anesthesiology, Radiology. There's no shame in admitting that women might be simultaneously as good as men at Math, but better, or at least more likely to enjoy, roles that require high levels of verbal aptitude as well.

Re:Girls better in non-STEM

[edtice1559]

It's one of the reasons why you don't have as many girls being diagnosed with ASD, they'll spend huge amounts of time and energy camouflaging the symptoms and rehearsing so that people don't find out.

I don't usually reply to ACs but thought it was better than down modding. The defining characteristic of ASD is not caring about these things at all. So this doesn't really make any sense.

Re:Girls better in non-STEM

[lgw]

"Subjects" or "fields"? Women will have a large career advantage over men at teaching young children, regardless of ability, because the men are assumed to be pedophiles. People have a preference for fields they are likely to succeed in, which is separate from ability in a subject.

That's kind of the point of a lot of the "OMG gender!" stuff going on, right? Accusations that some fields are unwelcoming to women, regardless of ability?

There are no doubt biological differences in ability. There are no doubt biological differences in preference. There are no doubt social differences in preference, both generally and in the culture of specific fields. The interesting question is "how large is each", as only the last is really something we can affect.

Grades do not reflect expertise

[m00sh]

When I taught math or science, the girls were always among the top of the class.

The main reason was that they cared about their grades.

However, they never seemed to enjoy geeking out or talking about things that weren't going to be on the test.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Girls would invest in coming to class, taking notes, coming to study and tutoring sessions and really asking for help when they needed it.

Guys weren't as social. Some guys would have problems and not ask for help and do horribly in the end.

Grades are very artificial. They can be gamed since the teacher is giving the grade (it's not a third party assessment). You can get As and not learn much but also get a D and learn a lot.

What really should be looked at is expertise and not grades.

Of course, with every generalization I've made, I remember plenty of exceptions.

Re:So, when are we going to do somethign about thi

[b0bby]

I realize that this was intended as sarcasm, but in my kids schools there was a Communication Arts magnet program. They bent over backwards to get enough boys in that program to get somewhat equal numbers of boys and girls. So at least in some areas, there is an attempt to achieve balance by encouraging and supporting boys.

Exactly! Re:Girls better in non-STEM

[PackMan97]

If girls are better at A than boys, but only as good as boys at B, it stands to reason that girls will favor A over B. That's exactly what is happening. Girls go into subjects in which they excel. It frustrates me that no one ever looks at why aren't more men teachers, nurses, social workers, etc. Part of the problem is that not enough women are going into STEM as "we" would like, but the flipside is that not enough men are going into non-STEM. Why don't we try and get more men into non-STEM careers and see what happens?

Re:So, when are we going to do somethign about thi

[argStyopa]

I'm looking forward to the new Google counterpart to their "Ovaries in Coding" initiative:
Training & Educational Synergies Toward Individuals Creating Leading Experiences, ie Google TESTICLE.

sticking my neck out ...

[cascadingstylesheet]

Grades are ... highly elastic things.

I have kids in grade school right now. Sometimes they get to redo assignments if they did badly on them, sometimes they even get to redo tests. Sometimes homework counts for a lot, sometimes a little. Sometimes extra credit is possible, sometimes it isn't. Some teachers offer more extra help, some less.

There's a lot of room for ... what shall we call it, fudge factor? And I'm pretty sure I know what direction the pressure would be in this scenario.

So first things first; we may not "know" what we think we know from this study at all.

Re:sticking my neck out ...

[anegg]

Grades are ... highly elastic things.

I have two kids, one (male) a junior in high school, the other (female) a freshman in college. I and my wife both have STEM degrees and STEM careers. We also both organize and run extra-curricular STEM education programs (FIRST Robotics) for grades K-12. So... the subject of gender and STEM comes up a lot for us, as do grades versus ability.

Both of my kids suck at getting grades. Mostly due to missed assignments (aka homework). My daughter passed the AP Chemistry exam, but failed her AP Chemistry class (not just did poorly - failed). My son, who was building a Minecraft world "calculator" by making switching circuits from Minecraft materials when he was in middle school, is currently taking AP Computer Science with Java programming, and despite already knowing a fair amount of practical Java from his robotics programming, is pulling a "C" in the class.

Are my kids outliers? How many others are in the same boat - they don't get the grades, but they learn a lot, and can do a lot? Can grades be counted on as a measure of "ability"?

As for gender and STEM, at least as represented by participation in our community's FIRST robotics programs, we (my wife and I) see that in elementary school there is already somewhat of a predominance of males over females participating on teams, despite equal marketing and availability. By middle school, the males vastly outnumber the females; we are lucky if we get one or two interested females out of twenty or so interested students. In high school, the same pattern continues. We can bring in a more females than otherwise when we make a significantly greater effort to engage with females in recruiting, but the female attrition rate is higher than the male attrition rate. This is not to say that we haven't had some talented and engaged females in the programs - we have - but the predominance is towards males.

Re:"Variability Hypothesis" WTF?

[cascadingstylesheet]

I have a hard time believing that out of 1.6M students the ends of the bell curve vary so extremely from those in the middle.

Why?

Re:Another explanation is that grades are rigged..

[guruevi]

Statistics are clearly showing that minorities and women are greatly over represented in college intakes in comparison to their grades.

Schools are picking lower scoring individuals to satisfy some sort of equality metric; those people consistently fail and drop out resulting in a much more natural end result (diversity among those graduating college once again falls in line with the scoring results).

So efforts to get some sort of outcome-driven equality, fail all the time. Nordic communities likewise found that out, they are amongst the highest scoring in actual equality but classic gender and race patterns are emerging stronger than elsewhere.

Re:"Variability Hypothesis" WTF?

[Gibgezr]

You may have a hard time believing it, but it's generally believed to be true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:So, when are we going to do somethign about thi

[swb]

You laugh, but we complain about this a lot.

Up through middle school we would get project assignments from non-art teachers that involved what amounted to an arts and crafts project (eg, a history assignment that was a diorama about Lincoln or something).

My son always got bad grades on those projects despite having a B+ or an A in the class generally because art wasn't his thing, and the grading on the project was biased towards its artistic content. I would inevitably go in to gripe about the grade he got and I would see the high-scoring projects were nearly all by girls, many of whom seem to be into "coloring".

And nearly all these projects were assigned by female teachers. Their responses were really frustrating, a lot of bullshit about the importance of presentation quality of submitted work, etc. "What about their actual knowledge of the subject?" and the teachers would kind of blanch and not want to say anymore.

My take is there is some kind of low-level bias going on here, the teachers see the girls being less interested in the subject matter and toss them an easy one to boost their grades. Last year we only had two, and my *wife* actually did the artistic part of the work herself on one of them -- still only a C+!! My wife was super pissed and thought that it was a definite sign that the grade was being issued based on gender, not on content, because from a production value perspective it was like business-meeting quality.

This year during the fall "curriculum night" I actually asked all the teachers how many "coloring assignments" there would be. Most didn't understand and I explained, "You know, those assignments where we do something artistic that has nothing to do with the content of the curriculum and is judged on artistic merit". To a person, all the female teachers looked pissed that I asked that. Totally busted.

Re:So, when are we going to do somethign about thi

[commodore64_love]

> I've heard of boys being told that cooking and even book clubs are not for them, due to toxic ideas of what masculinity is a

Even if a boy grows his hair long, below his shoulder, he gets told "You need to get a cut... you look like a girl." Teachers, preachers, random audlts, fellow classmates/bullies. There's nothing more natural than long hair (for both sexes) but our society won't allow it.

Re:So what reflects expertise then?

[commodore64_love]

Have you thought some of those programs (vi, emacs) are obsolete today? In one interview I had a manager list all the CLI commands I use in Modelsim. Fortunately I had a good memory, but after I listed several routine commands I said:

"Honestly I just use the dropdown menus now, or drag cursors on the simulation window to inspect waveforms. It's faster and easier than typing a string of commands."