No Gap Found In Math Abilities of Girls, Boys 701
sciencehabit writes "For anyone who still believes that boys are better at math than girls, a massive new study published today in Science shows there's no difference. 'Among students with the highest test scores, the team did find that white boys outnumbered white girls by about two to one. Among Asians, however, that result was nearly reversed. Hyde says that suggests that cultural and social factors, not gender alone, influence how well students perform on tests.' But the researchers do note a disturbing trend towards omitting harder kinds of math questions from standardized tests."
I think xkcd sums it up nicely. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A root cause you'll never hear about (Score:4, Informative)
Not controversy, plain wrong
I don't know if you're just trying to be funny or not, but just in case, you'll note that Bobby Riggs was 55 years old and hardly the best male tennis player in the world, but gave Billie Jean King an actual competitive match. She only won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. Of course, earlier Riggs had humiliated Margaret Court, age 30 and the best female player in the world, 6-2, 6-1.
Sometime in the 80s, Martina Navratilova was asked about this generally, and she was quoted as saying she would lose to the 100th ranked male player.
Re:Can it be time? (Score:3, Informative)
I know somebody who's transgendered (MtF) and has been diagnosed with Asperger's... though to be fair, her current psychologist thinks that it was a misdiagnosis, and that the reason she was socially retarded was because she was sent to an all-boys school, as she no longer has those social problems since going to University and now working in a coed environment. The fact that she's got an eidetic memory, a gift for languages and maths, and an IQ in the stratosphere (high 99.9th percentile) is just a coincidence. She does have other symptoms, though, like the inability to tune out background "noise" and conversation.
So the theory goes, at least... as far as facts go: neurochemically, she's got a brain that's more consistent with a female brain at the horomonal level (and she hasn't started taking horomones yet), and she has been diagnosed with Asperger's. :)
Re:I, for one (Score:5, Informative)
Do you have data to back up that claim?
When you compare the same jobs, same qualifications, same experience, same competency and same working hours, there is no meaningful difference between male and female salaries.
Note that most comparisons do *not* do this (eg: they frequently average salaries for men and women across the entire workforce), because they are trying to support an agenda.
No. (Score:2, Informative)
No, it is only qualified if the differences between the genders are independent of the decisions justified by said differences. If the decisions have the perverse consequence of causing even more differences, then you have to bring the decisions into question.
The Pygmalion effect [wikipedia.org] means that you can't separate performance from expectation of performance. Expectations of superior performance are, all too often, self-fulfilling prophecies.
Re:Can it be time? (Score:3, Informative)
(The file is called sex.pdf , don't be alarmed, totally sfw!)
In this one they used mobiles, not engines. There is another study out there that is with 12 m/os that does use engines, cars, etc that gets the same results. It's all in "The Essential Difference" by Simon Baron-Cohen, cited in a few posts above.
Re:A root cause you'll never hear about (Score:1, Informative)
Hunh. In my life I've experienced way more overt and covert sexism and hostility from men than I have women about my career choice as a physicist/engineer. Granted, I'm the first to admit that I have a biased sample set: I tend to hang out with people in my field, and in both those fields the people tend to be men. That said, most other women in the hard sciences are going to have the same biased sample, and so I'd believe from my own experience that they're more likely to deal with guys judging them. This doesn't mean that women are blameless, but I just don't think they're as large of a factor as you think they are.
Re:I, for one (Score:5, Informative)
When you compare the same jobs, same qualifications, same experience, same competency and same working hours, there is no meaningful difference between male and female salaries.
I don't think you are correct. I remember reading a study a year ago that compared men and women's salaries for the same jobs and levels of education and experience and the results were women paid 15% less overall (25% less when one only looked at the private sector).
I don't recall who the study was by and Google does not turn it up right away. Do you have a source for your claim?
I'd also like to note that even if there is reliable data showing men and women make the same amount for the same job (with the same qualifications, experience, hours, etc.) that does not necessarily indicate equality as it allows for it to be harder for women to get high paying jobs. For example, if you look at all the people who are CFO's for fortune 500 companies and determine that the men and women make about the same, but 90% of those CFO's are men, that could very easily be an indication that it is harder for women to get those jobs because of discrimination. Alternately, it could indicate that for social reasons women are less likely to go into a career track that would lead them to such a position. The point being, same pay for the same job is not conclusive evidence of no gender discrimination.
Re:A root cause you'll never hear about (Score:4, Informative)
Seriously. Anyone who has dated a geek girl knows that misogyny is a drop in the bucket compared to the problem that girls geared toward science and math face from other girls who will be absolutely VICIOUS in putting them down.
Unless you're only talking about high school (where most kids are vicious, whether you're geeky or fat or wierd or anything else they don't like) other girls are NOT the biggest problem for geek girls. In college, I took mostly geeky classes, so I was either the only girl or the other girls were just as geeky as me, so I didn't see non-geeky girls who would put me down to often. Once I got out of school, it became even easier to avoid girls who would judge me for being geeky. But you know who I can't avoid? Geek guys. So, even if more girls are cruel than geek guys are sexist, the geek guys affect me much more than anti-geek girls ever could. Everytime I try to explain something technical to a guy and he decides I must not know what I'm talking about, it hurts me and can (and probably has) hurt my career. When a more experienced tech at my current job started to take me under his wing and mentor me, and then completely stopped talking to me after I stopped wearing makeup (yes, I'm serious), that sexism hurts me more than all the comments girls made behind my back in high school. Now I get to wonder if it's worth stooping to the pettiness and wearing makeup again so I can get back in the good graces of someone who could probably help me a lot here, or if it would be wrong to try to move up solely on the base of my appearance, and I get to wonder if all the other guys here are just as sexist but less blatant about it. That's far from the only example of sexism I've experienced, it's just the most recent. Hands down, sexist guys are much more of a problem for geeky girls than anti-geeky girls are.
Re:I, for one (Score:3, Informative)
This article [iwf.org] claims that A study of the gender wage gap conducted by economist June O' Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, found that women earn 98 percent of what men do when controlled for experience, education, and number of years on the job..
Of course, women are now graduating college at higher rates than men [thelantern.com]. There was a recent study mentioned in the New York Times [nytimes.com] which claims that in US urban areas, women 21-30 earned more on average than men (as high as 120% in Dallas), although nationwide women in that age range only made 89% of men. The suspicion is that urban areas are attracting more college and higher educated women.
At the same time, I've seen a couple of industries that are notable anti-female, so while things are getting better in general, things still have a long way to go.
Re:I, for one (Score:3, Informative)
When you compare the same jobs, same qualifications, same experience, same competency and same working hours, there is no meaningful difference between male and female salaries.
So one woman CEO at one company in the U.S. solves the world's sex discrimination problems?
Note that most comparisons do *not* do this (eg: they frequently average salaries for men and women across the entire workforce), because they are trying to support an agenda.
Assuming men and women have equal opportunities, such an average is appropriate. The expected value for the sex of an employee should be roughly 51% female, because of the male/female ratio. An average of salaries should show a slightly higher mean wage for women, since as a higher percentage of the population they have a slightly higher probability of being in very high paying positions. The distribution of salaries is not normal, instead it has a very high end that causes the mean to be significantly higher than the median. This distribution means that the mean salary for the more numerous sex should be slightly higher, assuming equal job opportunities.
Re:I, for one (Score:2, Informative)
this is the source. and the study comes from the IWF (independent women's forum!).
to sum it up, they found that when controlled for all the variables above, women make about 98% of what men earn.