Larry Summers Revisited
Another really interesting article on women in science (and still more in the queue!) - this one is more upbeat.
A piece in this week's Economist subtitled, "Girls are becoming as good as boys at mathematics, and are still better at reading" describes research that shows that the gap between boys' and girls' math scores on standardized tests goes away in countries in which there is greater equality between the sexes. This suggests to me that things like stereotype threat play a big role in some of the observed test score differences. The good thing about stereotype threat is that it's relatively easy to overcome - basically you just have to create awareness of it as an issue.
Boys do continue do better than girls in geometry, but that's the only area in which I've seen any compelling looking evidence for sex-linked differences in ability. There's been some interesting research linking fluctuations in spatial reasoning to levels of estrogen and testosterone, but I have no idea how solid it is. In any case, I would imagine that the differences involved are relatively small and swamped by individual differences, since otherwise this kind of thing would not really be contentious.
Girls do consistently better than boys on tests of reading, and the study also found that the reading gap is even greater in countries with greater sexual equality. The implications are interesting:
At first sight, girls' rise to mathematical equality suggests they should be invading maths-heavy professions such as engineering—and that if they are not, the implication might be that prejudice is keeping them out. However, as David Ricardo observed almost 200 years ago, economic optimisation is about comparative advantage. The rise in female reading scores alongside their maths scores suggests that female comparative advantage in this area has not changed. According to Paola Sapienza, a professor of finance at the Kellogg School of Management in Illinois who is one of the paper's authors, that is just what has happened. Other studies of gifted girls, she says, show that even though the girls had the ability, fewer than expected ended up reading maths and sciences at university. Instead, they went on to be become successful in areas such as law.
In other words, girls may acquire an absolute advantage over boys as a result of equal treatment.
I, for one, welcome our new female overlords.
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on Wed, Jun 04, 02:06PM
Sapienza needs to learn some math herself. Finland scores higher on the equality scale than Iceland, yet boys are 12 points ahead in math abilities according to the PISA data. Germany is ranked 7th on the scale, but girls are a whopping 20 points behind.
And Jordan and Kyrgyzstan are 104th and 70th in the equality ratings, yet there girls do as well in math as boys.
Strange, ain’t it? Also strange that Sapienza didn’t pull out the other glaring assumption given by her line of reasoning: Boys being extremely discriminated when it comes to reading.
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on Wed, Jun 04, 11:06PM
I haven't read the original paper, but presumably they do a regression, which can pick out trends despite a few exceptions. Taller people tend to be heavier than shorter people; the fact that there are some tall, skinny people and some short, fat people doesn't falsify the general height/weight relationship.
As for discrimination, cultural discrimination against women suggests that discrimination against women may be a factor in the test scores. Reverse discrimination is a possibility, but that seems less plausible given the larger cultural context.
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on Thu, Jun 05, 09:06AM
Take a look at the data: These are not execeptions, there are as many exceptions as there is proof for the postulated correlation.
