1. gregladen
  2. Math gender gap is not genetic

Math gender gap is not genetic

By gregladen on June 2, 2009.

Or to put it more accurately, yet another study seems to show that girls learn from their teachers, parents, and peers that they are not supposed to be good at math. Sterotypes can be fulfilled. Pleas stop doing that, everyone.

Here is some press on this story.

University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers continue to find evidence that shows there is no innate difference in the math ability of males and females.

"There is a persistent stereotype that girls and women are just not as good at math as boys and men," said UW-Madison psychology professor Janet Hyde. "And the data we have indicates that's just not true. I really think it's important to get that word out and to chip away at that myth."

Hyde and Janet Mertz, UW-Madison professor of oncology, co-authored an analysis of data compiled on math performance at all levels in the United States and abroad. The report, titled "Gender, Culture and Mathematics Performance," was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

I hope to eventually read the actual study. I'll get back to you on that.

Tags
behavioral biology
Gender and Sexual Orientation
Sex Differences

More like this

Gender gap in maths driven by social factors, not biological differences
History has had no shortage of outstanding female mathematicians, from Hypatia of Alexandria to Ada Lovelace, and yet no woman has ever won the Fields medal - the Nobel prize of the maths world. The fact that men outnumber women in the highest echelons of mathematics (as in science, technology and…
Surprise! Gender equality makes everyone better at math!
"Every year I teach dozens of students at the University of Birmingham. Most of the students on the gender and sexuality courses are women. I guess this is because the boys don't think that gender applies to them: that it's a subject for girls." -Louise Brown You know the stereotype, perpetrated…
Girls, boys, and math.
You've probably already heard the news last week that a study published in Science indicates that the gender gap between girls and boys in mathematical performance may be melting faster than the polar ice caps. The study, "Gender Similarities Characterize Math Performance" by Janet S. Hyde et al…
Janet Hyde and Marcia Linn on the Psychological Similarity between Men and Women
In my previous post arguing for the relatively large psychological similarity between men and women -- in great contrast to the public conception -- I drew heavily on the work of Janet Hyde, a professor of Psychology at Berkeley. Now Janet Hyde and Marcia Linn have published an editorial and review…

It would be nice if girls were as encouraged as boys in math & science. I hope the gap will thin out in the generation growing up now, given (hopefully) the heightened awareness of this.

When my mother entered high school in the late 1940s (Rosemead High, Los Angeles County), the geometry teacher apologized to the class on the first day for being forced to have girls in a math class, even though girls are incapable of learning math and it would be just a waste of time for him and them to try to teach them. So he had all the boys sit in a circle on one side of the class, the girls on the other, and only taught the boys, telling the girls to do whatever reading or needlework they wanted to do on the other side. IIRC he didn't even issue them textbooks. Halfway through the year he finally got a teacher's aide who did what he could to try to catch the girls up to the rest of the class, but the teacher was still able to point to the fact that the boys did better on the final than the girls as "proof" that he was right.

I'm always surprised when I hear the whole "girls suck at math" thing. In my own school days, the people who were consistently at the top of the (math) class were the girls. I actually used to think that girls must be smarter at math because they always did better than I. Then I realized I was just lazy and never did my homework.