Gender equity: Doing the math

[seabeyond]

The students came from Western and Asian democracies and developing countries, as well as Muslim countries notable for their sex-segregated classes. But the really surprising finding was that the more equal the societies were around gender, the better everybody did in math. As the researchers conclude, "gender equity and other sociocultural factors … are the primary determinants of mathematics performance at all levels for both boys and girls."

The news about girls' increasingly better performance in math has been trickling in for years. But the findings were often dismissed by those who claimed that boys were inherently better at math and science. One argument was that the countries studied were cherry-picked to find girls doing well and therefore the results were not representative. If you buy that argument, putting resources into improving girls' math and science abilities is a waste of time because you are going against "nature."

As Ethan Siegel, a theoretical astrophysicist in Portland, Ore., notes on his blog, Starts With a Bang: "You know how prejudices and confirmation biases work: If you think things are a certain way for a certain reason, then when your reasoning is shown to be incorrect because your premise is flawed, what do you do? Do you question your conclusions, or do you just find a new explanation that brings you to that same conclusion? Most recently, the argument goes something like, 'Even though men and women are equal on average in math ability, men have a greater variance in their abilities. So there are more very dumb men, but also more very smart men, and those are the ones who become scientists, etc.'"

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But if this "variance " argument were true, you'd find boys at the higher end of the distribution across all countries because we're talking genes here. Kane and Mertz found no evidence to support that claim. In some countries, as predicted, boys' variance was higher than girls'. In other countries, there were no differences, and in yet others, girls' scores showed more variance than boys.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/24/opinion/la-oe-rivers-gender-equity-20120124
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another hard and fast MYTH of gender difference that tells us, there has to be this biological difference that allows our patriarchy, is just not true. how many still hear that boys are mathematical/science and girls, reading/communication. since i have TWO boys that does not meet this reality and have seen for years in the real world that it is not true, i do not have to hold onto this myth in comfort. i can readily let it go and let my boys shine in excelling in reading/communication and the girls that help them get thru their math classes have a pat on the back.

[CrispyQ]

1. I went for years thinking I wasn't smart enough for math.

I always had my nose in a book, so English came easily to me. I loved history, civics, things that didn't take math. Math, that took work! And I never put in the time, so I fell for the "I'm not smart enough for math."

Finally, in my early 30s I decided to take a college algebra class just to prove I could do it. I put in some seriously long hours doing problems but I aced the class & it was the best confidence booster I'd ever had at that point in time. I'm sure without that experience I would never have gone into programming.

I don't recall hearing that girls couldn't do math when I was a kid. We had an excellent curriculum & fantastic teachers who I feel encouraged all us kids equally, for the most part. That was small town America in the mid-60's though. I think I was just lazy & my mother let me be.