• 24 Jan 12
  

  Emily Sparks

  gender social equality

  • Women and Math, the Gender Gap Bridged

     

    Social equality frees women to match men

     

    Based on the research of     Luigi Guiso,   Ferdinando Monte,   Paola Sapienza And   Luigi Zingales
  • Nine years before the 19^th Amendment granted American women the right to vote, a committee of Swedish scientists in 1911 awarded a second Nobel Prize to Marie Curie, a French Pole, in recognition of her discovery of the elements radium and polonium
  • Yet five years into the 21st century, the leader of one of the world’s most elite universities, in one of the oldest democracies, opined upon “the unfortunate truth” that women probably are not as mentally equipped for work in math and science as men (Summers 2005)
  • omen probably are not as mentally equipped for work in math and science as
  • A recent study in the journal Science shows that “the so-called gender gap in math seems to be linked to environmental factors, which means it could be eliminated by education or social programs.” So said Paola Sapienza (Finance), one of the authors, along with Luigi Guiso (Instituto Universitario Europeo) and Ferdinando Monte and Luigi Zingales (both of the University of Chicago). In fact, she continued, “this gap doesn’t exist in countries in which there is greater gender equality”

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    American girls, on average, earn higher grades than boys in most subjects in high school. According to the College Board, which administers the SAT college entrance exams in the United States, the average SAT-taking girl who graduated from high school in 2007 had a grade point average of 3.40, higher than the average boy’s 3.24. Girls were better represented than boys among the best students, comprising 57 percent of the SAT-takers who graduated among the top 10 percent of the class of 2007. Yet the girls’ average score on the math portion of the SAT was 499 points, compared with 533 for boys, out of a possible 800 (College Board 2007).

  • Since such math gender differences typically do not emerge until high school (Gallagher and Kaufman 2005), some argue that the tests themselves are biased (Spelke 2005). Others contend that, over time, social forces discourage talented women from studying science and math (Lubinski and Benbow 1992). “For example, the Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth shows that mathematically talented men were likely to go into engineering and the physical sciences, while similarly talented women tended more toward careers in law, medicine, and biology,” said Sapienza.

      
  • The math gender gap can be eliminated, and it is indeed eliminated in some countries.

  •   

    Issues of Intrinsic Aptitude
  • Others dispute the role of social influences on male and female achievement, citing evidence that some basic mental attributes that are valuable for conducting math and science seem to be more developed among men
  • who score at both the highest and lowest levels. This has important implicati
  • I

    n a notable 1995 study, Larry Hedges and Amy Nowell analyzed data from six large studies to provide a comprehensive look at mental test scores for men and women. They concluded that “although average sex differences have been generally small and stable over time, the test scores of males consistently have larger variance.” Said Hedges, “The data show that there are simply more men than women who score at both the highest and lowest levels. This has important implications for achieving gender equity in society” (University of Chicago 1995).
  • Thus, we find ourselves again debating the roles of nature and nurture in human development. Are scientists the products of their inherited genetic gender code, or are they shaped by the gender-biased environments in which they live?
  • In search of bridges across this gap, Sapienza and colleagues analyzed data from over 276,000 children in forty countries. The large number of subjects and the broad range of social systems represented were key to the validity of the study
  • The study is somewhat limited, however, because there isn’t enough variability, for example, between Massachusetts and Texas, compared to the difference between Iceland and Turkey.”
  • Each child took the 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) at the age of fifteen. Created by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, PISA is an internationally standardized assessment of math, reading, science, and problem-solving ability. Every participant got the same questions at the same age, and every question was approved by every participating country in order to eliminate cultural bias.
  • When results of the first PISA came out in 2001, German scores were surprisingly low, sparking intense national debate. Because U.S. students do particularly poorly in math, President Bush created a National Mathematics Advisory Panel.
  • In their search for a math gender gap, Sapienza and colleagues did not have to look very hard. Despite the fact that girls spent 19.5 percent more time than boys on math homework, their average math scores were 2 percent lower (a difference of 10.5 points in scores). This finding persisted even when accounting for the fact that boys spent 2.3 percent more time in math classes. Not only did the average boy outperform the average girl, but a gap also existed between the best male and female students. Among those in the top 5 percent of test takers, there were only six girls for every ten boys.
  • While the overall global pattern shows that boys tended to outperform girls in math, the male advantage was not complete. In a few countries girls topped boys. For example, the average girl in Iceland scored close to 3 percent higher (14.5 points) than the average boy. And in Indonesia there were eleven girls for every ten boys in the top 5 percent of test takers
  • There was not a single country in which boys outperformed girls. Worldwide average reading scores for girls were 6.6 percent better than for boys, ranging from 5.4 percent better in Turkey to 12.7 percent better in Iceland for the subset of countries shown in figure 1. Among children who scored in the top 95 percent, there were 183 girls for every 100 boys, ranging from a balanced one-to-one ratio among Turks to 29 girls for every 10 boys in Iceland.
  • Academic excellence is not specific to a single topic; countries that educate girls well do so across the board.
  • gender gaps that expanded and contracted from country to country
  • Other researchers had shown that social conditioning and gender-biased environments can impact test performance
  • epresentation of women in government.
  • Sapienza and her colleagues found that improved social conditions for women were related to improved math performance by girls. For example, the math gender gap almost disappeared in Sweden (GGI = 0.81), while girls scored nearly 23 points below boys in math in Turkey (GGI = 0.59). Not only did average girls’ scores improve as equality improved, but the number of girls reaching the highest levels of performance also increased. In Iceland, for example, there were 117 girls for every 100 boys among the top 1 percent of math students.

  • “We establish that in some countries the gender gap in math disappears. But there’s a big tension. Is it emancipation of women, or is it something else?” said Sapienza. “One possible explanation is wealth.”

      

    To learn whether the math gender gap shrank as a result of girls in richer countries performing better than those in poorer countries, the researchers incorporated each country’s gross domestic product (GDP) into their mathematical model.
  • “In some countries like Philippines or Sri Lanka, which aren’t particularly wealthy, women are fairly emancipated. On the contrary, some wealthy countries, like Italy, are among the less gender equal societies.”
  • Social Equality, or Just Biology at Work?
  • Having linked social structures to the math gender gap from country to country, Sapienza wonders whether this result rules out biological influences entirely. The answer is no. The biological hypothesis suggests that an average boy would score higher in mathematics than in reading, while for girls the reverse is true. This pattern does not change in more gender equal societies hinting that some aspects of academic performance may be innately different between boys and girls.
  • Sapienza and colleagues found that boys, regardless of the country and social environment in which they live, typically do better in math than in reading. Similarly, girls are usually better in reading than in math, regardless of the degree of gender equality in their society. As a result, in more gender equal societies, girls will gain an absolute advantage relative to boys.
  • Some evidence of the influence of biology can be gained by looking at mathematics sub-scores. Previous research had shown that boys’ advantage over girls in math is most pronounced in geometry (e.g., Pythagorean theorem), while the gap is narrowest in arithmetic (e.g., 1+2=3). But no matter how much girls narrow the gender gaps in geometry and arithmetic in more gender-equal countries, boys always score higher in geometry than arithmetic, while the opposite is observed for girls. So the between gender differences in a single discipline—reading or math—certainly appear to be influenced by social features, but the within gender differences between reading and math, and between arithmetic and geometry, appear to be much more stable across environments, suggesting possible biological roots.
  • But while opportunities for women in science have greatly improved over recent decades, the words of Madame Curie written a century ago still resonate: “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.”

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