Gender Inequality and the Math Gap

arstechnica.com

4 points·mechanical_fish··3 comments

All I know is, where I grew up, girls usually scored higher than boys on math tests, and of course that was also attributed to physical/gender differences... girls having a "natural" interest in studying and boys having a "natural" interest in running around and being boys. Everything always gets blamed on gender differences but the truth is, we simply don't know what those differences are (as opposed to culture/individual upbringing), so we justify our own prejudices with "science".

If we are playing the anecdote game, in my high school, girls did best in math class (straightforward math problems--evaluate this integral), but boys did the best in math team (more creative and applied questions).

The study, however, leaves us with yet another question of this sort: why do boys appear to read so poorly? We clearly can't ascribe it to social inequality, but that doesn't mean it isn't due to some other social factor.

This is just stupid. The study (or any other I've ever seen) as described offers no such clarity. My reaction to any such study that offers such grand social pronouncements is extreme skepticism.

For once, I'd like to read an article about a study that only concludes what the statistics in the study will actually support, and nothing more.

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